A aviation & planes forum. AviationBanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » AviationBanter forum » rec.aviation newsgroups » Naval Aviation
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Soldiers Fear the Needle - The Pentagon still fights for its anthrax vaccine



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old March 24th 05, 12:58 AM
Roman Bystrianyk
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Soldiers Fear the Needle - The Pentagon still fights for its anthrax vaccine

http://www.healthsentinel.com/news.p...st_item&id=700

Kareem Fahim, "Soldiers Fear the Needle - The Pentagon still fights for
its anthrax vaccine", Village Voice, March 22, 2005,
Link:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/ind...fahim&id=62301

Jesse Kearns blames the anthrax vaccines, pumped into his right arm
over 14 months while he served in the navy, for leaving him saddled
with the medical woes of a man three times his age.

Just 25, Kearns has suffered two heart attacks, including one he didn't
notice, and a second that was nearly fatal; a stroke that left him
disabled, with a slight limp; and blood clots, over the past few years,
that have swollen his arms and legs. His regular regimen of medicine,
displayed on a shelf in his mother's Long Island kitchen, includes
shots of a blood thinner called Lovenox, which he injects into his
abdomen four times a day, leaving a painful trail of black and blue
ringing his midriff.

Kearns said he thought nothing of taking the vaccines when doctors
aboard his minesweeper in the Persian Gulf told the crew they were
required. "I was 20 years old-I didn't know anything about it," he
said, and added that refusing the vaccine would have put him at quick
odds with his superiors and earned him nothing but derision from fellow
sailors.

Back in the U.S, concerns over the safety and effectiveness of the
anthrax vaccine, which has been mandatory since March 1998 for service
members, started to slowly churn in the military. Precise numbers
aren't available, but hundreds of soldiers are thought to have left for
fear of side effects from the vaccine. At least a hundred more were
court-martialed for refusing. A lore grew up around the shots, and
critics claimed the anthrax vaccine, manufactured by a Michigan company
called BioPort, might be responsible for ailments ranging from the
still mysterious Gulf War Syndrome to death.

Today, those protests have grown strong enough to halt the DOD program
that administers the anthrax vaccine. In October, a Washington, D.C.,
district court judge, responding to a lawsuit brought by six John Doe
soldiers, issued an injunction against the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization
Program (AVIP), saying the process that allowed the shots to be
licensed in the first place had been flawed.

"Congress has prohibited the administration of investigational drugs to
service members without their consent," wrote Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.
"The men and women of our armed forces deserve the assurance that the
vaccines our government compels them to take into their bodies have
been tested by the greatest scrutiny of all-public scrutiny." The
soldiers' lawyers contended that, among other things, since the Food
and Drug Administration had not allowed a sufficient public comment
period before licensing the vaccine as effective against a certain type
of anthrax exposure-so-called "inhalationanthrax"-the required
shots were unlawful.

In December, the Pentagon struck back and obtained emergency
authorization to resume the program for military personnel on a
voluntary basis. That move has also been controversial, and marks the
first time a provision from the Project BioShield Act, a law passed
three years after the 9-11 attacks intended to help federal agencies
respond to terrorist emergencies, has been invoked.

The FDA has opened a public comment period on the vaccine, which is set
to expire at the end of this month. Pentagon lawyers are then expected
to argue that the injunction against the vaccine should be lifted, and
again make it required of all soldiers.

A Pentagon spokesperson, responding to questions by e-mail, elaborated
the reasons his agency thinks the vaccine should be mandatory. "The
Department of Defense recognizes that military teams depend on each
other to survive on the battlefield. That is why all vaccinations have
traditionally been mandatory. The mutual dependence of each team member
means each needs to be protected against preventable infections."

If the Defense Department prevails in court-and many observers think
this is likely -it could mean a new round of defections, at a time
when the U.S. military finds itself stretched between overseas
engagements and is missing recruitment goals. Young people like Nick
Lilienstern and Skip Muller-sailors who struggled to find honorable
ways out of their service rather than receive the shots-could be the
new victims of a vaccine that nobody seems to know too much about.

Muller and Lilienstern, who met when they served together briefly on a
navy destroyer, found different ways to avoid taking the shots when
they became required. Lilienstern refused outright, and immediately
received a nonjudicial punishment. He was restricted to his ship for 45
days and received half-pay for two months. During that time, he said,
the number of friends he had on his ship began to dwindle. When the
captain threatened him with further sanctions-the same punishment for
each of the six anthrax shots soldiers take in an 18-month series-his
mother contacted their local congressman, and Lilienstern was
discharged from the navy.

Skip Muller's superiors told him that refusing the vaccine would mean a
court-martial, and possibly a dishonorable discharge. So he took some
advice from a sympathetic senior officer and wrote a letter to the
ship's captain explaining that he is gay. Within months, he received an
honorable discharge.

