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Egyptian Military Using Nerve Gas on Protesters
Wednesday, 23 Nov 2011 06:44 AM
By Newsmax Wires


The Egyptian military has been using a banned chemical agent to deal with hundreds of thousands of protesters, according to several news sources.

At least 23 Egyptians have died and more than 1,700 have succumbed to a lethal gas military forces have been using during the past three days in clashes in and around Cairo's Tahrir Square.

The International Business Times reports that demonstrators have been struck with "dangerous levels of CR gas over the past two days of protests" and Australia's The Age said Wednesday that the canisters are marked "Made in the USA."

CR gas is an intense and lethal version of CS gas, called "tear gas," widely used by police for crowd control.

Wikipedia notes that CR gas has effects that are "are approximately 6 to 10 times more powerful than those of CS gas." CR causes intense skin pain and irritation, and can lead to blindness and death by asphyxiation.

CR gas was widely used by South African police during the height of Apartheid in the 1980s and its use was widely condemned by international bodies.

Former IAEA official Mohammed ElBaradei has confirmed in Twitter that Egyptian forces have used "tear gas with [a] nerve agent."

The Arabist, an Egyptian blog covering the protests Tuesday, quoted an Egyptian neurology expert as saying this "is not the regular tear gas used in January [during protests]" and was causing "extra-pyramidal symptoms -- involuntary jerks in extremities and trunk mimicking a convulsive seizure."

''It is some kind of neuro-toxic nerve gas,'' doctor Mohamed Aden, who usually works at the Cairo University hospitals, told Australia's The Age. ''We are seeing people whose upper respiratory tract is in convulsion - we have to give them diazepam to relax the muscles to allow them to begin to breathe again.''

The Australian paper continued: "A young man was rushed into the clinic, unconscious and fitting, as the doctor spoke. For at least five minutes it was touch and go as medics administered treatment. Finally he drew breath and the team moved to one of the four patients who had just been carried in, a man with gunshot wound to a leg."


Read more on Newsmax.com: Egyptian Military Using Nerve Gas on Protesters

Quoted Text

With its high viscosity and low volatility, VX has the texture and feel of motor oil. This makes it especially dangerous, as it has a high persistence in the environment. It is odorless and tasteless, and can be distributed as a liquid, both pure and as a mixture with a polymer in the form of thickened agent, or as an aerosol. It works as a nerve agent by blocking the function of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase. Normally, an electric nerve pulse would cause the release of acetylcholine over a synapse that would stimulate muscle contraction. The acetylcholine is then broken down to non-reactive substances (acetic acid and choline) by the acetylcholinesterase enzyme. If more muscle tension is needed the nerve must release more acetylcholine. VX blocks the action of acetylcholinesterase, thus resulting in initial violent contractions, followed by sustained supercontraction restricted to the subjunctional endplate sarcoplasm and prolonged depolarizing neuromuscular blockade, the latter resulting in flaccid paralysis of all the muscles in the body. Sustained paralysis of the diaphragm muscle causes death by asphyxiation.

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Treatment

Primary consideration should be given to removal of the liquid agent from the skin before removal of the individual to an uncontaminated area or atmosphere. After removal from the contaminated area, the casualty will be decontaminated by washing the contaminated areas with household bleach and flushing with clean water. After decontamination, the contaminated clothing is removed and skin contamination washed away. If possible, decontamination is completed before the casualty is taken for further medical treatment.

An individual who has received a known nerve-agent exposure or who exhibits definite signs or symptoms of nerve-agent exposure should immediately have the nerve agent antidote drugs atropine, pralidoxime (2-PAM), and a sedative/antiepileptic such as diazepam injected. In several nations the nerve agent antidotes are issued for military personnel in the form of an autoinjector such as the United States military Mark I NAAK.[7]

Atropine works by binding and blocking a subset of acetylcholine receptors (known as muscarinic acetylcholine receptor, mAchR), so that the build up of acetylcholine produced by loss of the acetylcholinesterase function can no longer affect their target. The injection of pralidoxime regenerates bound acetylcholinesterase.