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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 2: A production of iHeart Radio.

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Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

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Speaker 3: my name is Nolan.

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Speaker 4: They called me Bed, and we're joined as always with

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Speaker 4: our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck. And most importantly,

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Speaker 4: you are you.

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Speaker 2: You are here.

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Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 2: War? What is it good for? No, we're not gonna

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Speaker 2: do the song? Well, there's absolutely nothing. But then it

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Speaker 2: also makes me think of the quote from the Fallout Games,

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Speaker 2: war never changes, you know all of that? Those are

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Speaker 2: my two top War quotes. Is the song and the

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Speaker 2: I also love a band that has a song like

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Speaker 2: named after the name of their band, and that's such

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Speaker 2: a really sick flex like Radiohead. Or no, that's not true.

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Speaker 2: There is a talking Head song called Radiohead. But anyway, yeah,

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Speaker 2: not good for much except for you know, well, it's

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Speaker 2: good for the population over all, great.

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Speaker 4: Medical innovation, scientific progress, technological breakthroughs.

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Speaker 2: And you make it sound awesome. It's a number.

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Speaker 4: It's a number one pick for unintended consequences as well. Uh,

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Speaker 4: we've heard of agent Orange, and if you are a

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Speaker 4: longtime listener of the show, you have heard about it

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Speaker 4: as well, and the horrific effects that substance wrought upon

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Speaker 4: civilians and military alike during the Vietnam War. In a

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Speaker 4: previous conversation on Listener Mail, an anonymous conspiracy realist reached

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Speaker 4: out to us to ask us about something called p

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Speaker 4: B pills. It's a disturbing substance, little known outside of

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Speaker 4: the military or medical school. We had not heard of

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Speaker 4: it before our listener reached out. However, according to firsthand sources,

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Speaker 4: this may be the real explanation behind the notorious, still

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Speaker 4: not fully understood collection of symptoms called Golf War syndrome.

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Speaker 4: Here are the facts. We have to talk about the

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Speaker 4: Golf War. It's something that happened in recent history, right

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Speaker 4: in the nineteen nineties early nineteen nineties. It's sometimes called

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Speaker 4: the Persian Gulf War, sometimes in a very dystopian way.

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Speaker 4: It's referred to as the First War because there was

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Speaker 4: another one. But what happened for anybody who is unfamiliar

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Speaker 4: with Saddam Hussein, well.

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Speaker 2: The United States led a coalition of forty two countries

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Speaker 2: against Iraq, which at that point was under the control

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Speaker 2: of the dictator Saddam Hussein. You might have heard of

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Speaker 2: him kind of the first maybe not the first, but

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Speaker 2: it was a really important moment for war coverage. So

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Speaker 2: he almost attained this like celebrity status in a weird way,

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Speaker 2: as this like big bad. He was elevated by the

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Speaker 2: press and the video of the television media. If you

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Speaker 2: want to hear more about this guy, please do check

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Speaker 2: out Robert Evans's excellent series on Behind the Bastard Bastards.

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Speaker 2: Excuse me, he's one particular bastard.

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Speaker 3: Here, But in the end, at least my understanding is

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Speaker 3: that it was between Iraq and Kuwait, right, There was

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Speaker 3: conflict there. It had something to do with being in debt, right,

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Speaker 3: so Iraq actually owed a ton of money to Kuwait

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Speaker 3: and rather than you know, coming through with the payments,

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Speaker 3: they came through with tanks and stuff.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: So, right now, speculation about the logic behind Iraq's invasion

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Speaker 4: of Kuwait it still thrives.

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Speaker 2: But you're correct.

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Speaker 4: I would say, Matt, that it does seem to go

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Speaker 4: down to money, because in all I think it was

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Speaker 4: August second of nineteen ninety, Husain's forces invaded Kuwait and

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Speaker 4: they overran the country in like forty eight hours or less.

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Speaker 4: It was very much one sided conflict there.

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Speaker 3: And you know how George W. Bush described the second

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Speaker 3: like the second invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan as like, oh,

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Speaker 3: it's just gonna be like forty eight hours that actually

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Speaker 3: happened in this case.

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Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, Now, Hussein did not call it a crusade,

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Speaker 4: give him that. He was also an inspiring romance novelist.

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Speaker 4: Again behind the bastards check out the series It's Wild.

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Speaker 4: The Iraqi forces declared ownership over Kuwait's northern territory and

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Speaker 4: all of the rest of it came under the governance

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Speaker 4: of a puppet state, you know, similar to Japan's actions

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Speaker 4: on the Chinese mainland. And you know, here's why most

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Speaker 4: people agree. Money was the impetus for Hussein. Iraq had

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Speaker 4: borrowed the equivalent of fourteen billion US dollars from Kuwait

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Speaker 4: to finance another war against Iran, and Kuwait, like most creditors,

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Speaker 4: wanted to be paid back. They wanted their bag. But

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Speaker 4: at the same time, Kuwait and the United Arab Immirates

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Speaker 4: were overshooting the quotas that OPEC sets for oil production,

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Speaker 4: and there's a big deal to Iraq because they're an

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Speaker 4: oil export reliance country at the time. So the main

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Speaker 4: way that they can pay back this debt is being

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Speaker 4: aggressively devalued, and in the government's statements at this period

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Speaker 4: of time, they're pretty blunt about it. The Iraqi government

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Speaker 4: says Kuwait is doing this on purpose to make it

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Speaker 4: difficult or impossible to pay back their debt. They wanted

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Speaker 4: to put Iraq in a financial hole and keep it there.

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Speaker 2: Sorry, but like Iraq also massive oil production operations, right, yes,

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Speaker 2: so why was Kuwait a to exceed those quotas. It

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Speaker 2: seems like they were bending the rules a little bitter like,

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Speaker 2: how how are they able to go about that in

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Speaker 2: such a seemingly passive aggressive way.

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Speaker 4: Yet OPEC is a cartel, you know, and I know

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Speaker 4: cartel has some sinister connotations, but OPEK essentially exists to

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Speaker 4: slow the faucet of oil and.

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Speaker 2: Regulate prices the very least, yeah, even the mout.

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Speaker 4: Yeah right, right, so it's price fixing and it is

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Speaker 4: focused on providing predictability and stability for oil exporting nations.

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Speaker 2: However, they it's a paper.

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Speaker 4: Basically, they sign a piece of paper saying we'll do this,

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Speaker 4: we'll agree to this, and there's not a way to

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Speaker 4: stop them from going back on their word.

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Speaker 3: Well, and there there are real world constraints on an

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Speaker 3: oil producing country, right, and all of it's measured in

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Speaker 3: barrels per day, which is the thing OPEC can can

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Speaker 3: kind of control, right, how much money can you get

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Speaker 3: for that single barrel of oil? And you know, if

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Speaker 3: you can only make x number of barrels when that

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Speaker 3: price fluctuates, you're in the The economics of your country

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Speaker 3: can fluctuate wildly, right, which is what's happening here and

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Speaker 3: why it feels. It felt like, let's say to a

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Speaker 3: rock that Kuwait had its boot on its neck.

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Speaker 2: And so it's a good example of putting all your

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Speaker 2: economic eggs in one basket. Even if that basket or

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Speaker 2: those eggs are incredibly valuable, it's still one thing, right,

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Speaker 2: and that can hamstring you down the line if you

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Speaker 2: don't have a diverse, more diverse economic outlook. Right.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, like Rizza said in the Chappelle Show, you got

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Speaker 4: to diversify your portfolio.

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Speaker 3: And this diverse bonds I will with portfolio because it's

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Speaker 3: not a little more economically minded.

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Speaker 4: The shout out to Chappelle's show, So did huseaning take

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Speaker 4: a lesson from our pal, King Philip Street name heavy

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Speaker 4: P because that he handles Kuwait the way that Philip

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Speaker 4: handles the templar. He says, the best way to resolve

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Speaker 4: this massive debt is to remove the creditor from the board.

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Speaker 4: The US disagreed, as did most of the world. The

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Speaker 4: United Nations and the Security Council specifically adopted to separate

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Speaker 4: resolutions in the beginning, and they imposed economic sanctions against

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Speaker 4: the Rock. The United Kingdom and the US deployed forces

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Speaker 4: into Saudi Arabia literal boots on the ground, and at

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Speaker 4: the same time they urged other nations to follow their example. Eventually,

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Speaker 4: as you said, Noel, they ended up with a coalition

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Speaker 4: of forty two different nations involved in some way and

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Speaker 4: the wallets were opened. Billions of dollars are powering this endeavor.

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Speaker 4: Officially it was an estimated sixty billion dollars. However, we

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Speaker 4: know war is messy and so a lot of that money.

