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I'm going to reserve comment on this. When I first started reading the article I thought to myself "Oh crap, another hypochondriac loading himself up with drugs". Yet as I continued reading, I had thoughts of a different war, a different time, a different illness, same rhetoric.

OC


Is an Armament Sickening U.S. Soldiers?
By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP

NEW YORK (Aug. 12) - It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills - morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.

Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.

Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.

There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick.

In the sprawling bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has many caretakers. An internist, a neurologist, a pain-management specialist, a psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon and a dermatologist. He cannot function without his stupefying arsenal of medications, but they exact a high price.

"I'm just a zombie walking around," he says.

Reed believes depleted uranium has contaminated him and his life. He now walks point in a vitriolic war over the Pentagon's arsenal of it - thousands of shells and hundreds of tanks coated with the metal that is radioactive, chemically toxic, and nearly twice as dense as lead.

A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter, exploding on impact into a charring inferno. As tank armor, it repels artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium. The U.S. has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of it, sitting in hazardous waste storage sites across the country. Meaning it is plentiful and cheap as well as highly effective.

Reed says he unknowingly breathed DU dust while living with his unit in Samawah, Iraq. He was med-evaced out in July 2003, nearly unable to walk because of lightning-strike pains from herniated discs in his spine. Then began a strange series of symptoms he'd never experienced in his previously healthy life.

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another, and in the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.

"We all had migraines. We all felt sick," Reed says. "The doctors said, 'It's all in your head.'"

Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit made up of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.

But the medic knew something the others didn't.

Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They'd brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.

"We got on the Internet," Reed said, "and we started researching depleted uranium.

Then they contacted The New York Daily News, which paid for sophisticated urine tests available only overseas.

Then they hired a lawyer.

Reed, Gerard Matthew, Raymond Ramos, Hector Vega, Augustin Matos, Anthony Yonnone, Jerry Ojeda and Anthony Phillip all have depleted uranium in their urine, according to tests done in December 2003, while they bounced for months between Walter Reed and New Jersey's Fort Dix medical center, seeking relief that never came.

The analyses were done in Germany, by a Frankfurt professor who developed a depleted uranium test with Randall Parrish, a professor of isotope geology at the University of Leicester in Britain.

The veterans, using their positive results as evidence, have sued the U.S. Army, claiming officials knew the hazards of depleted uranium, but concealed the risks.

The Department of Defense says depleted uranium is powerful and safe, and not that worrisome.

Four of the highest-registering samples from Frankfurt were sent to the VA.

Those results were negative, Reed said. "Their test just isn't as sophisticated," he said. "And when we first asked to be tested, they told us there wasn't one. They've lied to us all along."

The VA's testing methodology is safe and accurate, the agency says. More than 2,100 soldiers from the current war have asked to be tested; only 8 had DU in their urine, the VA said.

The term depleted uranium is linguistically radioactive. Simply uttering the words can prompt a reaction akin to preaching atheism at tent revival. Heads shake, eyes roll, opinions are yelled from all sides.

"The Department of Defense takes the position that you can eat it for breakfast and it poses no threat at all," said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center, which helps veterans with various problems, including navigating the labyrinth of VA health care. "Then you have far-left groups that ... declare it a crime against humanity."

Several countries use it as weaponry, including Britain, which fired it during the 2003 Iraq invasion.

An estimated 286 tons of DU munitions were fired by the U.S. in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. An estimated 130 tons were shot toppling Saddam Hussein.

Depleted uranium can enter the human body by inhalation, the most dangerous method; by ingesting contaminated food or eating with contaminated hands; by getting dust or debris in an open wound, or by being struck by shrapnel, which often is not removed because doing so would be more dangerous than leaving it.

Inhaled, it can lodge in the lungs. As with imbedded shrapnel, this is doubly dangerous - not only are the particles themselves physically destructive, they emit radiation.

A moderate voice on the divisive DU spectrum belongs to Dan Fahey, a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley, who has studied the issue for years and also served in the Gulf War before leaving the military as a conscientious objector.

"I've been working on this since '93 and I've just given up hope," he said. "I've spoken to successive federal committees and elected officials ... who then side with the Pentagon. Nothing changes."

