WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF
Dr. Garth L. Nicolson
COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS
Subcommittee on Health
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 24, 2002
Past and present senior DoD and DVA administrative personnel must be held accountable for the utter mismanagement of the entire GWI problem. This has been especially apparent in the
continuing denial that chronic infections could play a role in GWI and the denial that immediate family members could have contracted their illnesses from veterans with GWI. This has resulted in sick spouses and children being turned away from DoD and DVA facilities without diagnoses or treatments. The responsibility for these civilians must ultimately be borne by the DoD and DVA. I believe that it is now accountability time. The files must be opened so the American public has a better idea how many veterans and civilians have died from illness associated with service in the Gulf War and how many have become sick because of an inadequate response to this health crisis. Unfortunately, little or no progress has been made on these items for the last decade or more, and the situation has not changed significantly since my last testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives [14] in 1998.
Similarly, our earlier testimony to House Subcommittees was apparently disregarded as well. http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/s...-02/gnicol.htm The Nicolsons discovered that about one-half of the patients had contracted a curious microorganism called Mycoplasma fermentans incognitus, or Mfi.
What shocked the two scientists was that this particular strain of Mycoplasma included a gene from the HIV-1 virus, a virtual impossibility in naturally occurring Mycoplasmas. Their new discovery in a beautiful microorganism shaped like a day lily, appeared to be a genetically altered biological weapon capable of incapacitating infected victims.
Garth immediately instructed veterans’ physicians to prescribe the only known treatment: large doses of long-term courses of antibiotics. As the word spread, calls began coming in from military units and reporters all over the world.
More research led to a
trail of experiments with Mycoplasma as far back as WWII.
The I.G. Farban Co. had tested the germ at prisoner camps and death camps in Eastern Europe, and the Nicolsons believed it was brought to the U.S during “Operation Paperclip”, a recovery program of Nazi scientists & technicians right after WWII. It most likely ended up at one of the U.S Bio-warfare research centers like Fort Detrick or Plum Island, where it continued to be worked on and perfected as an incapacitating germ warfare agent.
Even more chilling was the discovery that
Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo of the U.S Army had submitted a patent on Mfi in 1987. Dr. Lo was a top molecular biologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C. Like Nancy, Lo had also trained at Baylor, and later at Tanox, a Baylor biotech spin-off, working on antibody based tests against Anthrax and related microorganisms.
Something sinister was happening at Baylor, and the Nicolsons had a sinking feeling it was related to the Veteran’s illnesses.
In 1994, three women from Huntsville, Texas contacted the Nicolsons. These women, known as “the three moms”, were married or related to Huntsville Prison employees. Huntsville prisoners were dying, and employees were getting sick with unusual illnesses. Garth and Nancy had just published their papers on the signs and symptoms of “GWI”, and
Huntsville citizens were suffering from the same symptoms as the veterans. The disease also appeared to be contagious.
In fact, over 300 families in Huntsville (pop. 35,000) had some form of the illness. There were 26 cases of Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS) and 63 cases of MS in the small community, rates of incidence that were several times the expected rates.
The Nicolsons took blood samples from the Huntsville families and discovered Mfi in about half of the Wallsville patients.
http://questioningwar-organizingresi...1_archive.html
Feel like a human guinea pig yet????