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Speaker 4: The real toll financially is probably much higher and were

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Speaker 4: never and a note, the full extent of expense here,

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Speaker 4: but we do know the bombing begins in January of

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Speaker 4: nineteen ninety one, and for any students of warfare, there

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Speaker 4: are several notable aspects of this conflict. There are a

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Speaker 4: lot of first time things here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, do you guys have memories of watching the Iraq War,

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Speaker 3: like the invasion and the green cameras, the night vision stuff.

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Speaker 3: And I just have clear visions of CNN showing you know,

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Speaker 3: all of this stuff and watching it with my parents

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Speaker 3: just trying to understand what the heck's going on.

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Speaker 2: Well, and I sort of alluded to that earlier, just

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Speaker 2: about this being you know, or Saddam being almost like

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Speaker 2: elevated to this big, bad level by this kind of coverage,

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Speaker 2: And I guess I didn't realize until I was looking

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Speaker 2: at some of the research that Ben did here that

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Speaker 2: this really was a first and that this kind of

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Speaker 2: coverage prior even with like the Vietnam War, there were

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Speaker 2: no embedded journalists. It was all stuff sent to the

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Speaker 2: news stations that was very much controlled by the military,

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Speaker 2: and of course even the embedded journalists were very much

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Speaker 2: controlled and handled by the media, but this was still different.

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Speaker 2: It was very different, and yes, I do remember all

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Speaker 2: of that.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, real time updates. The media forces and the government

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Speaker 4: forces could attempt to sanitize what was depicted, but just

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Speaker 4: like how live programs can have curse words slip through,

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Speaker 4: you can't clean all of the footage. So for many,

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Speaker 4: many citizens of the US and the world entire they

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Speaker 4: were seeing the unedited reality of conflict and it's a

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Speaker 4: very very ugly, strange, dangerous thing.

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Speaker 2: This is also.

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Speaker 4: I didn't know this, three of the largest tank battles

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Speaker 4: in all of US history also took place at this time.

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Speaker 4: This is also the first time people deployed depleted uranium

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Speaker 4: in a large scale.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, and head over to our YouTube channel and

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Speaker 3: scroll all the way back to August twenty twenty three

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Speaker 3: to watch our special on It's the Gulf War, syndrome,

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Speaker 3: Agent orange and depleted uranium. There's three separate videos, so

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Speaker 3: definitely check that out. But guys, this is also Nurse Narayah, right, yes,

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Speaker 3: the testimony in nineteen ninety I guess it's right around

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Speaker 3: the time of Iraq and invading Kuwait is when we

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Speaker 3: got the Nurse Narayah testimony that we've talked about on

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Speaker 3: the show a couple of times. That turned out to

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Speaker 3: be not true, dealing with what was it child babies

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Speaker 3: being taken out of incubators.

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Speaker 4: Incubator Yep, yeah, we cover it in our book as well.

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Speaker 4: I think it's chapter five, I want to say propaganda,

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Speaker 4: or maybe it's oh, it might be chapter eight political corruption,

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Speaker 4: bangor hit. Check out the art from our pal Nick

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Speaker 4: Turbo Benson.

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Speaker 2: It's true.

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Speaker 4: It's something that people have been talking about for quite

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Speaker 4: a long time. And this would also not be the

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Speaker 4: last of these wars. In two thousand and three, the

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Speaker 4: battle begins anew in the US. This was known as

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Speaker 4: Operation Iraqi Freedom at this point. Still, even in twenty

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Speaker 4: twenty four, in the grand scheme of things, the tragedies

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Speaker 4: heartbreak of war are comparatively fresh. We as a civilization

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Speaker 4: simply do not know the full consequences of these interventions.

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Speaker 4: We do know the threats were real. There were clear

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Speaker 4: and present dangers. The West was very concerned with the

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Speaker 4: Hussein administration's interest in biological and possibly nuclear warfare, and

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Speaker 4: as previous lessons had proven time and time again, it

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Speaker 4: is exceedingly rare, if not virtually impossible, for any government

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Speaker 4: to walk back those ambitions once they get past a

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Speaker 4: certain threshold is super uncommon. So the US and its coalition,

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Speaker 4: their ideas were going to cut this off of the

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Speaker 4: butt or at least that's there, or cut this off

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Speaker 4: of the route, nip it in the butts what I mean.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, also, I mean people will certainly recall this

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Speaker 2: obsession with disarming Iraq. You know, in this idea of

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Speaker 2: weapons of mass destruction was sort of the mcguffin behind

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Speaker 2: the whole Iraqi freedom operation, and it ended up like

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Speaker 2: not being the case. That sort of comes back in

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Speaker 2: a way in this story, this idea of this sinister

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Speaker 2: secret thing that may or may not actually exist.

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Speaker 4: And the US sought to prepare its forces in advance

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Speaker 4: for the possibilities of nasty things like nerve agents, biological weapons,

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Speaker 4: et cetera. Like the Gulf War itself. We would not

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Speaker 4: know the full consequences of these preparations for some time.

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Speaker 4: In the decades after the First Gulf War, more and

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Speaker 4: more veterans from all sides of the conflict began experiencing

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Speaker 4: a collection of strange symptoms that they could not expel

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Speaker 4: lane fatigue, insomnia, rashes, diarrhea, intense cognitive issues. You know,

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Speaker 4: we would call it brain fog today and muscle pain

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Speaker 4: like all around. The kind of things where you would

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Speaker 4: know that you were seriously sick, but you wouldn't have

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Speaker 4: a name to put on the thing, right, you would know,

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Speaker 4: you would be able to name all the stuff it

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Speaker 4: was not. It was not the flu. You know, you

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Speaker 4: would test negative for other things, but you are clearly sick.

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Speaker 4: And this became known as Gulf War syndrome for sure.

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Speaker 2: And I mean, you know, well, there isn't a name

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Speaker 2: exactly for this kind of thing. There's sort of a vague,

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Speaker 2: foggy name for a thing that we don't know the

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Speaker 2: name of. I mean, in this case, it was deemed

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Speaker 2: or dubbed Golf War syndrome or Golf War illness. But

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Speaker 2: according to a report released by the Institute of Medicine

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Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, about a third of Gulf War veterans

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Speaker 2: suffer from what is referred to as a CMI or

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Speaker 2: chronic multi symptom illness, which, like you said, is a

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Speaker 2: series of symptoms that cannot be medically explained. And if

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Speaker 2: anyone has ever had to deal with anything like this,

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Speaker 2: or even just an illness that won't go away, and

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Speaker 2: the doctors don't believe you, or they keep treating it

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Speaker 2: with the wrong thing. It can be so frustrating, you know,

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Speaker 2: because Western medicine doesn't always get it right.

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Speaker 3: You know, Well, there's a thing where depending on how

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Speaker 3: rare the illness you've got or the disease you've got,

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Speaker 3: it's like if you imagine the graph, the more rare

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Speaker 3: it is, the less likely you know, a general practitioner

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Speaker 3: is going to say, oh, this is it right, because

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Speaker 3: you're going to go through the checklist of all the

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Speaker 3: other things that could cause all those different symptoms with

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Speaker 3: this Gulf War syndrome. It is so strange because it

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Speaker 3: is so there's so many human beings that are experiencing

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Speaker 3: similar symptoms right that are i don't know, broad spectrum right,

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Speaker 3: dealing with exactly.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's tough because this is not saying that

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Speaker 4: the medical professionals were purposely bearing this, but a lot

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Speaker 4: of times these guys are these guys feel like there

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Speaker 4: is a conspiracy of foot to suppress what is actually

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Speaker 4: happening to them. And unfortunately, there is a great deal

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Speaker 4: of validity to that concern. We will see as we

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Speaker 4: continue this evening that veteran advocacy groups had to fight

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Speaker 4: tooth and nail to get this acknowledged to not be dismissed.

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Speaker 4: The public is still searching for an official explanation behind

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Speaker 4: Gulf War syndrome. What could cause these otherwise inexplicable series

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Speaker 4: of ailments? Is it possible people were asking that the

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Speaker 4: US government, in a rush to protect their soldiers, accidentally

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Speaker 4: poison them. This is the story of PB pills. We're

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Speaker 4: going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and

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Speaker 4: then we'll dive right in. Here's where it gets crazy.

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Speaker 4: Paridistigmine bromide worked on that one for a seconds.

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Speaker 2: It's a it's a doozy, the bromide part alone. I

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Speaker 2: mean anything anything I've heard bromide attached to usually isn't

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Speaker 2: something that you necessarily want to jest. I don't know.

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Speaker 2: Maybe I'm thinking of like potassium bromides.

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Speaker 3: Yes, that's the last one I remember, which is the

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Speaker 3: Mountain Dew guy.

