A new Duke University-led study finds that Gulf War Illness (GWI), which affects approximately 250,000 U.S. veterans, significantly reduces their white blood cells' ability to make energy and creates a measurable biochemical difference in veterans who have the disease.
"Historically, GWI has been diagnosed based on a veteran's self-reported symptoms, such as exercise-induced fatigue, indigestion, dizziness, insomnia, or memory problems. There's been no objective biochemical or molecular measurements doctors could use to diagnose it," said Joel Meyer, professor of environmental genomics at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, who led the new study.
The new study provides measurements accessible in blood samples, which, though not sufficient to serve as a stand-alone diagnostic test, could be useful to help improve treatment for veterans suffering from Gulf War Illness by giving doctors a new way to assess whether a prescribed treatment is helping, Meyer said.
"Knowing this is an energetic deficiency can help us zero in on more effective ways to relieve the symptoms," Meyer said. "Blood tests, repeated over the course of the treatment, would show if a veteran's white blood cells are responding to a treatment and producing more energy."
He and his co-authors from Duke, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs' War-Related Illness and Injury Study Center, and the New Jersey Medical School published the new paper in PLOS ONE.
Their research reveals that Gulf War Illness inhibits white blood cells' energy production by impairing the workings of the cells' mitochondria, structures within the cell which extract energy from food and convert it into the chemical power needed to fuel growth, movement and other bodily processes and functions.
"The idea to investigate the role mitochondria might be playing in GWI came from Mike Falvo, one of my co-authors from Veteran Affairs and the New Jersey Medical School, who had noticed that a lot of GWI symptoms were similar to those associated with mitochondrial diseases," said Meyer.
"So, we analyzed mitochondrial respiration and extracellular acidification, which are proxies for energy generation, in the white blood cells of 114 Gulf War veterans, 80 of whom had been diagnosed with GWI. We also looked for evidence of mitochondrial DNA damage and nuclear DNA damage."
The analyses revealed no evidence of DNA damage, but they did show significantly lower levels of extracellular acidification and oxygen consumption in the white blood cells from veterans with GWI—signs that their mitochondria were generating less energy.
Follow-up blood tests on about a third of the veterans showed that some of these levels could vary over time, but the general pattern remained: the cells of veterans with GWI produced less energy.
The cause of Gulf War Illness is still unknown. To determine if environmental factors might play a role, Meyer and his colleagues turned to the veterans' surveys of self-reported symptoms and their written recollections of their deployments.
"We found veterans who recalled being exposed to pesticides and pyridostigmine bromide, a drug used during the Gulf War as a pretreatment to protect troops from the harmful effects of nerve agents, were more likely to get GWI after deployment," Meyer said. "An interesting question is how these effects have persisted so long after the exposures."
More information: Bioenergetic Function is Decreased in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells of Veterans with Gulf War Illness, PLoS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287412
Almost a third of individuals who received a COVID-19 vaccine suffered from neurological complications including tremors, insomnia, and muscle spasms, according to a recent study published in the journal Vaccines.
The study analyzed 19,096 people who received COVID-19 vaccines in Italy in July 2021, out of which 15,368 had taken the Pfizer vaccine, 2,077 had taken the Moderna version, and 1,651 took the AstraZeneca version.
While both Pfizer and Moderna are mRNA vaccines, AstraZeneca, being an adenovirus vaccine, uses a different mechanism to trigger the immune response.
The study found that about 31.2 percent of vaccinated individuals developed post-vaccination neurological complications, particularly among those injected with the AstraZeneca jab. Different vaccines had a different “neurological risk profile.”
The neurological risk profile of the AstraZeneca vaccine included headaches, tremors, muscle spasms, insomnia, and tinnitus, while the risk profile of the Moderna vaccine included sleepiness, vertigo, diplopia (double vision), paresthesia (a feeling of numbness or itching on the skin), taste and smell alterations, and dysphonia (hoarseness or loss of normal voice).
As to Pfizer vaccines, researchers found “an increased risk” of cognitive fog or difficulty in concentration.