At the other end are a collection of conspiracy-theorists and Internet proselytizers who say using such weapons constitutes genocide. Two of the most vocal opponents recently suggested that a depleted-uranium missile, not a hijacked jetliner, struck the Pentagon in 2001.

"The bottom line is it's more hazardous than the Pentagon admits," Fahey said, "but it's not as hazardous as the hard-line activist groups say it is. And there's a real dearth of information about how DU affects humans."

There are several studies on how it affects animals, though their results are not, of course, directly applicable to humans. Military research on mice shows that depleted uranium can enter the bloodstream and come to rest in bones, the brain, kidneys and lymph nodes. Other research in rats shows that DU can result in cancerous tumors and genetic mutations, and pass from mother to unborn child, resulting in birth defects.

Iraqi doctors reported significant increases in birth defects and childhood cancers after the 1991 invasion.

Iraqi authorities "found that uranium, which affected the blood cells, had a serious impact on health: The number of cases of leukemia had increased considerably, as had the incidence of fetal deformities," the U.N. reported.

Depleted uranium can also contaminate soil and water, and coat buildings with radioactive dust, which can by carried by wind and sandstorms.

In 2005, the U.N. Environmental Program identified 311 polluted sites in Iraq. Cleaning them will take at least $40 million and several years, the agency said. Nothing can start until the fighting stops.

Fifteen years after it was first used in battle, there is only one U.S. government study monitoring veterans exposed to depleted uranium.

Number of soldiers in the survey: 32. Number of soldiers in both Iraq wars: more than 900,000.

The study group's size is controversial - far too small, say experts including Fahey - and so are the findings of the voluntary, Baltimore-based study.

It has found "no clinically significant" health effects from depleted uranium exposure in the study subjects, according to its researchers.

Critics say the VA has downplayed participants' health problems, including not reporting one soldier who developed cancer, and another who developed a bone tumor.

So for now, depleted uranium falls into the quagmire of Gulf War Syndrome, from which no treatment has emerged despite the government's spending of at least $300 million.

About 30 percent of the 700,000 men and women who served in the first Gulf War still suffer a baffling array of symptoms very similar to those reported by Reed's unit.

Depleted uranium has long been suspected as a possible contributor to Gulf War Syndrome, and in the mid-90s, veterans helped push the military into tracking soldiers exposed to it.

But for all their efforts, what they got in the end was a questionnaire dispensed to homeward-bound soldiers asking about mental health, nightmares, losing control, exposure to dangerous and radioactive chemicals.

But, the veterans persisted, how would soldiers know they'd been exposed? Radiation is invisible, tasteless, and has no smell. And what exhausted, homesick, war-addled soldier would check a box that would only send him or her to a military medical center to be poked and prodded and questioned and tested?

It will take years to determine how depleted uranium affected soldiers from this war. After Vietnam, veterans, in numbers that grew with the passage of time, complained of joint aches, night sweats, bloody feces, migraine headaches, unexplained rashes and violent behavior; some developed cancers.

It took more than 25 years for the Pentagon to acknowledge that Agent Orange - a corrosive defoliant used to melt the jungles of Vietnam and flush out the enemy - was linked to those sufferings.

It took 40 years for the military to compensate sick World War II vets exposed to massive blasts of radiation during tests of the atomic bomb.

In 2002, Congress voted to not let that happen again.

It established the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses - comprised of scientists, physicians and veterans advocates. It reports to the secretary of Veterans Affairs.

Its mandate is to judge all research and all efforts to treat Gulf War Syndrome patients against a single standard: Have sick soldiers been made better?

The answer, according to the committee, is no.

"Regrettably, after four years of operation neither the Committee nor (the) VA can report progress toward this goal," stated its December 2005 report. "Research has not produced effective treatments for these conditions nor shown that existing treatments are significantly effective."

And so time marches on, as do soldiers going to, and returning from, the deserts of Iraq.

Herbert Reed is an imposing man, broad shouldered and tall. He strides into the VA Medical Center in the Bronx with the presence of a cop or a soldier. Since the Vietnam War, he has been both.