The activists working against the anthrax vaccination program are a
zealous bunch and include doctors, soldiers, lawyers, and former
journalists. Their attack on the vaccine proceeds today more or less on
two fronts. They argue, first, that there is not yet solid proof that
the vaccine works against inhalation anthrax, the aerosol form of the
agent that would likely be used to attack U.S. troops, and second, that
side effects from the vaccine-which might include death-mean the
shots should be voluntary and offered with a brochure that describes
the risks. Or better, given that there has never been an anthrax attack
directed against the U.S. military, that anthrax treatment shift to
post-exposure antibiotics instead.

Mark Zaid, one of the lawyers who brought the latest suit against DOD,
has been fighting the anthrax vaccine program since it was introduced
during the Clinton administration. He said the first service members
who dealt with the vaccine dilemma were sailors, like Lilienstern,
Muller, and Jesse Kearns-people who served on aircraft carriers and
destroyers that were in, or getting ready to sail to, the Persian Gulf.

Zaid said the sailors, thousands of miles from home, were able to
connect with the growing network of activists starting to raise
concerns about the program. "These kids had Internet access. So they'd
e-mail their moms, and their moms would do the research," he said. Many
of these moms found the work of Meryl Nass, a doctor based in Maine who
specializes in anthrax and bio-terrorism.

"Most people don't get sick," Nass told the Voice, "but a significant
minority do." Nass said soldiers started contacting her about the
vaccine in 1998, after many of them found a short article she had
posted to an Internet mailing list. In the article, she noted there was
still no answer to the question of what causes Gulf War Syndrome; and
that the anthrax vaccine had not been subjected to a clinical trial.

The DOD maintains that the vaccine has an "extensive" safety record,
noting that more than 1.3 million people have received the vaccine, and
a million of those people are still on active duty. "The rate of
adverse events is similar to other vaccines," wrote a Pentagon
spokesperson in an e-mail, adding that the AVIP program is currently
"paused." In fact, the program is not paused, legally, but stopped.

"There still exists no reliable clinical data from which to glean the
types of adverse reactions, their rates, or severity," said Nass. While
there have been extensive tests on animals, she noted that no one has
been able to extrapolate that data to humans.

By the time Jesse Kearns's aunt started to suspect the anthrax vaccine
was what had made her nephew sick, and started combing the Web for
information on it, his illness was well advanced. In 2001, his arm
inexplicably ballooned after he lifted a new macerator motor on his
ship. Navy doctors told him he had deep-vein thrombosis, and that it
would "take care of itself," he recalled. He returned to the U.S. on
leave a few months later, and his arm swelled again. Doctors told him
he had antiphospholipid syndrome, an autoimmune disease that causes
blood clots, and prescribed Coumadin, an anticoagulant.

Within eight months, he developed another blood clot in his right leg.
His navy service ended in January 2003, and he started a job in a
building-supply yard. He had trained on fire crews in the navy, but his
condition meant he wouldn't be able to pass a fire department physical
at home in New York. This is what Kearns regrets most about his
illness, apart from the looming threat to his life: A troubled kid
before joining the navy, Kearns had found his confidence working to put
out fires on the ship, as well as a plan for his future.

Kearns and his family are not sure the anthrax vaccine has anything to
do with his ailments; as with many of those who receive the shots and
then come down with unexplained illnesses, the rumors surrounding the
anthrax shots-and the continuing sense of mystery-provides a
possible answer. Dr. Nass said that studies linking vaccinations to
Gulf War Syndrome call the anthrax vaccine a "separate risk factor."

Whatever caused his illness, Kearns's struggle now is with the military
bureaucracy. He has applied for disabled-veteran benefits, and today
only receives $300 a month. He is in the midst of talks with the
Department of Veterans Affairs to get more, so he can move out of his
mother's house and start his life.

"The suffering of this patient and his struggles to gain support for
his medical care highlight how difficult it can be for service members
to navigate the health care and disability systems," wrote Dr. Renata
Engler, director of the Vaccine Healthcare Centers Network at Walter
Reed Medical Center, who did an extensive write-up on the Kearns case.
"The fact that he is administratively struggling for recognition of the
seriousness of his illness and approached [us] because he felt he had
to prove that his illness was service connected saddens this military
physician with almost thirty years service."

 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
American nazi pond scum, version two bushite kills bushite Naval Aviation 0 December 21st 04 11:46 PM
Hey! What fun!! Let's let them kill ourselves!!! [email protected] Naval Aviation 2 December 17th 04 10:45 PM
Baltimore Sun investigation: Abuse goes far beyond the military police GrPrtrd8 Military Aviation 0 May 11th 04 06:05 AM
God Honest Naval Aviation 2 July 24th 03 04:45 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 06:56 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 AviationBanter.
The comments are property of their posters.