- Gulf War Illness Probe To Advance
With New Study
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- Tom Clancy's latest novel Rainbow Six
rivets readers with a fictional account of environmentalist elites who
decide that the only way they can save the world is to radically eliminate
over 95% of the human population. Some of the world's leading scientists
develop a strain of viruses, which they call Shiva after the Indian goddess
of death, and devise an ingenious method to infect the world's population.
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- Part of Clancy's plot involves the development
of two antibodies to fight the new virus, one of which will be for the
world's elite, to inoculate them; the other for the sick, to make them
sicker.
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- But there's a more riveting reallife
scenario unfolding in the United States and around the world that puts
Clancy's fictional thriller into the realm of the credible: the efforts
of a small group of reputable scientists, sick U.S. veterans, and a handful
of investigative journalists to unlock the secrets of Gulf War Illness
(GWI), sometimes referred to as Gulf War Syndrome, which has afflicted
between 100,000 and 200,000 military personnel who served in President
George Bush's Desert Storm and their families, and which is responsible
for perhaps 15,000 deaths.
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- The number of military personnel who
have died of the mysterious illness remains a classified secret, one of
GWI's top researchers, Dr. Garth Nicolson of the Institute for Molecular
Medicine, told The Wanderer.
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- For nearly ten years, since his daughter
Sharron returned from the gulf where she served with the 101st Airborne,
Nicolson and his wife, Nancy, a molecular biophysicist, have waged a lonely,
frustrating, and often dangerous campaign to discover the causes of GWI
while working on a treatment.
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- Their first big break came last week
(Jan. 12th) when they were notified by the U.S. Army that their research
had been validated and their Institute for Molecular Medicine would be
one of three centers, with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and
the University of Texas at San Antonio, involved in a $12 million Veterans'
Administrationfunded project to develop a treatment for the debilitating
and often fatal illness, an infection known technically as mycoplasma fermentans.
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- Dr. Nicolson explains that slightly under
onehalf of the Gulf War veterans he has tested have shown signs of infection
by mycoplasma fermentans.
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- For the husband/wife team of researchers,
the army's notice came as a tremendous vindication after years of repeated
attempts by government agencies to ruin their careers, their credibility,
and their research.
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- As both Nancy and Garth Nicolson wrote
in the October, 1996 issue of Criminal Politics, since he began researching
the causes of GWI, he has lived through a government sponsored "nightmare."
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- "We were attacked by high level
military physicians, ostracized by certain colleagues who spread rumors
about our sanity, forced out of academic institutions by a concerted effort
that involved nonstop administrative harassment, mail and courier theft,
wiretaps, credit card fraud, breaking a tenure contract, computer and documents
theft, attempts to block our scientific and medical presentations, sabotage
our clinical samples, and undermine our employees."
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- Their ordeal over the past eight years
since 1991 has convinced them that certain sections of the U.S. government,
working with what might be called the "eugenics elite" at the
country's top research labs in the fields of biochemistry and genetic engineering,
are testing new designer biologic agents on the American public, starting
with prisoners and military personnel.
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- Who They Are
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- The Doctors Garth and Nancy Nicolson
are not your ordinary conspiracy theory "nuts."
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- Garth Nicolson before setting up the
Institute for Molecular Medicine, a 501c3 corporation, in Huntington Beach,
Calif. was the David Bruton, Jr., Chair in Cancer Research and professor
at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and
professor of internal medicine and professor of pathology and laboratory
medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.
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- He was also adjunct professor of comparative
medicine at Texas A&M University. Among the most cited scientists in
the world, having published over 480 medical and scientific papers, edited
13 books, served on the editorial boards of 12 medical and scientific journals,
and currently serving as editor of two (Clinical & Experimental Metastasis
and the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry), he has been the recipient of
numerous research grants from the U.S. Army, the National Cancer Institute,
National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and the National
Foundation for Cancer Research. In 1998, he received the Stephen Paget
Award from the Cancer Metastasis Research Society and the Albert Schweitzer
Award in Lisbon.
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- Nancy Nicolson, a molecular biophysicist,
was on the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine's Department of Immunology
and Microbiology.
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- Both scientists have been nominated for
a Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking work in nucleoprotein gene tracking.
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- In 1987, Nancy Nicolson believes, she
was deliberately infected with mycoplasma incognitus because she refused
to participate in research on biological weapons and germ warfare, and
had, in fact, publicly spoken in opposition to such research programs
which are, in fact, banned by international treaties of which the U.S.
is a signatory.
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- She became deathly ill, becoming partly
paralyzed; her thyroid was affected and she contracted meningitis. But
during this illness, she found the antibiotic Doxycycline helped her regain
health.
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- In 1991, six months after the Nicolson's
daughter returned from the gulf, Sharron came down with an illness remarkably
similar to what Nancy had just recovered from: chronic fatigue, aching
joints, diarrhea, vomiting, and fevers. The symptoms seemed similar to
mycoplasma infection, and so the Nicolsons recommended treating her with
Doxycycline.
