for there to be specific antibodies to the cause i cant see how that would happen without some foreing element having been in the bloodstream. or be the result of close proximity to radioactive materials.

It might be that they don't really have an blood test for specific traces but have an correlation between the presence of stress hormones and people suffering the symptoms which only really proves that the involved people are not lying about feeling sick, it don't really answer the "illness ray" vs "post traumatic stress" question.

This is wrong. There's actually biomarkers for PTSD that are detectable from a blood test. [1]

Stresses can do all sorts of things, change gene expression, trigger proteins or breakdown products, etc, etc. All of those things can produce measurable changes.

[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21392516/

yep thats kind of my point, PSTD is a real enough thing that it can legitimately cause symptoms and leave traces in the blood.

The problem is that those are almost exactly the same kind of processes that theoretically could result in an "illness ray" leaving traces in the bloodstream.

A big problem here is probably that the US government haven't yet fully internalized how real PSTD and other stress related symptoms are, and is still treating it as if kind of "fake" especially when it comes to paying for treatments. so the people campaigning for getting the victims help is forced to push some sci-fy inspired illness ray theory.

That's neat, but the gap between going to a GP and getting that test administered in the US seems difficult to bridge.

You'd need a test for "cooked flesh".

You can absolutely see results from cooked flesh on a blood test. The problem is that there are other possible causes for the results than cooked flesh