AstraZeneca Risks
More than 53 percent of individuals who took an AstraZeneca shot suffered from headaches, which usually lasted for one day. Over 13 percent developed tremors, which typically reverted after a day as well.
Insomnia was reported among 5.8 percent of AstraZeneca recipients. However, the study notes that researchers were unsure whether the individuals actually developed insomnia or had a “misperception of their sleep quality due to vaccination stress.”
Tinnitus was reported by 2.7 percent of the people who took AstraZeneca shots. Tinnitus is a condition in which an individual hears ringing or other noises which are not caused by an external sound.
All these health complications had a higher risk of occurring after taking the first dose of the vaccine.
The study speculated that complications related to the AstraZeneca vaccine are attributable to two factors. “Firstly, the nature of the vaccine, which is a modified adenovirus vector that results in significant and persistent systemic immune activation; secondly, individual vulnerability related to a predisposing biology.”
Moderna and Pfizer Risks
Sleepiness was found in 39.7 percent of those who took Moderna jabs, with the condition usually lasting for a week. It suggested that there “could be a strict relationship between the development of sleepiness and immune responses to vaccine/infection.”
The study cited a “fascinating hypothesis” which suggests that influenza vaccines may lead to “the selective immune-mediated destruction of orexin-producing neurons, which is T-cell-mediated neuronal damage, thus triggering narcolepsy.”
Narcolepsy is a condition in which the brain is unable to control the ability to sleep or stay awake.
“Considering that the same can occur for COVID-19 vaccines, future investigations monitoring the new-onset hypersomnia findings in vulnerable individuals are urgently needed.”
Hypersomnia is the inability to stay awake and alert during the daytime, even though the person may have had plenty of sleep during the night.
About 15.9 percent of people who received Moderna shots had vertigo, a sensation which makes the individual feel that they or their surrounding environment is moving or spinning. It typically lasted for a day.
Paresthesia—a feeling of numbness or itching on the skin for no apparent reason—was reported in 14.5 percent of Moderna vaccine recipients, which went away after a day.
Among the people who received a Moderna jab, 2.7 percent reported diplopia, also known as double vision, which also lasted for about a day. “Symptomatic people showed an increased risk to develop diplopia after the second dose, as if a reactivation of the immune response was necessary to trigger diplopia.”
Meanwhile, about 6.4 percent of Pfizer vaccine recipients reported suffering from cognitive fog, with the condition usually reversing in a week.
“Brain fog is a type of cognitive impairment that presents as a ‘foggy brain state’, including a lack of intellectual clarity, difficulty with concentration, mental fatigue and anxiety,” the study said.
“Hypotheses including systemic inflammation crossing the blood–brain barrier, neuroinflammation after viral infection leads and microglial activation are emerging as explanations of this phenomenon in COVID-19 patients. An alternative speculation is that symptomatic people may have a subclinical cognitive dysfunction before vaccination, and that vaccination is a trigger.”
Females Highly Affected
The study found that females faced an “increased risk of developing neurological complications” following COVID-19 vaccination. “Our findings are in line with those of a recent study that revealed that several factors, including the female sex, were associated with greater odds of adverse effects,” it said.
The researchers suggested that greater female susceptibility to the vaccines’ neurological complications may be due to “genetic and hormonal factors.”
Females have two X chromosomes while males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. As the X chromosome “contains the most prominent immune-related genes in the human genome,” it can also cause “stronger inflammatory immune responses,” the study said.
Moreover, a primary female sex steroid called estradiol triggers a specific immunity process to produce “antibodies against infections.”
The study also raised concerns about comorbidities. In medical parlance, comorbidity describes the existence of more than one disease or condition in a body at the same time, which may or may not interact with one another.
“The evidence that immune system dysfunctions (allergies/immunodeficiency disorders) are frequently reported in our symptomatic group is more than a chance occurrence,” researchers said.
Comorbidities were present in 47.6 percent of the AstraZeneca vaccine recipients, 38.8 percent of those who took Moderna jabs, and 41.5 percent of individuals who received Pfizer shots, the study said.