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- Sharron then began contacting her veteran
friends, who were reporting similar problems, and of the 73 who tried the
treatment, 55 reported an improvement in health.
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- Now the plot thickens.
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- That same year, Garth Nicolson began
receiving reports of a "mystery illness" spreading among the
employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville. Using
gene tracking, the Nicolsons discovered these prison employees tested positive
for mycoplasma fermentans infection.
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- Prisoners in Huntsville, Palestine, and
Victoria, Texas, had been given experimental flu vaccines purportedly developed
by Tanox Biosystems on Stella Link in Houston, a company with close ties
to Baylor, and the testing was part of a U.S. Army sponsored program run
by biotechnology firms.
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- The inmates at Huntsville then began
spreading their disease to the prison guards, who passed it on to family
members and others in the general population, who then started coming down
with symptoms similar to those of such dread diseases as Lou Gehrig's Disease,
MS, and Guillian Barre Syndrome.
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- As Garth Nicolson reported his discoveries,
he encountered increasing hostility from his peers, including Dr. Charles
LeMaistre, a friend of George Bush and the past president of the M.D. Anderson
Cancer Center; Dr. George Young, chief of the VA in Houston; and Dr. Robert
M. Couch, head of the Baylor Influenza Program, because his findings implied
illegal testing.
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- Among Tanox's investors are George Bush
and his former Secretary of State and fellow Texan James Baker III.
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- As opposition rose, so did their understanding
of M.D. Anderson's deep involvement in biological weapons research and
testing since the late 1970s, and that M.D. Anderson was specifically engaged
in research on mycoplasma fermentans as a biological weapon.
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- Garth Nicolson resigned under pressure
from M.D. Anderson in August, 1996, and was ordered to remove all his research
equipment and materials from M.D. Anderson, where he had served as senior
tenured professor and department chairman for 16 years.
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- "The administration was trying to
restrict our activities in the area of GWI and I resigned because of my
stand on academic freedom and my right to pursue that particular line of
investigation. I had unanimous internal clinical review board approval
for the research," he told The Wanderer, "but I suspect that
thenMajor General Ronald Blanck, currently surgeon general of the army,
was pressuring the M.D. Anderson administration to stop our research."
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- Spreading The Disease
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- In dozens of research reports for professional
medical journals, and in four separate, sworn testimonies before congressional
committees, the Doctors Nicolson state their belief that Gulf War Illness
was caused both by the vaccines soldiers sent to the gulf received and
by airborne chemicals released when U.S. troops destroyed tons of Saddam
Hussein's chemical weapons.
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- Their testimony is that soldiers were
exposed to five possible sources of exposure: vaccines, some of which were
questionable and were contaminated by microorganisms; blowback from destroyed
biological and chemical weapons; factories and bunkers which stored the
agents; approximately 60 Italianmade biological weapons sprayers that were
fully deployed in southern Iraq and Kuwait; as well as airburst SCUD missiles
equipped for delivery of chemical and biological weapons.
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- Prior to deployment, the army administered
vaccines, ostensibly, against weaponsborn anthrax, to 150,000 soldiers,
often eight or nine shots at a time. Eightyfive percent of soldiers were
told by their commanders that they could not refuse the vaccines, under
threat of courtmartial, and 43% experienced immediate side effects.
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- Together, the vaccines and Saddam's chemical
weapons produced a toxic cocktail producing GWI, the symptoms of which
include: aching joints, chronic fatigue, memory loss, night sweats, headaches,
skin rashes, depression, muscle spasms, dizziness, nausea, vision problems,
sex problems, urination problems, hair loss, bleeding gums, vision problems,
and eye pain.
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- Perhaps the most frightening facet of
GWI is that a large fraction of it is a communicable disease caused by
the biological weapons which Gulf War vets have passed on to their wives,
their children, including those in utero, and even to pets.
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- In his congressional testimony, Dr. Garth
Nicolson stated that the Gulf War was the first time in history that vaccine
records on the troops were classified and remain classified to this day.
The Department of Defense has admitted, however, that over 400,000 records
have disappeared.
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- Former Air Force Captain Joyce Riley,
a Gulf War vet and another major figure working to expose the causes of
GWI, has concluded that medical records of approximately 70% of all Gulf
War vets are listed as "missing."
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- Another bizarre twist to this tale is
that the army's medical records from the Gulf War were in storage at the
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City when it was bombed.
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- What has alarmed the Nicolsons, and other
researchers, is that mycoplasmal infections are often relatively benign,
but preliminary investigations of some mycoplasma found in some Gulf War
veterans contains the HIV1 envelope gene, a component of the AIDS virus
which renders the mycoplasma invasive, enabling it to spread throughout
the body, alter DNA, and cause birth defects.
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- Another frightful scenario is the possibility
that some vets, who have been infected with the mycoplasma disease but
as yet show no symptoms, may be donating blood, and thereby infecting the
larger population.
