Brain scans of Gulf War veterans show brain damage. As compared to healthy veterans, those who came home from the war sick had loss of brain cells (on a new more sensitive imaging technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy) of a comparable magnitude to that found in degenerative neurological diseases, although affected areas were different.

“You need to ask yourself if you would be willing

to give up 5 percent to 25 percent of the brain cells in vital parts of your brain that serve as the relay station for all automatic

and subconscious functions of your brain.” Some researchers propose three Gulf War Syndromes with differing symptom patterns that roughly sort out according to etiology. These new MR spectroscopy findings were in veterans complaining of the most debilitating of the syndromes, Type 2, which appears to correlate with low-level nerve gas exposure during the war. Type 2 patients may have genetically lower levels of a blood enzyme that protects against nerve gas damage, thus making them more vulnerable to damage from low levels of nerve gas (something no one knew about when we sent them into battle in Kuwait, of course). In the new study the subjects with the greatest evidence of brain damage were the ones with the lowest levels of the neuroprotective enzyme.