In the AstraZeneca group, both allergies and non-neurological diseases were reported. “A history of antitumoral and anticoagulant drugs was more frequent in this population,” the study said.
Among Moderna and Pfizer recipients, allergies were “more frequently” observed. While some people who took Moderna had a prior history of neurological diseases and transfusions as well as previous COVID-19 infection, those who received Pfizer vaccines had a history of immunodeficiency disorders.
Even though the study detailed neurological complications arising from COVID-19 vaccination, it admitted to certain limitations.
“Firstly, our results should be interpreted with caution because of a possible overestimation of neurological events resulting from the self-reported symptoms,” it said.
“Secondly, we evaluated the risks associated with the first and second doses of the vaccine; however, the data concerning the second dose were limited, thus representing a potential bias in the study.”
While admitting its limitations, the study concluded that “clinicians should be aware that several neurological complications may commonly occur after COVID-19 vaccines.”
“Caution should be used when administering COVID-19 vaccines to vulnerable people, such as to those who suffer from allergies,” the study stated. “We strongly believe that our findings are relevant for public health regarding the safety of vaccines in a large cohort.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca for comment.
Additional Neurological Findings
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough wrote about the study discussing neurological effects following COVID shots in an article on Substack.
“A shocking 31.2 percent of respondents to this large dataset sustained neurologic injury after two injections with verified data in health registries,” he wrote. “Most of the risk estimates indicate the safety profile is unacceptable. It is alarming that all neurological societies to date still recommend COVID-19 vaccines and none have issued safety warnings on the products.”
Dr. McCullough explained that an excess risk of 20 percent or greater is considered "clinically important."
Multiple other studies have found evidence of COVID-19 vaccines being linked to neurological complications. Back in October 2021, a study published in the Neurological Sciences journal stated that the “most devastating neurological post-vaccination complication is cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).”
CVST occurs when a blood clot develops in the venous sinuses of the brain. This blocks the blood from draining out of the brain, eventually resulting in the blood leaking into brain tissues and forming a hemorrhage, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The study found that CVST was “frequently reported in females of childbearing age,” generally among those who took an adenovector vaccine. Individuals who received mRNA vaccination were reported to have Bell’s palsy, in which facial muscles weaken or enter into paralysis.
A November 2022 study in Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports made similar findings, stating that there is “a greater than expected occurrence of severe neurological adverse events."
Dr. McCullough cited this study in an article the following month.
“Because the vaccines contain lipid nanoparticles loaded with genetic material that code for the damaging Spike protein, each patient faces a Russian Roulette of whether or not the nervous system will be hemodynamically showered with the damaging vaccine particles,” he wrote.
Despite studies suggesting the risk of medical complications, some experts continue to advise people to get COVID-19 jabs. According to John Hopkins Medicine, both Pfizer and Moderna are “highly effective in preventing serious disease, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19.”
It recommended people to get a COVID-19 shot as “we believe that their benefits outweigh their risks," Johns Hopkins Medicine said.
According to a position statement from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) issued in 2021, the organization recommended COVID-19 vaccine mandates for health care employees and supported vaccinations for children under the age of 12.
- Cash runway expected to extend beyond topline results from Phase 2 trial for RT-102, topline results from Phase 1 trial for RT-111, and development of RaniPill® HC to be Phase 1 ready -
- Expansion of manufacturing footprint is expected to enable increased scale and support capacity for potential partner programs -
- RT-101 program discontinued; RT-105 and RT-110 programs paused -
- The company will reduce its workforce by approximately 25% -
For all its faults, the American legal system has an international reputation for ensuring that victims of injustice get their day in court. In recent weeks, two young women filedlawsuits against the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and some of its affiliated doctors, arguing that the doctors harmed them irreversibly by subjecting them to “gender-affirming” hormonal treatments when what they needed was mental-health support. One plaintiff argues that the medical group has defrauded the public and its own members in contravention of state deceptive-practice provisions.