His hair is perfect, his shirt spotless, his jeans sharply creased. But there is something wrong, a niggling imperfection made more noticeable by a bearing so disciplined. It is a limp - more like a hitch in his get-along.

It is the only sign, albeit a tiny one, that he is extremely sick.

Even sleep offers no release. He dreams of gunfire and bombs and soldiers who scream for help. No matter how hard he tries, he never gets there in time.

At 54, he is a veteran of two wars and a 20-year veteran of the New York Police Department, where he last served as an assistant warden at the Riker's Island prison.

He was in perfect health, he says, before being deployed to Iraq.

According to military guidelines, he should have heard the words depleted uranium long before he ended up at Walter Reed. He should have been trained about its dangers, and how to avoid prolonged exposure to its toxicity and radioactivity. He says he didn't get anything of the kind. Neither did other reservists and National Guard soldiers called up for the current war, according to veterans' groups.

Reed and the seven brothers from his unit hate what has happened to them, and they speak of it at public seminars and in politicians' offices. It is something no VA doctor can explain; something that leaves them feeling like so many spent shell rounds, kicked to the side of battle.

But for every outspoken soldier like them, there are silent veterans like Raphael Naboa, an Army artillery scout who served 11 months in the northern Sunni Triangle, only to come home and fall apart.

Some days he feels fine. "Some days I can't get out of bed," he said from his home in Colorado.

Now 29, he's had growths removed from his brain. He has suffered a small stroke - one morning he was shaving, having put down the razor to rinse his face. In that moment, he blacked out and pitched over.

"Just as quickly as I lost consciousness, I regained it," he said. "Except I couldn't move the right side of my body."

After about 15 minutes, the paralysis ebbed.

He has mentioned depleted uranium to his VA doctors, who say he suffers from a series of "non-related conditions." He knows he was exposed to DU.

"A lot of guys went trophy-hunting, grabbing bayonets, helmets, stuff that was in the vehicles that were destroyed by depleted uranium. My guys were rooting around in it. I was trying to get them out of the vehicles."

No one in the military talked to him about depleted uranium, he said. His knowledge, like Reed's, is self-taught from the Internet.

Unlike Reed, he has not gone to war over it. He doesn't feel up to the fight. There is no known cure for what ails him, and so no possible victory in battle.

He'd really just like to feel normal again. And he knows of others who feel the same.

"I was an artillery scout, these are folks who are in pretty good shape. Your Rangers, your Special Forces guys, they're in as good as shape as a professional athlete.

"Then we come back and we're all sick."

They feel like men who once were warriors and now are old before their time, with no hope for relief from a multitude of miseries that has no name.















Some days it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>"The bottom line is it's more hazardous than the Pentagon admits," Fahey said, "but it's not as hazardous as the hard-line activist groups say it is. And there's a real dearth of information about how DU affects humans."

<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>


The truth they say is in the middle. Maybe Fahey has that part figured out? Something made these guys sick.

Fender

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
George Bernard Shaw

Veterans and DU

I'm not going to make a call on his "Condition" I've seen too many like Him already.We wont know anything if this is Like the NAM VETS until most are Dead or someone finds the "Smoking Gun"

DU is been just one of several factors that have been thrown around for years but was a "BIG ENOUGH CONCERN" That in 1998 they stated testing .
But there are so many more things that are being looked into now.
I dont know if they are suffering from DU exposure or ONE OF THE FEW other things thats being looked at.I just cant make a call or want too.
This is just for INFO not to Go after anyone for their Opinions.



This is out of the VA handbook on Radation Exposure ,they have a Whole Appendix that was too much to copy it has a link at the bottom somewhere.