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- This is the view of Dr. Patricia Axelrod,
one of the first to speak out about Gulf War Illness. In a Dec. 12th, 1996
Montel interview, she said: "We are dealing with bacterial warfare
agents. We are dealing with chemical warfare agents. We are dealing with
radiation poisoning...The Department of Defense is covering this up."
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- Already, as Life magazine reported in
1995, an abnormally high percentage of children with birth defects have
been born to Gulf War vets.
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- More Mysteries
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- On Feb. 9th, 1994, former Michigan Sen.
Don Riegle, Jr., took to the floor of the U.S. Senate and reported:
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- "Records available from the supplier
for the period from 1985 until the present show that during this period,
pathogenicbiologic agents meaning poisonous and other materials were
exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department
of Commerce.
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- "Records prior to 1985 were not
available, according to the supplier. These exported materials were not
attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction. Thus, from at
least 1985 through 1989, the United States government approved the sale
of quantities of potentially lethal biological agents that could have been
cultured or grown in large quantities in an Iraqi biological warfare program.
. . .
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- "I find it especially troubling
that, according to the supplier's records, these materials were requested
by and sent to Iraqi government agencies, including the Iraqi Atomic Energy
Commission, the Iraq Ministry of Higher Education, the State Company for
Drug Industries, and the Ministry of Trade. While there may be legitimate
needs for pathogens in medical research, closer scrutiny should be exercised."
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- Among the chemicals sent to Iraq Riegle
cited were Bacillus Anthacis, Clostridium Botulinum, Histoplasma Capsulatum,
and Brucella Melitensis.
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- "If you look at what the Iraqis
were ordering," said Dr. Nicolson, "they were ordering far more
than what they would need for legitimate testing purposes as controls for
diagnostic testing."
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- Among the companies granted export licenses
to ship these toxic agents abroad was the American Type Culture Collection
of Rockville, Md., and the federal government's own Centers for Disease
Control in Atlanta was responsible for shipping some of the materials,
according to Riegle's investigation.
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- Strange Twists
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- One of the strangest facts among the
millions uncovered by investigators such as the Nicolsons and Captain Riley
is that Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg of Rockefeller University is on
American Type Culture Collection's board of directors.
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- Lederberg is not only one of the world's
leading experts on cuttingedge molecular biology and genetics, but was
also named to lead the presidential commission to investigate the Gulf
War disease by President Clinton.
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- Lederberg, a member of the Department
of Defense Science Board and an advocate of biological warfare, has helped
steer Defense funds to organizations working on biological warfare.
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- As chairman of the government's investigators
into GWI, Lederberg claimed that his researchers could not discover any
cause for Gulf War Illness.
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- Another Nobel laureate who figures in
this drama is Dr. James Watson, who won a Nobel in 1962 for physiology
and medicine with two British scientists, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilson,
for his role in unraveling the molecular structure of DNA.
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- In 1968, Watson became director of the
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of Quantitative Biology in New York, where
he is a leading researcher in the Human Genome Project.
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- Watson, with other doctors, was involved
in the development of the flu vaccine which was used on the inmates in
Texas prisons.
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- Meanwhile, as the Clinton administration
slowly changes its official position that Gulf War Illness is a myth, the
Department of Defense acknowledges its past shortcomings in handling complaints
related to GWI and research on its causes; the Veterans Administration
has reported that the activeduty tumor rate in the U.S. military has increased
more than 600% since 1990; there is a health crisis in the gulf states,
with an estimated 15%20% of populations "sick" at any given time;
birth defects and infant deaths are soaring.
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- In a September, 1996 appearance at Washington
University in St. Louis, Nobel laureate Edward O. Wilson, an environmental
scientist, spoke on the subject of downsizing the earth's population.
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- The mild mannered Harvard professor of
entomology, reported The St. Louis PostDispatch (Sept. 12th, 1996), explained
how the earth's population had to be brought down to "'the hundreds
of millions' for a true ecological balance.
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- "A single global policy on population
is unfeasible, he said. But efforts are under way in this and other populous
nations to achieve zero population growth and even depopulation, he said."
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- The March/April, 1996 edition of Foreign
Affairs published an article for its elite readership, "Why We Need
a Smaller U.S. Population and How We Can Achieve It."
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- The stuff of fiction? Not anymore.
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- "This story gets more and more tangled
the deeper you dig," Dr. Nicolson told The Wanderer.
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- Indeed it does, especially as GWI is
exploding in the civilian population.
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- + + +
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- For Gulf War vets, there is some good
news, Dr. Nicolson said. "The Department of Defense and the Department
of Veterans Affairs are now allowing physicians to treat microplasma infections
in Gulf War Illness patients with antibiotics, according to our published
protocols.
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- "This was not allowed just a few
months ago."
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- Copies of this article can be found at;
http://www.thewandererpress.com
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