A neuropharmacologist debunks use of sarin in the Khan Shaykhun incident

CNN, April 13, 2017: 

The US military and intelligence community has intercepted communications featuring Syrian military and chemical experts talking about preparations for the sarin attack in [Khan Shaykhun] Idlib last week, a senior US official tells CNN. ...

From Denis O'Brien's April 13, 2017 post at LogoPhere:

... let me make it absolutely clear that as one trained in neuropharmacology I know with absolute certainty that the [April 4 incident in Khan Shaykhun - "KS"],  like the one in Ghouta in 2013, was not a sarin attack.  ...

After taking verbal pokes at reporters and officials involved in the sarin poisoning hoax, O'Brien settles into presenting LogoPhere's Top Ten Ways to Tell When You're Being Spoofed by a False-Flag Sarin Attack. 

http://logophere.com/Topics2017/17-04/17_017-BLA-Sarin.htm

Here I'm just going to extract from his article the 10 subject headers and a few sentences under each heading and/or summarize his explanation under each header. 

#1. People intoxicated with sarin don't look well. Ever. None of them. 

It amazes me that I would even have to raise this point. But what also amazes me is how often one sees perfectly healthy looking people being passed off as "sarin victims" ...

  #2. People intoxicated with sarin don't gasp, cough, cry, or pant. 

Anoxia is one of those medical conditions that is either corrected immediately or never.  Anoxia is when the amount of oxygen in the blood drops too low to sustain life. Anoxia is what sarin victims succumb to, and the reason is that sarin paralyzes the muscles required to move air in and out of the lungs -- the respiratory muscles. Understanding this simple pharmacological fact is key to understanding so much of what is going on in the fake sarin videos. ...

#3: People intoxicated with sarin don't often foam at the mouth. 

... The physiological issue with the foaming is much the same as with coughing and panting.  Sarin does produce an increase in the production of mucus in the airways -- bronchorrhea -- but if the respiratory muscles are compromised or totally paralyzed, all of that mucus will not likely be pushed into the mouth and nose, nor will there be enough air-flow to aerate the mucus into a foam.  The more common scenario is that the mucus will plug-up the airways and add to the victim's respiratory problems.  ... 

[Foaming could occur if the antidote atropine was administered immediately after the victim was exposed to sarin; see the article for details.]

#4 & #5: People intoxicated with sarin defecate massively and urinate all over themselves. 

Many of the "victims" shown in these dramatic videos from KS are shown in their underwear, which is, in an of itself, a little odd because when I worked in an ER, one of the first things we did with seriously ill patients of all kinds was to cut all of their clothes off so the clothes didn't get in the way or contaminate anything. But the point I want to make here is that in these terrorists' videos if the victims had soiled themselves, it would be immediately evident. And not just for the ones shown in their underwear. ... And the reason ... is that sarin squeezes the smooth muscles of the intestines and bladder so hard that everything is going to come out. ... the lack of feces and urine staining a person's clothes is one of the most evident clues that the person has not been poisoned by sarin.

[He makes the point that the videos of victims show their underwear to be clean]

#6:  People intoxicated with sarin will vomit up everything they haven't defecated.

From both the physiological and evidentiary points of view, this diagnostic point is much the same as the last one.  Sarin causes the smooth muscle that make up the stomach walls to contract so tightly that the person will vomit profusely and the evidence of such emesis will be readily visible.   .... I have waded through dozens and dozens of these videos purporting to show Assad's sarin attacks on his own people, I have seen hundreds of "victims" in those videos, and in all of that supposed sarin-carnage [including the 2013 Ghouta attack] I have only seen two possible examples of vomiting. 

#7&8:  People intoxicated with sarin will produce a large volume of tears and a large volume of watery saliva.

One of the fetishes of the people making these anti-Assad sarin-porn movies is pin-point pupils, aka "miosis."  ... Sure, sarin causes miosis, but then so do a lot of drugs ...

... sarin acts directly on the tear glands to produce a constant, uncontrollable stream of tears. And yet what the terrorists show us [in videos] when shining flashlights in "victims'" eyes is not just pin-point pupils but also absolutely dry eyes, meaning the person could not have possibly been exposed to sarin.  

And they do this over and over again, proving every time what liars they are.  You can find dozens of these pin-point pupil episodes, and none showing excessive tears, except for kids who are crying.  

And it is much the same with the salivary glands -- sarin directly stimulates them, too. And this would produce a large amount of saliva and copious drooling.  So when the terrorist cameraman zooms in for the iconic shot of some poor distressed child's face close-up, and the child is not drooling like a bull mastiff at dinner time, then we have more proof that sarin was not involved in whatever the child's problem is, and most likely, neither was Assad.

#9: People intoxicated with sarin turn blue. Always. 

[My summary: Sarin creates cyanosis, which is most strikingly evident "in the lips, cheeks, ears, and nose where the blood vessels come close to the surface of the skin." O'Brien makes the point that there is no available photographic record, not anywhere or at any time including the KS incident, of a purported sarin victim showing cyanosis. So to convey exactly what cyanosis looks like, O'Brien publishes a rare photograph of a cyanotic condition although not from sarin. Again, none of the videos and photos produced in relation to the KS incident show purported victims with blue or blue-tinged skin.]

#10.   People intoxicated with sarin never turn pink or red. Never.

From the foregoing description of cyanosis, it should not surprise you to learn that people exposed to sarin -- certainly sarin at high enough concentrations to kill -- do not turn red or pink, which is called being rubicund.  Sarin causes anoxia, which causes the blood to turn bluish, which causes people to turn bluish, but blood that has large amounts of oxygen is bright red, which is why anyone who has been intoxicated with sarin cannot, physiologically speaking, be rubicund. 

And yet look at the victims in those sarin-porn flicks that the terrorists put up on YouTube. Look at their skin color. Over and over and over the skin color is pink to bright red.  Look at the victims shown in the images under points #1, #2, #3, #4 & #5 above. ...

[...]

Denis O'Brien makes several other points in this, his third deconstruction for the public of the sarin poisoning hoax, but the above are the 10 key points about the symptoms of sarin poisoning.

As to those who might worry that by publishing the truth about the symptoms, this will help the terrorists who stage sarin hoaxes and the governments that collude with them -- if they got another chance to fool the public about such a serious matter, then yes, I assume they would be more careful in the future to stage accurate depictions of symptoms. I do not think they are going to get another chance.

Most definitely you would want to read O'Brien's entire exposition, which he simplifies very well for laypersons, and which includes several photographs. You need to understand in detail the extent of the contempt with which governments and news organizations who claim and report on the use of sarin by Syria's government hold the public.  

I refuse to blame this on stupidity, unless I am to accept that the world's wealthiest governments and news organizations were so stupid they never consulted with even one pharmacologist to determine the most telling signs of sarin poisoning. No, they knew; they've known for years. It's just that they also knew the public didn't know the symptoms.  So they proclaimed blatant lies to our faces, then they laughed at us.     

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