VETERANS EXPOSED TO DEPLETED URANIUM (DU)
Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process by which
U-235 is purified for use in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. During this
process, both U-234 and U-235 are removed. Since U-234 and U-235 are the more
radioactive of the natural uranium isotopes, DU is about half as radioactive as natural
uranium (i.e., DU has about half the number of disintegrations per second per gram).
Removal of U-234 has the greatest impact on the radioactivity of DU for although U-234
makes up only a very small portion (.0058%) of natural uranium, its radioactivity is
extremely high (6200 ìCi/g) when compared to the other isotopes (2.2 ìCi/g for U-235
and 0.33 ìCi/g for U-238). U-234, therefore, contributes approximately 0.36 ìCi/g or
almost half of the radioactivity of natural uranium. In DU, the concentration of U-234 is
0.001 %, thus diminishing its contribution to the total radioactivity of DU to approximately
0.062 ìCi/g or l6%. (Refer to the Physician Information Packet (2000) in Appendix 15
for chart of contributions of individual isotopes to radioactivity of uranium and DU.)
DU is primarily a hazard if internalized due to its alpha particle emission. The toxicity of
DU is related more to its chemical properties as a heavy metal than its radioactivity.
Because of DU’s high density and other properties, it is used by the military forces in
armor to protect tanks and in munitions to enhance penetration and destructive effects.
During the Gulf War (GW), DU-containing weapons were used on a very large scale for
the first time and were utilized only by the U.S. and British forces. U.S. service personnel
potentially exposed to DU include “friendly fire” casualties with retained fragments or
wound contamination, those who entered vehicles that had been damaged by DU munitions,
individuals who cleaned or salvaged DU-damaged vehicles, and personnel who
breathed smoke or dust containing DU particles.
DoD has estimated that external exposure to DU by service personnel in the GW would
have been unlikely to exceed the applicable NRC occupational dose limits.
The highest internal radiation dose found in veterans who were tested by whole-body
counting as part of the DU Follow-up Program at the Baltimore VA Medical Center was
slightly over the NRC’s annual allowance for the general public of 0.1 rem per year.
29
Health effects of DU
Since DU was not used in weapons prior to the GW and since DU exposure in the GW
was different in various ways from other forms of exposure to uranium (e.g., in uranium
miners and millers), relatively little is known about DU’s long-term health effects.
Therefore a DU Follow-up Program (see below) was established in 1993 at the Baltimore
VA Medical Center to provide clinical surveillance to veterans and active-duty personnel
who had significant exposure to DU (primarily those with retained DU fragments.)
Significant findings of the Baltimore DU Follow-up Program include the following:
• Elevated uranium excretion in the urine (primarily in those with retained DU fragments)
but no evidence of renal damage or impairment of renal function;
• Urinary uranium excretion appears to be a more sensitive screening test than external
body/whole-body counting for significant DU exposure;
• Elevated urine uranium levels were related to poorer performance on some computerized
neuropsychological tests; new data in press show this effect is dampening;
• Uranium was present in the semen of several veterans with elevated urine uranium
levels. These are preliminary findings that need further exploration. There is no
evidence of birth defects in the over 30 children born to these veterans;
• Elevated urine uranium levels were related to higher prolactin levels, most of which
were within the upper bounds of the normal range in the 1997 results, but the 1999 data
did not find that.
See Appendix 14 for a copy of a paper by McDiarmid et al. See Appendix 15 for DU;
Information for Clinicians from the Baltimore VAMC for additional information.
The Baltimore VA Medical Center DU program also is providing direction to an expanded
DU screening program (see below). Elevated urine uranium values were found to be unlikely
in the absence of retained DU metal fragments. It was felt that there was little likelihood
that those with normal urine uranium levels when tested would develop any uraniumrelated
toxicity. A committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), National Academy of
Sciences, reviewed the possible effects of DU exposure. It concluded that there was limited/