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Speaker 2: A good right, and was a brominated vegetable oil.

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Speaker 4: Orange. Yeah, we're here to ruin the things you enjoy.

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Speaker 4: So right now, I could just picture how many people

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Speaker 4: drink orange Fanta? Do you think while they listened to

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Speaker 4: the show.

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Speaker 3: Oh, somebody had it in their mouth when you said that.

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Speaker 2: We are sorry to you. But but the potassium bromide

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Speaker 2: was apparently used as a sedative in the nineteenth century,

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Speaker 2: nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but I believe it was

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Speaker 2: discovered to not be great for you.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it happens. It happens, And that might be the

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Speaker 4: story with PB pills as well. This stuff dates back.

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Speaker 4: It was clearly established well before the Gulf War. It

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Speaker 4: was patented in nineteen forty five. It's been used in

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Speaker 4: civilian medicine since nineteen fifty five, and primarily then as now,

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Speaker 4: it is used to treat an extraordinarily rare autoimmune neuromuscular

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Speaker 4: condition called myasthenia gravis.

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Speaker 3: Guys, is it weird to you at all? My asthenia gravis?

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Speaker 3: So let's stay right there. But just as an aside,

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Speaker 3: is it weird to you guys hearing that medicine is

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Speaker 3: patented in nineteen forty five? Just considering I guess there's

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Speaker 3: chemical warfare occurring in World War two, right, with all

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Speaker 3: kinds of gases and things that people are going to

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Speaker 3: be exposed to, it would make sense that this is

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Speaker 3: around the time when it gets patented and deployed.

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Speaker 2: But it is just I don't know, it seems like yeah,

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Speaker 2: oh for sure, but you know, you know, so many

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Speaker 2: things they figure out down the line that's been around

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Speaker 2: for asias. You can prescribe off label and it does

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Speaker 2: other things. But I'm always suspicious when I hear off

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Speaker 2: label thrown around. It's like, hey, just so happens that

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Speaker 2: it kind of sort of does this other thing that

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Speaker 2: we didn't really realize, and let's let's prescribe it for that,

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Speaker 2: even though it's not for that.

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Speaker 4: I mean a lot of a lot of medicine. And indeed,

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Speaker 4: great invention is trial and error and finding something that

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Speaker 4: you didn't intend when you were trying to do another

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Speaker 4: thing unsuccessfully. Shout out to alchemy, which created chemistry. Shout

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Speaker 4: out to viagra, which was supposed to help with heart

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Speaker 4: with heart problems.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the microwave, right with something to do with the

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Speaker 2: chocolate that melted in the guy's pocket, Like that was

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Speaker 2: an accident, and then they realized they could harness.

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Speaker 4: That, and I guess, tech, I guess if we're waxing poetic,

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Speaker 4: viagra can help with heart problems, I mean hard problems.

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Speaker 2: Of the hearts.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, but Okay, So here's here's the thing. Here's why

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Speaker 4: PB pills matter. So this substance is what's known as

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Speaker 4: a cholinesterase inhibitor. There is a protein in your body

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Speaker 4: if you're human, called calinesta RaSE and it breaks down

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Speaker 4: a chemical called aceta. Calling wildly mispronouncing this maybe, but

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Speaker 4: the reason this chemical is important, this aceta colding, is

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Speaker 4: because it helps your nerve cells and your muscles talk

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Speaker 4: to each other. It's like a zoom call for them

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Speaker 4: or a telephone for them. And as a result, this

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Speaker 4: PB substance helps that useful protein stay in your system longer.

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Speaker 4: It helps your body activate the muscle. It lessens muscle weakness.

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Speaker 4: So if you have a condition like my esthenia gravis,

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Speaker 4: this is a godsend for you. It just keeps your

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Speaker 4: body running the way it should. So it's preventative.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 4: Since this stuff helps your nerves and your muscles communicate,

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Speaker 4: then the theory is the logic is that if another

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Speaker 4: substance interferes with that communication, these PB pills can sort

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Speaker 4: of hold the line. They can lessen the impact of

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Speaker 4: some very nasty stuff. It sounds good, Oh yeah, it

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Speaker 4: sounds great. I think we're done for today.

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Speaker 3: Are there a lot of people in the military that

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Speaker 3: have myasthenia gravis?

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Speaker 4: Uh not, actually not a time, not disproportionately.

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Speaker 2: Maybe with the rest of the population. The weird, it

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00:21:48,440 --> 00:21:50,480
Speaker 2: is a little weird, but like you know, of course

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Speaker 2: I was, you know, sorry, this isn't we're not talking

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Speaker 2: about patasium bromi. But I did look it up just

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Speaker 2: to see what I was thinking about, and it was

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Speaker 2: taken off of the market. It's used in veterinary medicine,

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Speaker 2: but it's taken off the market for human use because

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Speaker 2: of a litany of side effects that just outweighed any positives,

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Speaker 2: and it was used as a sedative, and other they

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Speaker 2: call them hypnotics had come out that were far more effective.

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Speaker 2: So it was fully pulled for human use, and now

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Speaker 2: it's apparently only used to you know, sub do pooches

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Speaker 2: and kiddies. But let's talk about the side effects of

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Speaker 2: these this other bromide situation, these PB pills.

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Speaker 3: Oh, it's got them. Like every good drug, he's got

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Speaker 3: side effects. And it's the scary stuff you gotta read

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Speaker 3: in the ad.

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Speaker 2: It's the fine print that they say really really fast.

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Speaker 3: But in this case, there's no ad for this. You

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Speaker 3: just get handed some you know as a person in

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Speaker 3: the military. But let's talk about them. There's uncommon side

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Speaker 3: effects as again or always read in the ads.

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Speaker 4: Well, let's currently welcome to the welcome to the good

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Speaker 4: guys marine take these. Make sure you don't get a

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Speaker 4: hit with nerve gas, but just in case you do,

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Speaker 4: you're gonna want to take some PB pills. Oh, thank

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Speaker 4: you sir. Currently these are uncommon side effects, but include

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Speaker 4: stuff like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps and cramps, twitching,

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Speaker 4: or weakness of the muscles.

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Speaker 3: Wait, how is it going to cause weakness of the muscles?

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Speaker 3: It's supposed to do the opposite.

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Speaker 4: Wow, is your specialty questions? Get out of here, you

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Speaker 4: know what I mean? Like that's and also there's a

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Speaker 4: hell of a ven diagram right between again slowly nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,

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Speaker 4: stomach cramps, muscle cramps, twitching, and muscle weakness. That's pretty

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Speaker 4: similar to Gulf War syndrome.

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Speaker 2: Is this an antidote situation?

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Speaker 1: Like?

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Speaker 2: Do you only supposed to take these if you're exposed

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Speaker 2: to nerve gas? Now it's any it's a mephyl.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, oh button, it's preventative.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay, uh yeah, sorry, I have a very specific

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Speaker 3: image of that word.

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Speaker 2: I think most people do.

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Speaker 3: But tech tech.

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Speaker 4: It is preventative, but it's not a vaccination. The idea

404
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:07,719
Speaker 4: is that if you are in a conflict situation, right,

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Speaker 4: if you're in the armed services, you're out there in

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Speaker 4: the Middle East, you might get exposed to nerve gas

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Speaker 4: from Hussein's force, stuff like Sarah or Soman, and then

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Speaker 4: this stuff will It won't cure you, but it will

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Speaker 4: make it more likely that if you are exposed to

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Speaker 4: a nerve agent, you have a higher chance of surviving

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Speaker 4: with no long lasting ill effects.

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Speaker 2: Quick quick review, what are the effects of these agents

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Speaker 2: or some maybe hit lists of some particularly gnarly effects.

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Speaker 2: If you get hit with a nerve agent.

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Speaker 3: It's gonna mess with your body's ability to have your

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Speaker 3: nerves connect to your bid. It's the communication that the

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Speaker 3: pbpills are actually supposed to be helping out here, right,

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Speaker 3: and the concept of taking them every day. The way

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Speaker 3: that we were told by our anonymous listener is that

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Speaker 3: you never know when a chemical attack could occur. It

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Speaker 3: could be in you know, the place where you're sleeping,

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Speaker 3: and all of a sudden there's a nerve agent or

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Speaker 3: something that you're going to be affected by, so you've

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Speaker 3: got to make sure it's in your system, just continually cycling.

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Speaker 3: So sorry, I didn't mean a derail, but let's get

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Speaker 3: back here.

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Speaker 2: Why not at all? I think that's it's incredibly important important,

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Speaker 2: But it's funny how some of the side effects of

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Speaker 2: nerve agents are kind of similar to the side effects

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Speaker 2: of these bills, right exactly.

