The Veteran Biological Cascade: A Five-Tier Framework Linking Military Exposures to Organ-System Coupling and Suicide/Substance-Use Endpoints

This registration timestamps a theoretical framework and, critically, the specific results that would disprove it. It is filed before any test has been performed and before the author holds any data required to test it. What would refute this framework: The core claim: Tier 3: mechanistic coupling—proposes that documented military exposures (Tier 1: toxicants, blast, sleep restriction, operational stress) perturb multiple organ systems (Tier 2) in ways that become coupled—meaning dysfunction in one system predicts dysfunction in others more strongly in exposed than unexposed veterans, and this coupling is not fully explained by parallel exposure to each system independently. This framework is refuted if: The residual correlation between organ systems in exposed veterans does not exceed that in matched unexposed veterans, or The excess correlation appears only in one service era (Gulf War Illness phenomenon) rather than across Vietnam, Gulf, and post-9/11 cohorts, or Coupling is fully explained by dose rather than representing mechanistic interdependence. What is not novel: Allostatic load, Operator Syndrome, Gulf War Illness, and military exposome literature all establish related phenomena. This framework's single original contribution is Tier 3—the testable coupling prediction tied to documented exposure. Data scope: All predictions are testable only on federal records and specimens (VA/DoD health records, exposure registries, Department of Defense Serum Repository, mortality surveillance). The author currently holds none of these datasets. Analysis commitments: No test will run before its operationalized analysis plan is registered publicly, specifying primary outcomes, index-system definitions, adjustment sets, smallest effect sizes of interest, power calculations, and corrections for multiple comparisons across seven predictions and five service eras.