suggestive evidence of no association between exposure to uranium at cumulative internal
dose levels lower than 20 rem or 25 rads and lung cancer. Also, the committee found
limited/suggestive evidence of no association between exposure to uranium and clinically
significant renal dysfunction. The IOM committee found that there was inadequate/insufficient
evidence to determine whether or not associations existed between uranium exposure
and a number of other cancers and diseases.
30
Special VA programs for DU-exposed veterans
Veterans exposed to DU in the GW are eligible to participate in the VA’s Gulf War
Registry Examination program, which includes DU screening (see below). GW veterans
also have special eligibility (Priority Level 6) to enroll in VA health care for treatment of
conditions possibly related to service in the Persian Gulf.
DU Screening Program – In 1998 the VA and DoD established a screening program for
GW veterans whom DoD has identified as potentially having significant DU exposure and
other GW veterans who are concerned about possible DU exposure. See Appendix 3 for
a copy of VHA Directive 98-032 Evaluation Protocol for Gulf War Veterans with Potential
Exposure to Depleted Uranium (DU).
DoD has classified exposures to DU in the GW into 3 levels:
• Level I includes service personnel in or on a vehicle at the time it was penetrated by
a DU munition and rescuers who entered US vehicles immediately afterwards. DoD
estimates that less than 200 U.S. personnel are in Level I.
• Level II includes personnel who worked with DU-contaminated vehicles or other systems
(including members of the 144th Service and Supply Company of the NJ National
Guard) or were involved in the clean-up after a fire in Camp Doha’s North Compound.
DoD estimates that there were about 800 U.S. personnel in Level II.
• Level III includes personnel exposed to smoke containing DU or who entered DUcontaminated
vehicles. DoD estimates that Level III includes at least hundreds of U.S.
personnel who were exposed to smoke at Camp Doha.
[Other personnel not in one of these three categories presumably were at less risk for
significant DU exposure.]
The screening program includes (1) a GW registry examination (if not already performed),
(2) a detailed questionnaire about possible DU exposures in the GW, and (3) a 24 hour
urine collection for uranium determination.
The Baltimore DU Follow-up Program (see below) provides guidance to other facilities
regarding DU issues and is coordinating urine uranium testing and interpretation. Isotopic
uranium analysis may be able to separate those with excretion of high levels of natural
uranium (e.g., from living in an area with high uranium concentrations in the soil and
water) from those exposed to DU.
31
DU Follow-up Program – As noted above, a DU Follow-up Program has been established
at the Baltimore VA Medical Center. Initially about 35 veterans mostly with retained DU
fragments were invited to participate in this clinical surveillance program.
Recently additional GW veterans who were felt to have similar opportunities for significant
DU exposure have been added and a total of 51 individuals were evaluated as inpatients at
the Baltimore VAMC during 1999. It is expected that the VA will offer long-term followup
surveillance to individuals with significant amounts of internalized DU.
KEY REFERENCES RELATING TO DU
Baltimore VA Medical Center DU: Information for Clinicians (Appendix 15)
Environmental Exposure Report Depleted Uranium in the Gulf (II), DOD Office
of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, December 2000,
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/
Hooper et al., Elevated urine uranium excretion by soldiers with retained uranium
shrapnel. Health Physics, Volume 77, Number 5, pages 512-519, 1999
Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, Gulf War and Health Volume 1.
Depleted Uranium, Sarin, Pyridostigmine Bromide, Vaccines, 2000
McDiarmid et al., Health effects of depleted uranium on exposed Gulf War veterans.
Environmental Research, Volume 82, pages 168-180, 2000. (see Appendix 14)
McDiarmid et al., Urinary Uranium Concentrations in an Enlarged Gulf War Veteran
Cohort, Health Physics, Volume 80, Number 3, pages 270-273, 2001
McDiarmid, Melissa, Depleted Uranium and Public Health, British Medical Journal
Volume 322, Number 7279, pages 123-124, January 20, 2001
VHA Directive 98-032 Evaluation Protocol for Gulf War Veterans with Potential Exposure
to Depleted Uranium (DU), July 9, 1998 (see Appendix 3)