Among the defendants are some of the leading advocates of “gender-affirming care.” One is Michelle Forcier, a professor of pediatrics and assistant dean at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, who gained notoriety last year after appearing in Matt Walsh’s documentary What Is a Woman? Walsh, a Daily Wire journalist, asked Forcier why she uses “assigned sex at birth” for humans but not, say, for chickens. The doctor responded: “Does a chicken have gender identity? Does a chicken cry? Does a chicken commit suicide?”
Another high-profile physician defendant is Jason Rafferty, a mentee of Forcier’s and author of the AAP’s 2018 policy statement on “gender-affirming care” that has become the U.S. medical community’s touchstone. Rafferty, who describes “gender-affirming care” as an approach that uses “a child’s sense of reality” as the “navigational beacon to orient treatment around,” allegedly approved one plaintiff for puberty blockers after only one visit. He did so, states the complaint, despite the patient’s suffering from multiple-personality disorder and having been hospitalized at the time for a suicide attempt.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the plaintiffs announced the new lawsuits on the opening and closing days of the AAP’s annual conference, which ran from October 20 to October 24 in Washington, D.C. According to Carrie Mendoza, a physician and director of the nonprofit FAIR in Medicine who helped set up a booth at the conference to bring awareness to the problems of gender medicine, “the vast majority of AAP members with whom we engaged in discussion either shared our concerns or had no knowledge of gender medicine and wanted to learn more. Unfortunately, those who agreed that something has gone wrong with how we help kids with distress over their bodies said they fear the personal and professional repercussions of voicing their concerns.”
Her group’s “major takeaway from the conference,” Mendoza said, was “that there is a broken chain of trust in the field of pediatrics.” The AAP’s members “reasonably trust their professional association to adhere to scientific methods” and “reasonably trust that the AAP will convene committees to issue statements and guidelines based on the best available evidence,” she said. But “when the chain of trust is broken, it can take time before members notice dysfunction.”
An example of that dysfunction played out on the convention center’s second floor, just above Mendoza’s booth, where Ilana Sherer, a pediatrician and gender clinician from California, led a panel on gender and sexuality. Sherer asked that the session not be video-recorded, and “deputized” audience members to enforce her request. One of the attendees took an audio recording of the session and, through a mediator, shared it with me.
Sherer began by insisting that pediatricians practice “personal disclosures . . . in any kind of professional setting,” and disclosed that she is “a queer, cisgender, white, able-bodied woman” who lives and works “in the Bay Area, which is unceded Ohlone territory.”
She then suggested that pediatricians not wait until their patients are adolescents to talk to them about “gender care and sexual health” but instead start conversations about “sexual identities” in “childhood.” She also recommended using “updated language,” which pediatricians can learn from their patients. For girls who want male bodies, that new language includes “innie” and “front hole” instead of vagina; “dicklet” and “T-penis” instead of clitoris (a side effect of testosterone injections is clitoral growth, which can be extremely painful); and “chesticles” instead of breasts. For boys who want female bodies, Sherer mentioned “outie,” “junk,” “strapless,” and “bits” as replacement words for penis.
Sherer’s recommendations for dealing with kids who feel discomfort with their bodies or their sex directly contradicts the guidelines the AAP published in April. The guidelines, “10 Tips for Parents to Teach Children About Safety and Boundaries,” are meant to help parents and caretakers protect children against sexual abuse and assault. “Use appropriate language,” the first recommendation, instructs parents to “Teach children proper names for all body parts, including their genitals: penis, vagina, breasts and buttocks. Making up names for body parts may give the impression that they are bad or a secret and cannot be talked about.”
Sherer also discussed sexuality, noting that the term bisexual “assumes that there are two genders,” whereas the term “pansexual . . . recognizes multiplicity of gender.” She encouraged audience not to “assume that LGBT-identified youth are . . . only having sex with certain genders.” Sherer’s presentation included a visual aid to help fellow AAP members grasp the new concepts of gender and sexuality. It was a “cute” image of a “gender unicorn,” complete with a “little rainbow brain.”