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Speaker 4: And again, a lot of people who are taking these

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Speaker 4: they are trusting the authorities. They are not themselves medical professionals.

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Speaker 4: But like most people listening to tonight's show, they would

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Speaker 4: like to not die. And so this is where it

435
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Speaker 4: gets tricky. Right, Like many substances, this was always thought

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00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:49,600
Speaker 4: to be non harmful below a certain threshold, And that's

437
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 4: where it gets tricky. How can we keep track of

438
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 4: how much an individual person ingested? And when the VA Veterans'

439
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,359
Speaker 4: Affairs has a lot of information on this, we pulled

440
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 4: some quotes directly from them.

441
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:07,360
Speaker 2: Yes we did, and here goes one. PB pills were

442
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 2: supplied to service members as twenty one tablet blister packs

443
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:15,720
Speaker 2: with prescribed dosage as one thirty milligram tablet every eight hours.

444
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:20,280
Speaker 2: Veterans actual exposure is not known because pills were self administered,

445
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 2: and there are few examples in individual or unit health

446
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 2: records from the Department of Defense. And we're all get

447
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 2: to a real weird reason why that's the case, are

448
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 2: we ben there are some very interesting instructions that were

449
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:39,119
Speaker 2: given when people were handed these pills.

450
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:42,679
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's a huge caveat in there that we

451
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 4: have to spend some time on the VA then and

452
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 4: now is saying that soldiers were left on their own

453
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 4: when it came to the dosage. They were given recommendations

454
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,880
Speaker 4: like we outlined, but administering the PB pills was up

455
00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 4: to the individual themselves. And so if we asked scurselves

456
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 4: how the dosing worked, like you said, one thirty milligram

457
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:10,160
Speaker 4: tablet every eight hours. So that is, for some quick math,

458
00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 4: that's ninety milligrams every day. And the FDA recommends that

459
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:19,840
Speaker 4: people who have my esthenia gravis take up to six

460
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 4: hundred milligrams of PBE pills or the PP substance every

461
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:27,399
Speaker 4: twenty four hours, depending on the needs of the patient.

462
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:29,360
Speaker 2: And I saw this in a couple of places, but

463
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 2: not everywhere. About this stuff. There was some indication from

464
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:38,920
Speaker 2: folks that they were asked to destroy records of who

465
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:43,160
Speaker 2: received these and whether or not they were taking them.

466
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 2: Or again, if it's self administer, the would necessarily be

467
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 2: a record of how many times or how often they

468
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:49,639
Speaker 2: were taken. But I did hear in a couple of

469
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 2: talks and in some articles that there was this sense

470
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,160
Speaker 2: that they didn't want a record of like how these

471
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:57,439
Speaker 2: were distributed.

472
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 4: Right, similar to burn pits or documentary that.

473
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, and just to go back to our

474
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:06,719
Speaker 3: anutomous listener again, this person said that they chose not

475
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 3: to self administer the PB pills, or at least they

476
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:13,159
Speaker 3: began just a little bit and then stopped. But then

477
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:15,879
Speaker 3: this person witnessed a whole bunch of other people in

478
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:19,480
Speaker 3: the same platoon who are taking it religiously, like just

479
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 3: won't like, oh it's eight hours, I'm taking my pill.

480
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:25,680
Speaker 2: Well, there were apparently a lot of bullying tactics deployed

481
00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 2: by commanding officers as well, saying if you didn't take them,

482
00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:32,399
Speaker 2: you're gonna get you know, have to scrub the or

483
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 2: whatever you know, or not be court martialed. But just inconvenient,

484
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 2: mean spirited kind of tasks.

485
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 4: Right, and from their perspective, by the way, these commanding

486
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 4: officers are kind of doing like a tough love thing.

487
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:52,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, take care medicine, you know, Yeah.

488
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 4: I'm saving your life, maggot.

489
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 2: All right.

490
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:58,080
Speaker 4: It's like that's kind of the energy that they had.

491
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 4: They weren't purposely trying to poison. And also, you know,

492
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 4: another thing about the horrors of conflict is that it

493
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 4: creates superstition, right, very quickly. So even if you are

494
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 4: not going to be evolved with any kind of nerve agent,

495
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 4: you can feel a sort of safety by taking the thing,

496
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like every so often I

497
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 4: do this, and this is somehow a safety measure, even

498
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 4: if I don't know how it works totally. Yeah, And look,

499
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,720
Speaker 4: not everyone here's the thing. Not everyone who took these pills,

500
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 4: these PB pills got sick. And not everyone who fought

501
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:42,280
Speaker 4: in the Gulf War returned with Gulf War syndrome. There

502
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 4: is therefore a mystery afoot, and to those who believe

503
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 4: the government may be covering up something, this leads to

504
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 4: a series of increasingly disturbing allegations.

505
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 2: It does, indeed, first and foremost and probably the most plausible.

506
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 2: Let's just start from where they where they stemmed from.

507
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 2: These were from veterans and veteran advocate groups, which includes

508
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:12,200
Speaker 2: a lot of different individuals, whether it be family members

509
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 2: trying to go to bat for their loved ones and

510
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:17,840
Speaker 2: speaking out publicly. I saw really really great TED talk

511
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 2: from a woman named Jennifer Jackson Gorillas gay G K

512
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 2: O U R I, L L A S who had

513
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 2: a loved one and she does this talk as an

514
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 2: advocate for that individual. But then there's also you know,

515
00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 2: veterans affairs groups and less so maybe the veteran the VA,

516
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 2: but there are advocates groups that sort of exist to

517
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 2: improve the way the VA functions. Right, So the most

518
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:47,480
Speaker 2: plausible that comes out of these various sources is that

519
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 2: Uncle Sam administered PB pills without proper oversight, methodology and research.

520
00:30:54,840 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 2: Because this was put out without FDA approval, they were

521
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 2: given something called a waiver, which I believe is very

522
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 2: similar to what happened with COVID nineteen vaccines.

523
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 3: Guys. I found that the waiver again, I have it

524
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 3: on my refrigerator.

525
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 1: Now.

526
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 3: I think we've mentioned this several episodes back, but it's

527
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:19,080
Speaker 3: the waiver that you got in place of actual consent

528
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 3: and information about a drug because of that Emergency Act.

529
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 3: And it's just basically you're saying, look, I understand this

530
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 3: is an experimental drug. There could be side effects that

531
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:32,479
Speaker 3: we don't know about yet, haven't gone through clinical trials,

532
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:34,720
Speaker 3: but we're taking it anyway, and I'm doing it on

533
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 3: my own volition.

534
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that counter to like the Nurmberg Treaty or

535
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 2: whatever it was. I forget if it's a treaty, but

536
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 2: there was some official document that makes it illegal to

537
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 2: experiment on vulnerable populations. And you could very much class

538
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 2: people in the heat of battle who are terrified for

539
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 2: their lives and to your point, Ben, wanting that safety blanket,

540
00:31:56,960 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 2: even if it's just a feeling, they'd be more compelled

541
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:02,440
Speaker 2: to take something like this if they're in that situation,

542
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 2: therefore making them vulnerable. Doesn't this go completely counter to that?

543
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 4: Well, they didn't. In their opinion, this was not an experiment.

544
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 4: This was not human experimentation. Their opinion, this was a

545
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 4: kind of like a band aid rollout of something, you

546
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 4: know what I mean. Like you would say, hey, we

547
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:24,920
Speaker 4: understand the concept of parachutes. Therefore it is not human

548
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,280
Speaker 4: experimentation to have people jump from a plane with a parachute.

549
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:30,880
Speaker 3: Well yeah, and theoretically this is almost a piece of

550
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 3: technology that it is a piece of technology that can

551
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 3: be deployed with your troops to lessen the effect your

552
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:40,320
Speaker 3: enemy's weapons have on them.

553
00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:43,120
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.

554
00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 4: It's kind of a greater good argument, and that leads

555
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 4: us to just to follow that first allegation. They didn't

556
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 4: do their homework. That's the first allegation, right, The intentions

557
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 4: were good, but there wasn't enough due diligence applied before

558
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 4: this was rolled out to a ton of people. The second,

559
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 4: more sinister allegation is that someone in the halls of

560
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 4: power may have known full well that there was potential

561
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 4: or ill side effects and they either buried it or

562
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 4: ignored the research.

563
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:26,120
Speaker 3: That's tough, that's the old fodder viewpoint, right, yes, yeah,

564
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 3: Like we know that these guys are going to be

565
00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 3: down there with the enemy tanks, they might be in

566
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 3: tanks themselves. There is a much higher chance that one

567
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 3: or an entire group of these human beings gets killed

568
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:42,600
Speaker 3: in combat. Let's take this precaution, even though it's dangerous,

569
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 3: because it is also likely that they will get killed anyway.

