- On November 26, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) introduced
a Sense of the Senate resolution, asking the Pentagon to reconsider its
mandatory anthrax vaccine. This welcome move is long overdue.
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- Senate Resolution 278 restates some acknowledged problems:
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- A startling 84 percent of personnel who had anthrax vaccine
shots from 1998 to 2000 had side effects or reactions, of which 24 percent
were "systemic;"
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- The General Accounting Office found that "69 percent
of experienced pilots and aircrew members in the National Guard and the
Reserve reported that the anthrax shot was the major influence in their
decision to change their military status in 2000, including leaving the
military entirely;"
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- In the Iraq war, none of our allies used mandatory anthrax
vaccine. The British and Australian militaries have voluntary vaccine programs,
but other allies declined even those. Health and morale problems have been
compounded by conflict-of-interest concerns regarding the vaccine manufacturer.
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- The military has also adopted a problematic smallpox
vaccine. But as the Bingaman resolution states, the CDP withdrew support
for a smallpox vaccination program for first-responders, "after finding
that 1 in 500 civilians vaccinated for smallpox had a serious vaccine event."
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- Those of us not a captive audience from being in the
military or having a close relative in the military have tended to miss
part of this debate. But the problem in a nutshell with the anthrax vaccine,
according to former FDA official and retired US Army Colonel Sam R. Young,
is that it does not actually vaccinate against anthrax. Colonel Young,
who was a director of compliance in the drug regulatory process at the
FDA, has volunteered tirelessly in retirement to publish the fact that
the FDA never approved the so-called "vaccine." This remarkable
item, little reported by corporate media that receive contractors' advertising,
is now public record:
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- "In March 2000, the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Disease reported in the `Jordan Report 20th Anniversary:
Accelerated Development of Vaccines 2000' that no data existed to support
the effectiveness of the anthrax vaccine against pulmonary (inhalation)
anthrax in humans." The vaccine is thus illegal.
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- Bingaman's resolution asks Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
to reconsider the "mandatory nature" of the vaccine programs,
to reconsider punishments administered against personnel who refused the
vaccine, to reevaluate the anthrax threat in Iraq, and to assess current
reports of effects of the vaccines with a view to funding medical treatment
for them. These seem like modest requests. More crisply, one organization
of Gulf War vets has asked Rumsfeld to resign.
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- With Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Bingaman also wrote a
letter to the White House on July 11, 2003, requesting that the vaccine
policy be reconsidered. To date, no action has been taken.
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- The Bingaman resolution comes one week after the military
admitted the death of 22-year-old Army nurse Rachael Lacy from vaccines;
there is little wiggle room at this stage to successfully downplay the
vaccine problems. The pattern continues: looking ahead, even the harms
of the vaccine program will be exceeded by those of the Pentagon's use
of depleted uranium (DU) around troops and civilians.
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- For all the attention paid them by the administration,
however, those vets and service personnel with medical problems might as
well be 9-11 relatives and survivors. Indeed, stonewalling about the vaccine
program seems rather to have been a playbook for 9-11 stonewalling. Taking
advantage of the natural detachment of time to wear away the effects of
fall 2001, the administration is cynically running out the clock. They're
trying to consign those who want to know how 9-11 happened to dwindling
ranks, like MIA/POW families or those who were affected by the vaccine
program.
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- Making this policy explicit, on September 14 of this
year Vice President Cheney said on Meet the Press, matter-of-factly, "It's
time to put September 11 behind us." This offhandedness from Cheney,
who also suggested a link between Iraq and the 9-11 attacks, and whose
former company, Halliburton, has gotten huge Iraq contracts, is pretty
breathtaking. He's probably wise to restrict his public appearances mainly
to fundraisers. But presumably he signaled to interested parties abroad
that they need not anticipate a vigorous investigation.
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- They're not governing. They're taking advantage.
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- Margie Burns is a freelance writer in the Washington,
DC-area and can be reached at margie.burns@verizon.net. Her column appears
in the Prince George's and Montgomery Journals each Monday.
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