“I see a couple of confused faces,” Sherer promptly admitted. Perhaps the attending pediatricians had overlooked the unicorn section in their biology textbooks in medical school.
When discussing pronouns, including “they/them,” Sherer admitted that “it’s hard,” but said that kids can educate their doctors. “One of my young patients told me: pretend there’s a hamster in my pocket, and you’re talking to both of us. So, if you’re struggling with they/them pronouns, imagine the hamster. Okay? They are a doctor. I like them. This is their stethoscope. Hamster with a stethoscope. Think about it.”
In 2018, participating in a panel hosted by the organization Gender Spectrum, Sherer said that she saw “lots and lots of kids” who “don’t have [gender] dysphoria, that really don’t have mental health issues, and so to say to them ‘you have to go get a letter from a mental health provider’ feels challenging to me. And so what we’ve started to do in our clinics is have someone like Diane [Ehrensaft, a leading proponent of the gender-affirmative model] . . . go in and do brief assessment, and give their rub—I know you [addressing Ehrensaft] said you don’t rubber-stamp, but basically in my mind that’s what it feels like, and so then we can move on and say ‘OK, now we can talk about what you’re actually here for”—that is, hormones.
Which brings me back to the lawsuits.
That the AAP gave Sherer a stage is further evidence that the organization has abandoned science in pursuit of political fashion. (Neither Sherer nor the AAP could be reached for comment.) Mounting evidence suggests that U.S. pediatric gender clinics are not practicing differential diagnosis—that is, attempting to identify other potential conditions or causes of a patient’s distress—and instead are pushing hormonal and surgical options on kids. Just yesterday, Finland’s top gender clinician and researcher, Tampere University Hospital’s Riittakerttu Kaltiala, claimed in the Free Press that American medical societies are “actively hostile” to gender clinicians and researchers who raise concerns about the “affirmative” approach. “Medicine, unfortunately, is not immune to dangerous groupthink that results in patient harm,” she observes.
As public knowledge of this scandal grows, lawyers will try to go further and further upstream in the referral pipeline to hold providers accountable. In the U.S. legal system, courts play a leading role in crafting standards of medical liability; given their independence, American judges are known to offer novel and creative interpretations of the law. It is only a matter of time before judges become skeptical of pediatricians who referred vulnerable teenagers to facilities that they knew or should have known were unsafe.
It is not news that the AAP has endorsed novel theories about sex and gender in defiance of empirical evidence. What is increasingly clear, and what was confirmed at the conference last weekend, is that the AAP is too shortsighted to protect even the interests of its own members. By deceiving them about the science of gender medicine and infantilizing them with unicorn-themed propaganda, the AAP is not only undermining the public’s trust in its authority as a scientific organization. It is also creating legal risk for pediatricians who, perhaps in good faith, rely on its guidance.
The biggest problem confronting Israel in its war on Hamas is how to destroy the Gaza tunnel networks and the terrorist operations therein. Bombing works—mostly—but there’s a better way. Not only would it dramatically reduce Israeli military and Gazan civilian casualties, but it would effectively destroy the tunnel systems for the long term. That solution is to flood the tunnels with seawater from the adjacent Mediterranean.
I worked on the Gaza Strip back in the 1990s. The U.S. government was pouring tens of millions of tax dollars into development assistance there on engineering infrastructure, housing, and related projects. Part of reviewing that work on the ground involved tramping over much of the small territory on foot.
Gaza consists of a strip of beach, back beach, and coastal plain that’s flat to slightly rolling. The territory stretches for about twenty-five miles along the eastern Mediterranean. At its widest, in the south, it’s about seven and a half miles wide; most of it is far narrower, about half of that.
The Gaza tunnel system, mostly constructed over the last forty years, provides Hamas with offensive access to Israel. It also constitutes the terrorist organization’s most formidable defensive redoubt. The tunnels present by far the most difficult logistical problem for Israel in eliminating enemy targets. Open-source maps show at least eleven independent tunnel networks, some nearly adjacent to the sea. The number of independent networks, however, could far exceed that. Hamas claims that the total length of the tunnels is about three hundred miles.