570
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah.

571
00:33:47,800 --> 00:33:50,719
Speaker 4: If that's true, that means the US government ran a

572
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:55,880
Speaker 4: brutal cost benefit calculus, right or calculation, and they concluded, Look,

573
00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:00,800
Speaker 4: the potential for harm is below a certain percentage, so

574
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 4: it's an acceptable risk. And that might sound morally repugnant,

575
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:09,320
Speaker 4: because you know it is. Yeah, but we have to

576
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 4: admit there is a contextual logic to it. Would you

577
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:15,880
Speaker 4: rather risk injury to say, one out of three soldiers

578
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:19,040
Speaker 4: or do you want to roll the dice on Saddam

579
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 4: Hussein in nerve gas knowing that if you don't try

580
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:26,920
Speaker 4: to prevent that deployment it will kill thousands of people

581
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 4: very quickly.

582
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 3: Esh Man, I don't want to be the one making

583
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 3: those kinds of decisions, Thank you very much.

584
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 2: Do we have evidence that that nerve gases were deployed,

585
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 2: that definitely were deployed or is this all preventative for

586
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 2: a thing that made like I was asking earlier, may

587
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:48,160
Speaker 2: or may not have actually been on the tablet at

588
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:48,760
Speaker 2: the time.

589
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 4: At the time, they were in a little bit of

590
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 4: a black box, but they were pretty sure that saren cyclo,

591
00:34:56,640 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 4: sarin and mustard gas were possessed by the husay In administration,

592
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:05,960
Speaker 4: and if they were possessed, then they would be used.

593
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 4: That was the only logical conclusion they could make. And

594
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:12,759
Speaker 4: I'm not defending them, but I'm just saying from their perspective,

595
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 4: we can see the steps that they walked through.

596
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 2: Right.

597
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:19,320
Speaker 3: Oh, well there, I mean, there was an extensive chemical

598
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 3: weapons program in Iraq, right, and we know that from history,

599
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 3: like this was a thing in the eighties specifically, So

600
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 3: it's I don't know there. If you listen to Immortal Technique,

601
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 3: the you know, we knew they had chemical weapons because

602
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:41,439
Speaker 3: we helped them get them to them.

603
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I totally forgot about that detail in that

604
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 2: previous conflict, right, I believe what they're on We had

605
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:51,319
Speaker 2: sold there are allies at that point, and we sold

606
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:53,799
Speaker 2: them these various agents, which is what led us to

607
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 2: do the research to figure out how to use the

608
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:57,200
Speaker 2: PB pills in the first place.

609
00:35:57,320 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 3: Right now, you're right, all right, History, sometimes, you guys,

610
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:07,319
Speaker 3: is such a he said, She's a kind of thing.

611
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 3: You know what I'm talking about.

612
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 4: History is written by the victors, which is a terrible

613
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:18,880
Speaker 4: editorial standpoint, but it's the standard operating procedure.

614
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:19,200
Speaker 2: Right.

615
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:24,719
Speaker 4: There's a third, unproven and more sinister allegation wartime profiteering.

616
00:36:25,239 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 4: We know that pharmaceutical companies have an outsized lobbying influence,

617
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 4: and just like defense companies, they make a lot of

618
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:36,319
Speaker 4: money from government contracts. Then, as now, so is it

619
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:41,879
Speaker 4: possible then that private pharmaceutical companies successfully lobbied to get

620
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:44,640
Speaker 4: their products sold consequences be damned.

621
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,279
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even think about that. Just the contract,

622
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 3: that government contract to buy all the pills.

623
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 4: And none of this is proven, right, I mean, we

624
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:58,360
Speaker 4: know that they did sell the pills to the government,

625
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 4: but we can't ascribe motive. There's no smoking gun for it,

626
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 4: and that leaves us with the first allegation as the

627
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 4: most likely scenario. Because there may be some science to

628
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:15,080
Speaker 4: back up this idea. There were discoveries made about PB

629
00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 4: pill exposure far after it was given to America's fighting forces.

630
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 4: Suggests we take a pause for a word from our

631
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:26,320
Speaker 4: sponsors and then put on our house stuff works hats

632
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:29,800
Speaker 4: and dive into some disturbing science.

633
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:40,399
Speaker 3: And we've returned, so let's just get into it, guys.

634
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 3: Veterans Affairs officially says that these PB pills that we're

635
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:48,839
Speaker 3: describing in this entire episode are not connected to the

636
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 3: thing that is recognized as Gulf War syndrome. Right, that's

637
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 3: the official stance.

638
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:58,720
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's the official conclusion, but the science appears

639
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 4: to go back and forth. In twenty fifteen, or we

640
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 4: found a study from twenty fifteen at Baylor University, a

641
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 4: pretty small study, but it found something revolutionary. It linked

642
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:13,320
Speaker 4: the use of anti nerve agent pills PB pills to

643
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 4: Gulf War syndrome and it also found a missing link,

644
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:22,279
Speaker 4: a possible genetic factor that would result in sickness. There's

645
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 4: an article from the Military Times that puts it this way,

646
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 4: quote genetic factors may contribute to a veteran's risk for

647
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,760
Speaker 4: Golf War illness, which they were calling at the time.

648
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 4: And this study links the PB pills and their adverse

649
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 4: effects to the genetic makeup of individual soldiers.

650
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 2: So there's a.

651
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 4: Gene variant that, to put it very simply, because we're

652
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:50,719
Speaker 4: not geneticists, there's a gene variant that complicates your body's

653
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 4: ability to metabolize chemicals in these PB pills. And if

654
00:38:56,200 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 4: you have this variant, then you are going to be

655
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:02,839
Speaker 4: up to forty times more likely to have Gulf War

656
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:08,160
Speaker 4: syndrome symptoms. And people who don't have this variant, are

657
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:12,360
Speaker 4: gonna be fine. Wow, it's something, you know, It's something

658
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 4: no one like the idea of searching for cyanide poisoning

659
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 4: or attempting to diagnose an illness. It's something people just

660
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 4: didn't think to look for, is the argument.

661
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 3: Jeez, guys, I'm just thinking about for what forty times

662
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 3: actually means. So I was just imagining someone telling me, hey, Matt,

663
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 3: you have two times the chance of getting in a

664
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 3: car wreck if you leave in if you leave your

665
00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 3: house in your car today. So I would be like, oh,

666
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:40,879
Speaker 3: I'm not not going to do that. But if somebody say, hey, Matt,

667
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 3: you have a forty times larger chance of getting in

668
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 3: a car wreck today, I'd be like, hmmm, car.

669
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:52,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

670
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:55,880
Speaker 4: This it's it's weird too, because you know, it reminds

671
00:39:55,920 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 4: me of the genetic factors and things like the taste

672
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 4: of cilantro. You know, this genetic variant is likely something

673
00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 4: that most people will never know about themselves. It simply

674
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:14,319
Speaker 4: won't come up because genes are very complicated and you

675
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 4: don't think about it most of the time.

676
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:16,399
Speaker 2: Right.

677
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 3: No, And well, and this drug, these chemicals that are

678
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 3: in this drug were meant to be administered only to

679
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:28,480
Speaker 3: people who were dealing with a pretty rare problem, right, So,

680
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 3: like I'm just thinking about the number of the number

681
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:36,279
Speaker 3: of people that it would have gone to if it

682
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 3: weren't being used for this purpose, we never would have

683
00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:42,120
Speaker 3: known that there are any major issues and.

684
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 2: The original thing was rare, like right, Yeah.

685
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 3: Because if you think about a clinical trial with side effects,

686
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 3: like any any drug that gets tested, there are a

687
00:40:50,160 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 3: few people that develop cancer. There are a few people

688
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:55,160
Speaker 3: that develop things, and it may have nothing to do

689
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:57,880
Speaker 3: with the actual drug that's being administered. It may be

690
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:01,080
Speaker 3: what that individual was going through prior to getting the drug,

691
00:41:01,160 --> 00:41:03,960
Speaker 3: but because it was involved in the trial, you have

692
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 3: to list it, right.

693
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:08,200
Speaker 2: Yes, And we're talking about people that had goal war

694
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:11,640
Speaker 2: illness or goal for syndrome, whatever that is. It's it's

695
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 2: within a niche specific community obviously, and people I believe

696
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:19,320
Speaker 2: that even interacted with some of those folks, like family members,

697
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:22,560
Speaker 2: I believe even could have received some effect from this.

698
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 2: But it's it's not a tiny number. It's a what

699
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 2: we're talking like in the dozens of thousands, Like, like,

700
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 2: do do we have that? Yeah, it's a little hazy,

701
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:36,520
Speaker 2: and it's not certainly not really confirmed by the government

702
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 2: per se.

