Troops' Pneumonia Outbreak Spurs Medical Hunt

[Pale Blue Dot]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62963-2003Sep11.html

What's clear so far is this: Since early March, about 100 soldiers deployed to the Persian Gulf region and Central Asia have contracted pneumonia. About 30 have been ill enough to be sent to hospitals in Europe or the United States. In medical slang, 19 "crashed" within hours of getting sick, not responding to antibiotics and requiring mechanical ventilators to breathe for them. Two have died.

<snip>

Nothing obviously links the cases, the severe ones in particular. There is no evidence the illness is passed person to person. The 19 people -- 18 men and one woman -- were stationed across 2,600 miles, from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa to Uzbekistan in Central Asia, with most in Iraq. They had a variety of military occupations. Only two were in the same unit, and they became ill six months apart.

Overall, the incidence of pneumonia in deployed troops has not been wildly out of line with what is expected. It's the number of severe cases that's unusual -- that and the fact that 10 of them showed proliferation of uncommon immune system cells called eosinophils.

[brook]

1. I read...

a report the other day that the DOD said the troops in question had all just recently started to smoke and this was what caused their pneumonia. It seemed too outrageously simplistic to even post.

I found this teleconference which mentions the "onset" of smoking in relation to the illness.
DOD report

[Soloflecks]

2. The only smoke I see

is what's coming out of the ass of DoD. Of course, they're not going to mention depleted uranium.

[seventhson]

3. It's Radiation (DU/other) mutating the germs/Sakharov predicted 1950's

This is well known by the military industrial and nuclear companies like Hallibrton.

They do NOT give a shit.

They do NOT test for radiological causes and thus NO ONE reports on them.

See the following articles (which positions got this father of the Soviet H-Bomb labelled a refusenik by the Soviets):

http://www2.math.uic.edu/~takata/test_ban/427_megatons_atmospheric.htm

(do a term search for "mutations" on the page and keep reading)

excerpt from link:

The article which Sakharov refers to is quite readable and is available at http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/1_3-4Sakharov.pdf . In the article he makes the following argument:

Nuclear bomb tests produce large amounts of radiactive carbon-14, which is chemically similar to nonradioactive carbon. Living organisms absorb and use both types of carbon.

He calculates how an atmospheric test disperses carbon-14 over the earth's surface and how much additional radiation human beings will be exposed to.

Ill effects are 1) genetic mutations egg and sperm leading to disease and death, 2) cancers in people, 3) genetic mutations in bacteria and viruses, leading to new strains and new epidemics.

Data from radiologists and X-ray technicians (i.e. those exposed to significantly larger doses of radiation on a lifetime basis) used to estimate the morbility and mortality of radiation exposure.

[donsu]

4. Yes - and this is one subject americans hysterically avoid thinking about

the ecological snowball is hurtling down the mountain with nothing to stop it. but let's pretend we don't see it.

[Tinoire]

6. Ah... All that shit we dropped on Iraq and Yugoslavia come back to haunt?

Shades of Agent Orange... We'll lie for decades...

What a shame :( but if there's one thing you learn in the military- especially the Army and the Marines- it's that you are government property and expendable.

What a crying shame

[kutastha]

5. Eosinophils

Usually appear with some sort of parasitic or fungal infection or an allergic reaction. Sounds like some of these people have some sort of hypersensitivity to some bug living in Iraq.