The geography of Gaza argues strongly for the stratagem of flooding the tunnels. It would force the enemy above ground where they can more easily be destroyed, dramatically reduce the Israeli casualties required to accomplish that task and resolve the problem of dealing with parts of the tunnels that are too deep to destroy through bombing. Most importantly, flooding is a permanent or near-permanent solution to the Gaza tunnel problem. Once accomplished, pumping them out enough to be usable again would be both extremely costly and—especially in conjunction with bombing—exceptionally difficult. The timing of executing a flooding strategy is flexible; some could be flooded now, others later, and still others once they’re discovered.
The engineering is straightforward. Egypt floodedthirty-seven cross-border tunnels in southern Gaza back in 2015 in what stands as a practical proof of concept in this location. Seawater from the Mediterranean would be pumped directly into the tunnel openings through short pipelines. While there’s little hydrological head, there is also little topographical relief to deal with in laying the pipe. Large volumes of water are pumped long distances every day, and Israeli water technology is world class.
The shortest and most direct route to the tunnel entrances would be directly from the Mediterranean. This would require kinetic clearing of the construction sites and holding them for the duration of the operation to protect the temporary water transmission lines. The distance that would need to be cleared and held could be minimized on the northernmost and eastern tunnels by running a trunk line through adjacent Israeli territory and feeding water distribution lines to the tunnel entrances off that.
Flooding doesn’t have to be slow. A six-by-five-foot tunnel that runs 300 miles is a huge volume to fill, but how fast it fills depends on how fast the water is pumped. Rough calculations indicate that if a single pipe were used for each of eleven tunnels, with each pipe pumping at a very conservative 100 gallons per minute, it would take about seven and a half months for all eleven tunnel networks to fill. Pumping water at ten times that rate, however, is routinely done today everywhere from wastewater treatment plants to oil field operations. Also, the tunnels wouldn’t have to be filled to capacity to generate the desired effect. The effect would begin as soon as water started to flow; by the time a tunnel has two or three feet of water it would be effectively unusable.
The collateral damage to infrastructure should be minimal. The distances are short, the diameter of the required pipe is small, and the pipelines would run very close to the surface. As with the Egyptian tunnel operations, the impact of flooding on groundwater salinization would no doubt be raised. The extent of saltwater leakage through the tunnels into local groundwater would depend on the depth and construction of the tunnels and the configuration of the local aquifer. Gaza’s shallow aquifer is already over-depleted, however, and ninety-five percent of its groundwater was considered unfit for public consumption as far back as 2017. The reason is that it’s extensively contaminated with chemicals and sewage, as well as saltwater intrusion from the Mediterranean due to a long history of over pumping. Because of that, Gaza relies heavily on desalinization for potable water.
In the short term, think of flooding Gaza’s tunnels as humanitarian assistance. By eliminating the need to keep bombing them, flooding would reduce civilian casualties and other collateral damage. In the long term, think of denying Hamas access to the tunnels as an A2AD stratagem. At the end of the war, there can be no complete destruction of Hamas, nor long-term peace out of Gaza, unless and until the Gaza tunnels are taken out.
Jeff Goodson is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer. In 29 years with the U.S. Agency for International Development, he worked on the ground in 49 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, including the Gaza Strip. He served 31 months during three tours in Afghanistan. From 2006-2007 he was Chief of Staff and Head of Civil-Military Planning and Operations at USAID/Kabul, and from 2010-2012 he served as the DCOS/Stability Director of Development at ISAF Headquarters.
Pfizer (PFE) Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla discusses the $43 billion acquisition of cancer biotech company Seagen Inc. (SGEN), for which U.S. approval is still pending. The integration of Seagen will require additional investment, but is expected to generate $10 billion in revenues by 2030. Finally, despite the recent wave of consolidation in the sector, he anticipates few major mergers and acquisitions in 2024.
