Posted on 09/14/2003 10:25:36 AM PDT by Alia
Lt. Col. Janice M. Rusnak, recently arrived at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, for a tour as infectious-diseases specialist, walked into the third-floor intensive care unit. She didn't know the name of the patient she wanted to see. But she had what she considered a fairly good description.
Can you point me to the soldier from Iraq who's on a ventilator? she asked a nurse. The one with acute respiratory distress syndrome.
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.
On the day she walked into the Landstuhl hospital, Rusnak was looking for a patient about whom she had been told several days earlier in an e-mail from doctors at the Army's 28th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq. They had a soldier with severe pneumonia whom they were thinking of evacuating to Germany. They were worried, and a little spooked. They had recently had a similar patient -- a 24-year-old sergeant with pneumonia who also needed a ventilator. He had gone into cardiac arrest and died while being prepared for a flight out.
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.
The last case occurred Aug. 19. The Army isn't convinced it's the last. The search for the culprit is narrowing, but it's not over.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I received this article last Friday from a military pal who served in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. This soldier is not the only one still hearing burbling in their own lungs -- non smokers.
And not a single mention in the hysterical piece by UK Observer about the soldiers injured by a mysterious "virus". hmph.
What the article says about teens and military and smoking? Most teens were helped by steroids. The assumption in the article, therefore, is that the "fallen" military are also being treated with steroids, but not necessarily responding in similar fashion to the teens. The implied here is "age" being a factor. The soldiers are older than the teens.
But look again at the article. Some of the soldiers ARE teenagers.
I'd rather, like you, believe this was simply a "smoking" thing. But hearing from soldiers, first-hand, who run 3-6 miles daily, do not smoke -- having lung problems -- my first hunch was "sand". And, these same soldiers I correspond with? The burbling in their lungs has NOT improved since they left the desert. So, let's say it is bacterial. Why these places, at this time, but not at other times? This "outbreak" has also caused heart-attacks in a soldier (according to the article).
It is a fascinating story; and I do agree with you in questioning everything.
One of my operative takes is: Mid-east (particularly certain groups) are not to have WMD's. What's the next best weapon to use? Bio.
Thing that intrigues me about the biowarfare aspects? It appears to creep just like marxism and socialism have crept into pub ed.
And yes... lol. I do see unions as a social disease. They began as a good thing; and as John O'Sullivan sayeth: Anything not directly leaning rightward invariably creeps left. Unions to me now stand for gangsterism and thuggery. And here in CA? There are a lot of very fine people I know who HAVE to join unions -- JUST TO GET WORK.
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