703
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:45,520
Speaker 4: No, yeah, yeah, government is uh. The government is still

704
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:50,799
Speaker 4: disagreeing with veterans and their advocates. And originally they were

705
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 4: out of sight, out of mind about it, and they

706
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:57,120
Speaker 4: discredited a lot of things that they should have been

707
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:02,359
Speaker 4: looking at. That's just that's not political statement, no ideology

708
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 4: applied objectively.

709
00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:05,240
Speaker 2: That is true.

710
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:09,319
Speaker 4: And even now the US government officially considers what we

711
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:12,759
Speaker 4: call Gulf War syndrome to be a quote cluster of

712
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:18,920
Speaker 4: medically unexplained chronic systems end quote, meaning they acknowledge something exists,

713
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 4: but they don't conclude much else about it. They don't

714
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 4: even like using the term Gulf War syndrome. They say

715
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:27,280
Speaker 4: the symptoms vary far too widely.

716
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 2: That's the thing too, right, Like these are unrelated symptoms

717
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:33,800
Speaker 2: that don't usually get lumped in with the same malady.

718
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:37,760
Speaker 2: That's another thing that made it difficult for medical practitioners

719
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:40,720
Speaker 2: to kind of figure out based on the normal clues

720
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:43,240
Speaker 2: they would usually have. It's like a set of symptoms

721
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:47,800
Speaker 2: that equals something like a particular condition or adjacent conditions,

722
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 2: but these were it was a real mystery.

723
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 3: Who what if PB pills are one part of a

724
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:56,320
Speaker 3: much larger equation.

725
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, what if history is not super cut and dried.

726
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 4: What if real life is kind of complicated, just like

727
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:10,320
Speaker 4: people's genetic code. This is something that the VA seems

728
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 4: to tacitly acknowledge because they say the following quote, certain chronic,

729
00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:22,240
Speaker 4: unexplained symptoms existing for six months or more are related

730
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 4: to golf war service without regard to cause. So if

731
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 4: you are a veteran and you are in theater during

732
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:33,440
Speaker 4: that time, then you can apply for disability for compensation

733
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:40,560
Speaker 4: for assistance without specifically without the VA having to specifically

734
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:44,359
Speaker 4: say golf syndrome is real and you have it, they

735
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:48,719
Speaker 4: can just say unexplained things you happen to be in

736
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:49,359
Speaker 4: the Gulf War.

737
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 2: We know the government is all about plausible deniability, both

738
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:59,080
Speaker 2: internally and you know publicly, especially publicly, they have whole

739
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 2: divisions that are designed to do damage control control about

740
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:04,840
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. And we know that they're not

741
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:08,360
Speaker 2: gonna treat somebody or give them extra treatment because that

742
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 2: would acknowledge the thing exists in the first place and

743
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 2: that it was their fault.

744
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 3: Right.

745
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 4: A lot of the conspiracies that you see in the

746
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:19,400
Speaker 4: world of government are someone messed up and then someone

747
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 4: tried to cover it up or cya. Right, and there

748
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:26,280
Speaker 4: are to your point, Matt, there are other possible causes,

749
00:44:27,040 --> 00:44:30,320
Speaker 4: and they likely did affect people. We're talking about things

750
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 4: like burn pits, oil well fires because this is a

751
00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:37,840
Speaker 4: resource war, right, oil wells are set on fire and

752
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:41,520
Speaker 4: Kuwait by the Iraqi army as they're retreating. They're doing

753
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 4: this scorched stirth thing.

754
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:43,000
Speaker 2: Right.

755
00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:45,960
Speaker 4: If I can't have it, you can't either. And the

756
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 4: smoke from those fires was inhaled by a lot of

757
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 4: soldiers on both sides of the conflict, and a lot

758
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:56,840
Speaker 4: of those folks went on to have acute pulmonary consequences

759
00:44:56,920 --> 00:44:59,720
Speaker 4: like you know asthma, bronchitis, et cetera.

760
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:03,399
Speaker 3: Has to do with your lungs, right pullmaner, Oh yeah,

761
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:05,920
Speaker 3: other chronic evict Just throwing that out there in case

762
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 3: anybody didn't catch it.

763
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 2: When did we talk about burn pits recently? It feels

764
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 2: like a blur, but I swear it came up very

765
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:16,840
Speaker 2: recently about the kind of nasty stuff that they were burning,

766
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 2: you know, near camps or in the midst of camps.

767
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:22,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this wasn't this wasn't goal for war. We

768
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:24,279
Speaker 3: were talking about Iraqi freedom, we're.

769
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 2: Talking about talking about the thing. You know, they got

770
00:45:27,520 --> 00:45:30,800
Speaker 2: a for sure. And I think I had mentioned earlier

771
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:34,320
Speaker 2: the idea of the peb pills there being some obfuscation

772
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:37,080
Speaker 2: going on in terms of the records. I think that

773
00:45:37,239 --> 00:45:39,319
Speaker 2: was less. I think I was maybe misconstruing that more

774
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 2: with what you were saying then that the locations uses

775
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:46,480
Speaker 2: and the proximity of these burn pits. They have a

776
00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:50,480
Speaker 2: very hard time producing any records about that, as well

777
00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:53,000
Speaker 2: as medical records for the folks that were around them.

778
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 2: So DOA did a pretty crappy job of tracking this stuff. Well.

779
00:45:56,719 --> 00:45:59,120
Speaker 4: Also, it's kind of it's not outright covered it up right,

780
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:03,000
Speaker 4: It's kind of a supply chain dilemma as well. You know,

781
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:07,920
Speaker 4: one of the most expensive parts of fighting a conflict

782
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:10,799
Speaker 4: abroad is you have to build the logistics out. You

783
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,719
Speaker 4: have to build the supply chain. So when you have

784
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:16,440
Speaker 4: a bunch of trash and things that you need to

785
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:20,320
Speaker 4: throw away, you don't have your you know, the city

786
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:21,960
Speaker 4: garbage truck to come by.

787
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 3: Halliburton doesn't send in a you know, a chinook and

788
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:26,320
Speaker 3: pick up all the garbage.

789
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 4: They're a little expensive, oh weird.

790
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 3: But guys what we received, I don't know. I would

791
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:37,960
Speaker 3: estimate a dozen personal accounts from different individuals who talk

792
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:41,799
Speaker 3: to us about burn pits at very specific camps, very

793
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 3: specific bases that in it was the range of like

794
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 3: a very large forward operating base to just a place

795
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 3: where when you first arrive in a rack camp was

796
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 3: on the side.

797
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

798
00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 3: So I don't know that it seems like it was

799
00:46:57,080 --> 00:46:59,839
Speaker 3: just it seems like they could figure out where there

800
00:46:59,880 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 3: was burn pit, because if there were troops there, there

801
00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 3: was probably a burn pit.

802
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 2: And I'm sure that you guys saw this in your

803
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:08,000
Speaker 2: research as well. But I did find a full text,

804
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:12,920
Speaker 2: I guess versions very no bells and whistles of the

805
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 2: second report by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,

806
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 2: which is indicated as a you know, investigation into Gulf

807
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 2: War veterans illnesses. It says VA D O D continue

808
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:32,200
Speaker 2: to resist strong evidence linking toxic causes to chronic health effects.

809
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 2: And if you do a search for the word records

810
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:38,160
Speaker 2: in this seventy six instances of that occur, and almost

811
00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:40,719
Speaker 2: every one of them tied to there are none. So

812
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:43,120
Speaker 2: just that's where I got that information. It's a real

813
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:46,720
Speaker 2: report from nineteen ninety seven from Congress.

814
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,880
Speaker 4: And there are there's a lot of research on the

815
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 4: part of legislative bodies regarding this, and it continues because

816
00:47:55,920 --> 00:48:00,760
Speaker 4: you know these individuals for a long time. Or again

817
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:03,239
Speaker 4: we're being roundly ignored, and we're going to get to

818
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 4: something here another possible cause that should bother you. But first,

819
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 4: actually they should all bother you. But first let's talk

820
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:15,080
Speaker 4: about depleted uranium. The Gulf Wars the first time this

821
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:20,000
Speaker 4: stuff is used on a large scale as a weapon, right,

822
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 4: in military applications, du or depleted uranium is ideal for

823
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 4: use in armor penetrators. As one marine Front of the

824
00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 4: Show put it, it shoots through stuff good.

825
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:36,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially tanks, the armoring on tanks, right, which we

826
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:39,719
Speaker 3: know in the Gulf War that was an issue. There

827
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:43,320
Speaker 3: were big tanks that were coming at you. The US

828
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:48,280
Speaker 3: had larger tanks, more technologically advanced tanks and depleted uranium rounds.

