Anti-HIV mix found in Gulf Veterans
By Paul M. Rodriguez
The Washington Times - August 11, 1997
A synthetic chemical compound used in cutting-edge experimental inoculations against HIV
has been discovered in the blood of some ailing Gulf War Veterans, according to
Insight
magazine.
Pentagon and U.S. government medical authorities say no such inoculations were
administered during the Gulf War but offer no explanation for the presence of the compound
called squalene in blood samples of hundreds of Gulf War veterans who claim to suffer from
so-called Gulf War syndrome.
But these veterans, representing a cross-section of the uniformed services, including
those who served overseas and those who never left the United States, say they were given
unspecified or secret vaccinations.
Adding to the mystery is the inexplicable disappearance of as many as 700,000
service-related immunization records.
The new information about squalene, an adjuvent compound used to boost the effects of
immunizations, comes from a four-month investigation into the origins of Gulf war
illnessses by Insight, which is published by The Washington Times Corp.
Antibodies for this synthetic squalene were discovered in laboratory tests on hundreds of
blood samples taken from the Gulf war soldiers, some who became sick after the conflict
and others who have not.
These laboratory results, some of which have been separately reconfirmed (tests are
continuing), show unusually high antibody levels for squalene, which should not show up in
such tests.
Squalene as an adjuvant is a synthetic polymer that stimulates the body's immune responses
when mixed with vaccines to make medications more effective. It is not approved for human
use except in the most experimental tests overseen by the government in research or cures
for illnesses, such as HIV and Herpes.
Government officials say emphatically that no experimental HIV immunization tests were
conducted on the general military population. However, they say such tests have been
conducted by military and government backed research laboratories on human volunteers. The
tests have not been publicized but have been conducted over a period of several years.
Spokesmen from the Veterans Affairs Department, the National Institute of Health and the
Department of Defense say they are unable to explain when asked why squalene shows up in
the blood of sick soldiers who have been, or decline to answer questions about the
phenomenon.
Timothy Gerrity, a senior official at the VA and the only top official investigating Gulf
war illnesses willing to talk on the record, told Insight Magazine he "would be
surprised" to find out that squalene is in the bloodstream's of ill soldiers. All
vaccinations administered to the Gulf war soldiers are publicly known, he says, and that
no immuno-stimulants were given to U.S. troops.
Mr. Gerrity says that if the trail tests showing squalene are confirmed, the government
will investigate.
Congressional oversight panels, including the Senate and House Veterans Affairs
committees, also plan to investigate the squalene revelations and redouble efforts to find
still missing immunization records for hundreds of thousands of veterans.
Except for the work with a few cutting-edge pharmaceuticals-and then only with approval
from federal authorities-only government agencies are involved in human experimental tests
using adjuvants. Agencies authorized to conduct human experiments include the NIH
Infectious Diseases and Allergy Center and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The NIH and Walter Reed facilities have been experimenting since at lest the 1980's with
immunizations that could be effective against the HIV virus, which causes AIDS. Typically,
the experimental "immunizations" are mixed with adjuvants--like squalene or
alum--to provide a boost to experimental vaccines. Alum is the only U.S. approved adjuvant
for general human use in a variety of vaccines and immunizations.
"I want to know how squalene, an adjuvant that's not supposed to be in these vets,
got into those vets", says a leading medical specialist who studied lab results on blood
samples taken from Gulf war personnel.
These tests, conducted at two prestigious laboratories that prefer not to be identified
until further standardized double-blind testing is completed, surveyed fresh blood samples
of 200 soldiers and another 200 blood samples drawn two to three years ago by the Defense
Department from sick Gulf war veterans. The older blood samples were taken for unrelated
tests.
In nearly three-quarters of the blood from both testing pools, tests showed positive for
squalene antibodies.
The test results were similar to those from experimental test subjects in experimental HIV
and sexually transmitted disease studies at the NIH. In these cases, the medications they
received contained squalene.
How then, the researchers want to know, did the tested Gulf war soldiers get antibodies
for an adjuvant whose only known use is experimental?
"We have found soldiers who are not sick that do not have the antibodies" says
one of the independent laboratory scientists hired be Insight. "We found soldiers who
never left the United States but who got the shots who are sick, and they have squalene in
their systems. We found people who served overseas in various parts of the desert that are
sick who have squalene, and we found people who served in the desert but were civilians
who never got these shots[administered by the federal government]who are not sick and do
not have squalene."
...In short, says a senior government official familiar with the new blood tests, "I
can't tell you why it's there, but it is. And I can tell you this, too: the sicker an
individual, the higher the level of antibodies for this[squalene]stuff."
...Theories about adjuvants were first advanced about two years ago by Pamela Asa, a
Tennessee immunologist who specializes in auto-immune diseases and symptomatology.
Military and civilian government authorities dismissed her charges at the time.
Air Force Col. Ed Koenigsberg, director of the Pentagon's Persian Gulf War Veterans'
Illness Investigation Team, testified before the President's Advisory Committee on Persian
Gulf Veterans Disease in October 1995 that theories such as Dr. Asa's were not plausible
because no adjuvant other than alum adjuvants had been used on U.S. soldiers, and no
secret immunizations were administered.
However, the military did commission a study of so-called "adjuvants disease"
and possible unknown immunizations that may have been given Gulf war soldiers.
The study, prepared by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command and released in
March 1996, concluded that the only vaccines and immunizations administered to soldiers
were publicly known and were alum-based and that nothing but alum was used as an adjuvant.
But, as the General Accounting Office noted in a recently concluded study: "Six years
after the war, little is conclusively known about the causes of Gulf war veterans'
illnesses."
"None of the comments we received provide evidence to challenge our principle
findings and conclusions that
(1) DoD and VA have no means to systematically determine
whether symptomatic Gulf war veterans are better or worse today than when they were first
examined and
(2) ongoing epidemiological research will not provide precise, accurate, and
conclusive answers regarding the causes of the Gulf war veterans' illneses."
The only way, according to the GAO, for the government to begin finding out what's wrong
with Gulf war veterans is to begin a comprehensive study of the patients, including
high-tech laboratory work to explain, among other things, the presence of antibodies for
squalene.
Source:
http://gulfwarvets.com/hiv.htm