Goose


I know now for a FACT that Truth is Stranger than Fiction and IT CAN ALWAYS BE WORST!

_________________
\"Live Free Or Die\"

You're right Fender, somewhere in the middle of all the finger pointing is the truth. Unfortunately, it takes a whole lot of shouting to get the DOD to look at things. There's a reason my original 214 was ammended to read "AGENT ORANGE EXPOSURE".

OC

Some days it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints

My sister was an Army CrashHawk medevac pilot and served a tour in Iraq. She got a full medical discharge cause half her body went numb(and has stayed so).

She thinks it was the anthrax shot.

<img src="http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b343/m21sniper/OnTheJobEnhanced.jpg" border=0>
<b>"US Snipers...Providing surgical strikes since 1776"</b>

My younger brother was Illinois National Guard and was in DS1 driving an 18 wheeler trasnporting everything from Airborne Units to Iraqi Detainee's to who knows what.

Since he returned he was diagnosed with Crones Disease because of stomach problesm he was having. He has extremely harsh headaches, lasting days, among various other aches and pains and things he never experienced prior to being in DS1.

He does get his blood pressure meds from VA, although they turned him down on disabilty.
A female he works with was also in his Guard unit at the same time. She experiences basically same things and VA awarded her a 1% disability.

I have to agree with you guys that the truth is out there somewhere, but will it be too late once found to help the guys that need it the most right now?

I wish I had been there, as I think that would have been the ultimate performance of our job as crew chiefs. You saw the end result 1st hand of what we practiced for everyday!

One of the guys at our gun club who was a Marine recently died as the result of a paperwork foul-up and they double-dosed him on anthrax innoculations. His immune system went nuts and slowly tore his body apart over three years. A DS vet I met suffered from intermittent seizures, slurred speach, memory lapses, and apparent Parkinson's disease. At least he could stand and walk on his own, barely, with help. Two of my mother's aquiantances, both DS vets, recently had children with severe skull and bone deformaties.

I'm honestly more concerned over the willy-nilly use of immunizations (even the ones for little kids) than the DU. The immune system is a tricky and dangerous thing, and by giving too many immunizations over too short a time (or, in the case of infants, too early), it can shock the system, which freaks-out and will attack anything.

But, in regards to DU, they do need to take better precautions so service personel know to stay away from DU-contaminated areas so they don't accidentally breath, eat, or drink the stuff. Maybe even offer some type of dust mask, and make sure your hands and foodstuffs have had some semblence of a cleansing.

Thinking of Snipe's sister and the other vets I've known that have suffered mysterious debilitating medical problems, does anybody have an idea as to the rate our service personel are diagnosed with these ailments?

Crushed under his own mental block...

But I would go more towardsthis is just my Guess for Us in GW1 and because I have my Original Shot Record and it is marked
VACC A-1 and VACC-A-2 I would go to the Anthrax.
VACC A is the expiremental version of the Anthrax shot only 2 shots were given.
The older version is 8 shots and todays is what,6-8 shots?
The Anthrax given today ISNT the Anthrax shot that was given to the GW-1 Vets 1990-1992 in some cases AND in 1993 the place was shut down for CGMP Voliations and the FDA LOCKED THE DOORS.
It was sold to another Company and re-opened in 95-96 basically the same people running it under differant name "BIO-PORT"
So the Vaccine has changed several times and unless you have records,which most GWVETS dont have because they were either destoried or "Lost"by DOD , YOU have to have your shot records or prove that you were with someone who has the record .

Another thing is "ISG" or "IMG " BASICALLY
"IMMUNE SERUM GLOBULIN" made from seprating blood into its 2 basic compontents ,serum and the Blood Plates themself.
Thats being looked into.

Than the "Chemical Weapons" that were either "Launch or used"(who knows)or from the fall out of bombing or Blowing up the areas storing them or from Aircraft which brought it back on them after they bombed ,which released clouds of the Chemicals.

A while back the Army still gave out personal exposeure Maps of where you were on what given day and your "Chances of suffering from
effects of it."

But I have a DX, which is in this whole "GULFWAR SYDROME" thing is Good,(Actually I rather have my Health) The Vets who Dont have a DX get sent to Shrinks etc..... without any treatment until its too late.

So its a Big Mess and now the WHOLE NEW GW2 Vets,with more and worst Combat Wounds, lost limbs,head injuries, etc... PTSD and Strange illinesses its replaying itself..

I just wish we finished it in 91,These Vets wouldnt be over there today .

But HogSnort

It was the "HAY-DAY" of the CrewChief and Weapons Crews Plus the rest and the A-10, KILLING TANKS! Probably some Pilots think it was their "HAY-DAY" too. But the training we did all that time Worked! except the Chem Gear Training ,that was Thrown-out the Window by the Second week.

Goose

(PS I have alot of research on this stuff.and books ,binders and records on this whole thing of "GULFWAR SICKNESS" I have gathered over the years when I was Working with the DAV)




I know now for a FACT that Truth is Stranger than Fiction and IT CAN ALWAYS BE WORST!

_________________
\"Live Free Or Die\"