829
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 2: And this is just a byproduct of nuclear energy creation

830
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 2: or where is this stuff coming from? They US have

831
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:57,279
Speaker 2: all this depleted uranium laying around, is that right? It

832
00:48:57,320 --> 00:48:59,759
Speaker 2: is kind of just like a trash that they're re

833
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:01,240
Speaker 2: using to blow up tags.

834
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:06,319
Speaker 4: Yeah, depleted uranium is naturally occurring uranium, and it's been

835
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:11,840
Speaker 4: stripped of most of but not all, of the radioactive goodies.

836
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 4: And it is a byproduct it comes from preparing uranium

837
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:17,320
Speaker 4: for nuclear application.

838
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:20,399
Speaker 2: That makes perfect sense. And how lucky for them they

839
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:23,480
Speaker 2: were able to make lemons to lemonade or whatever.

840
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,319
Speaker 3: Well, and it does stick around, right, it's uranium. It

841
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:32,440
Speaker 3: doesn't just naturally decay real quick. Now it's a radioactive substance.

842
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:37,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's great for shooting stuff, is the thing.

843
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 2: Real good.

844
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 4: It's really good at it. It's also really not good

845
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 4: for humans. And if you ever are hanging out with

846
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:47,480
Speaker 4: some friends on the weekend and they're like, hey, do

847
00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:50,239
Speaker 4: you want to play with depleted uranium, you should say no,

848
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 4: I hope that's not a hot take.

849
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:54,000
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know.

850
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:56,920
Speaker 3: Well, just imagine though, if you're in that situation in

851
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:00,800
Speaker 3: there are du rounds going off all over the especially

852
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 3: in a large battle in maybe a somewhat urban environment,

853
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:10,400
Speaker 3: right where you're now going through that same city that

854
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:14,360
Speaker 3: you just shot up like crazy. That stuff's in the

855
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 3: air via like dust, that stuff's on the ground.

856
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:22,720
Speaker 2: It's so there're SOPs for wearing gas masks or protection

857
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:26,440
Speaker 2: when circling back through these areas. I'm sure.

858
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:31,280
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's always going to be a standard operating procedure

859
00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 4: or like an order of operations for stuff, but that

860
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:36,760
Speaker 4: can fall to the wayside very quickly in the chaos

861
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:41,400
Speaker 4: of a hot conflict. Multiple studies by the US government

862
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:45,720
Speaker 4: appear to show that, yes, depleted uranium is nasty stuff,

863
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 4: but they conclude it does not itself cause what we

864
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:54,360
Speaker 4: call Gulf War syndrome double however, so that's two howevers

865
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:58,000
Speaker 4: for US played along at home. Since twenty eleven, US

866
00:50:58,120 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 4: combat veterans can still claim disability compensation for any health

867
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:07,719
Speaker 4: problems related to depleted uranium, and this is up to

868
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 4: the VA. They decided on a case by case basis,

869
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:15,839
Speaker 4: which means, yet again you're at the mercy of bureaucracy, right.

870
00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 4: And this is not to disparage the people working at

871
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:23,120
Speaker 4: the VA. It's the system that's the problem.

872
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:26,640
Speaker 3: Hip because it really does become bureaucratic. As you said,

873
00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:29,400
Speaker 3: where were you deployed, when were you there? What you know,

874
00:51:29,480 --> 00:51:31,800
Speaker 3: battalion and blah blah blah blah blah, all that stuff,

875
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:34,640
Speaker 3: and then you can basically the VA could say, well,

876
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 3: there's an x percent chance that you were actually exposed

877
00:51:38,680 --> 00:51:41,440
Speaker 3: to du right, which could be good or bad.

878
00:51:41,680 --> 00:51:44,320
Speaker 4: And it's like, do you have the right form from

879
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 4: the right medical professional. Oh, do you need to see

880
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:50,520
Speaker 4: the medical professional. Okay, that'll be like a couple of years.

881
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 4: I mean, hopefully it's not that extreme. But there are

882
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 4: systemic problems here. This is another cause that we personally

883
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:04,120
Speaker 4: don't care for, and it was it was bandied about

884
00:52:04,160 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 4: a lot in the early days. Factions of the US

885
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 4: government were going to veterans and saying, well, you think

886
00:52:10,719 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 4: you have Golf War syndrome, Even before they had a

887
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:15,960
Speaker 4: name for it, they said, what you really have is

888
00:52:16,080 --> 00:52:22,319
Speaker 4: PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Now gaslighting, Yeah, before we continue,

889
00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:27,280
Speaker 4: PTSD is very real. It can affect absolutely anyone civilian

890
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:32,480
Speaker 4: or military alike. Given the right circumstances, it happens. It

891
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:34,960
Speaker 4: is a real thing. We're not dismissing that, but we

892
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:39,880
Speaker 4: are saying lumping all of those proven physiological symptoms of

893
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:44,440
Speaker 4: Gulf War syndrome into one umbrella and saying it's just PTSD.

894
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 4: That can seem profoundly offensive to some people. It is

895
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 4: like gaslighting. It feels like that it's dismissing a genuine

896
00:52:51,520 --> 00:52:54,440
Speaker 4: health condition as being quote all in your heads.

897
00:52:54,200 --> 00:52:57,920
Speaker 2: And that is messed up. Yeah cool, and again we

898
00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:00,840
Speaker 2: you know, I mean I should get but like you know,

899
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:05,160
Speaker 2: my kid has as aversion to certain types of antibiotics

900
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 2: were particularly penicillin. It causes a severe psychological reaction. There

901
00:53:11,040 --> 00:53:13,120
Speaker 2: was this time where they were given penicillin and all

902
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:14,839
Speaker 2: of a sudden, like we're acting like they were having

903
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:19,479
Speaker 2: an emotional, uh, you know, anxiety attack basically. But that's

904
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 2: a really hard thing to convince doctors to believe in

905
00:53:23,040 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 2: because they don't. There's not a whole lot of exact

906
00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 2: precedent for it, but it happens every time. So this

907
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:32,120
Speaker 2: is like that, but with even more documented cases. And

908
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:34,520
Speaker 2: you've basically got people saying, sorry, I don't know what

909
00:53:34,600 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 2: you're talking about. That's all in your head, buddy.

910
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 3: I would say, I've I have personally been diagnosed with

911
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:42,880
Speaker 3: PTSD one time by a neurologist, and it was not

912
00:53:43,640 --> 00:53:47,920
Speaker 3: that huge collection of symptoms that are you know, those

913
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 3: that are described as Gulf War syndrome. So if this

914
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:55,719
Speaker 3: for my money, guys, it makes sense that PTSD is

915
00:53:55,760 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 3: a component of all that other stuff. Yes, oh, but

916
00:53:59,280 --> 00:53:59,880
Speaker 3: it is not.

917
00:54:00,200 --> 00:54:03,719
Speaker 2: Yes, portfolio, as I believe he.

918
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 4: It's an ocean's eleven of terrible stuff. You know, it's

919
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:13,399
Speaker 4: a heist crew on your health. And the question is

920
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:16,719
Speaker 4: it aided? Has this heist grew been aided and embedded

921
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:20,480
Speaker 4: by the US government? Unfortunately at certain points in the

922
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 4: narrative that appears to be the case, right, and the

923
00:54:24,239 --> 00:54:29,319
Speaker 4: VA and other research organizations have concluded that evidence does

924
00:54:29,360 --> 00:54:34,080
Speaker 4: not support an association a causual connection between PB pills

925
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 4: and what they call chronic multisymptom illness and what the

926
00:54:38,080 --> 00:54:42,160
Speaker 4: rest of the world calls Gulf War syndrome. But the

927
00:54:42,320 --> 00:54:47,320
Speaker 4: VA still again says, if you have chronic, unexplained symptoms

928
00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 4: existing for six months or more that are related to

929
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:54,759
Speaker 4: your time in the Gulf War, then you are deserving

930
00:54:54,920 --> 00:55:01,279
Speaker 4: of assistance, compensation, and resources, regardless of what the cause is,

931
00:55:01,360 --> 00:55:03,800
Speaker 4: what the official cause is. So really, what they're saying

932
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 4: again is agree to disagree on the specifics of what's happening,

933
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 4: but we will help you in theory. And this like

934
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:17,800
Speaker 4: it seems like I don't know after looking into this, folks,

935
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:23,480
Speaker 4: we believe the most likely factor for PB related GWS

936
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 4: Golf War syndrome, it has to hinge on that previously

937
00:55:27,160 --> 00:55:31,279
Speaker 4: unknown genetic variant. And again there are people who never

938
00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:34,960
Speaker 4: took PB pills who do have golf war syndrome because

939
00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 4: as we've as we've shown, there are other factors that

940
00:55:38,160 --> 00:55:38,960
Speaker 4: can create this.

941
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:45,680
Speaker 3: Yep, and I do gosh, I do wonder how many

942
00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:50,319
Speaker 3: of those factors add up to create Wait, how many

943
00:55:50,320 --> 00:55:50,759
Speaker 3: do you need?

944
00:55:50,880 --> 00:55:51,080
Speaker 2: Right?

945
00:55:51,320 --> 00:55:53,280
Speaker 3: Do you need the burn pits and the PB pills

946
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:57,160
Speaker 3: and then you're in golf war syndrome territory? Do you

947
00:55:57,239 --> 00:55:59,840
Speaker 3: need PTSD in burn pig? You know? Like, just what

948
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:01,640
Speaker 3: is what are the things?

949
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:04,560
Speaker 2: It reminds me of the stuff with AstroTurf giving people

950
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 2: cancer where it was really difficult to show the correlation

951
00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:12,040
Speaker 2: or maybe cause that I can't remember. I always get

952
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 2: those confused. I know the difference, But there was something

953
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:17,719
Speaker 2: with that where it was very tricky to show that

954
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:19,960
Speaker 2: these people that got cancer definitely got it because they

955
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:22,040
Speaker 2: were rolling around an AstroTurf.

956
00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:25,759
Speaker 4: Right, because there were other factories yea, yeah, And this

957
00:56:27,239 --> 00:56:32,200
Speaker 4: is all unfortunately true. We know that the idea of

958
00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:35,879
Speaker 4: a genetic variant can explain why some people ingested these

959
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:38,960
Speaker 4: pills with no lasting effect, while others may have incurred

960
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:43,640
Speaker 4: lifelong medical consequences as a result, even when following official

961
00:56:43,680 --> 00:56:47,960
Speaker 4: guidelines to the letter. And just like the VA decides

962
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:50,880
Speaker 4: stuff on a case by case basis, the causes of

963
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:54,279
Speaker 4: Golf War syndrome for a lot of individuals in the

964
00:56:54,400 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 4: Armed Services may vary case to case as well. To

965
00:56:57,320 --> 00:57:00,799
Speaker 4: your point, Matt, and the most important thing here is

966
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:04,400
Speaker 4: that if you served in the Gulf War in Operation

967
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:09,640
Speaker 4: Desert Shield or Desert Storm anytime after August second, nineteen ninety,

968
00:57:10,640 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 4: the VA wants you to know that you may be

969
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 4: at risk of certain health conditions. So they are admitting

970
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:21,240
Speaker 4: that something is up, and that is, as strange as

971
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:25,280
Speaker 4: it sounds, that's actually progress from the nineteen nineties. Now

972
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:26,960
Speaker 4: they're admitting the house is haunted.

973
00:57:27,440 --> 00:57:29,440
Speaker 2: And like you said, Man, I mean, that's a big deal,

974
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:32,760
Speaker 2: because that just doesn't happen unless they've got no other route,

975
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 2: you know, And at that point it's like damage.

976
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:39,880
Speaker 3: Control really quickly. Guys. Imagine twenty three years after that

977
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:43,440
Speaker 3: August date in nineteen ninety, we made our video series,

978
00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:50,240
Speaker 3: right and then what ten years later, a little yeah,

979
00:57:50,400 --> 00:57:52,480
Speaker 3: less than ten years, less than ten years later, we're

980
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 3: talking about it again, and it's still a problem. Just

981
00:57:55,400 --> 00:57:57,960
Speaker 3: the span of time. And there are people out there

982
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:01,720
Speaker 3: who have been dealing with this since nineteen ninety or

983
00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:04,200
Speaker 3: at least, you know, nineteen ninety one ninety two, after

984
00:58:04,240 --> 00:58:06,080
Speaker 3: they were exposed to all this stuff.

985
00:58:06,200 --> 00:58:09,880
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we haven't really talked about personal experiences

986
00:58:10,000 --> 00:58:12,720
Speaker 2: or personal accounts of people that actually suffer from this,

987
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 2: but they are out there. And that Ted Talk I

988
00:58:15,880 --> 00:58:19,240
Speaker 2: mentioned Ted x talk. If you want to hear someone

989
00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:22,960
Speaker 2: describing how debilitating this is for a loved one, that's

990
00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 2: a good source. And just just search for you know,

991
00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:29,160
Speaker 2: golf for syndrome testimonials. There they're out there, and this

992
00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:31,400
Speaker 2: is stuff that literally is causing people's quality of life

993
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:33,720
Speaker 2: to just be just absolutely in the tank.

994
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, and there are you can find just through a

995
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:43,920
Speaker 4: quick YouTube search. You can find some contemporaneous reporting. I'm

996
00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 4: thinking especially about an interview out of KMOVTV four in

997
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:52,760
Speaker 4: Missouri that was from like nineteen ninety six, and they

998
00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:58,880
Speaker 4: interviewed veterans about this before the VA reached its current conclusions.

999
00:58:59,080 --> 00:59:02,720
Speaker 4: So you can see the pendulum moving in the right direction.

1000
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 4: But for many veterans, leaving combat only led to another battle,

1001
00:59:08,480 --> 00:59:11,520
Speaker 4: a battle for their conditions and injuries. To be acknowledged

1002
00:59:11,760 --> 00:59:15,800
Speaker 4: rather than buried under paperwork or swept under a bureaucratic rug.

1003
00:59:16,120 --> 00:59:19,360
Speaker 4: It is tragically a battle that many of our fellow

1004
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:22,920
Speaker 4: listeners in the audience tonight continue to fight one day

1005
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:25,840
Speaker 4: at a time. But the VA, as imperfect as it is,

1006
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:29,440
Speaker 4: it exists to help. So if you are a loved

1007
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:34,760
Speaker 4: one or experiencing medical conditions physiological, psychological as a result

1008
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:37,640
Speaker 4: of your time in the service, contact the VA at

1009
00:59:37,640 --> 00:59:41,600
Speaker 4: the following number eight seven seven two two two eight

1010
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:45,240
Speaker 4: three eight seven. You might be on hold for a while,

1011
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 4: but that's why they're there to help you, not to

1012
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:51,600
Speaker 4: put you on hold. Just to clarify, and with that,

1013
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:55,440
Speaker 4: we want to hear your experiences to your point about

1014
00:59:55,880 --> 01:00:00,479
Speaker 4: personal stories. Tell us about your your encounters with golf

1015
01:00:00,600 --> 01:00:05,720
Speaker 4: or syndrome as well as other potential conditions related to combat,

1016
01:00:05,960 --> 01:00:08,000
Speaker 4: and let us know whether you think there's a cover

1017
01:00:08,120 --> 01:00:10,520
Speaker 4: up a foot. We try to be easy to find online.

1018
01:00:11,200 --> 01:00:13,520
Speaker 2: That's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff,

1019
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 2: where we exist on Facebook, on YouTube, where we have

1020
01:00:16,840 --> 01:00:20,560
Speaker 2: video content galore rolling out every single week, and also

1021
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:25,280
Speaker 2: on x FKA, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok. We exist

1022
01:00:25,320 --> 01:00:27,520
Speaker 2: at the handle conspiracy stuff show.

1023
01:00:27,960 --> 01:00:30,920
Speaker 3: Hey, you want to call us, talk to us, tell

1024
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 3: us a story. Why not call our voicemail system. It

1025
01:00:34,520 --> 01:00:39,000
Speaker 3: is one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in,

1026
01:00:39,040 --> 01:00:42,920
Speaker 3: give yourself a cool nickname. No government names please, unless

1027
01:00:42,960 --> 01:00:46,000
Speaker 3: it's important to you for one reason or another. Generally,

1028
01:00:46,040 --> 01:00:47,480
Speaker 3: if you say your full name, we're not going to

1029
01:00:47,600 --> 01:00:50,320
Speaker 3: use it. We will make up a name for it

1030
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:53,200
Speaker 3: or something. You've got three minutes when you call in.

1031
01:00:53,240 --> 01:00:55,640
Speaker 3: If you've got more to say than that three minutes,

1032
01:00:55,760 --> 01:00:59,640
Speaker 3: or you've got links, pictures, anything, why not instead shoot

1033
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:00,960
Speaker 3: us a good old fashioned email.

1034
01:01:01,160 --> 01:01:23,000
Speaker 4: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1035
01:01:23,120 --> 01:01:25,160
Speaker 3: Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production

1036
01:01:25,280 --> 01:01:29,800
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1037
01:01:29,880 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.