Soldiers blame ills on drug

Fort Carson - Spec. Heather Stanbro finds herself standing in rooms with no idea how she got there. She shakes uncontrollably and has trouble walking without staggering. She recently bit and punched her husband in what she calls a psychotic episode.

The 25-year-old soldier blames her medical problems on the anti-malaria drug Lariam that she was forced to take weekly last year while serving as a medic in Iraq.

Stanbro said a military medical specialist recently told her that she is suffering from brain-stem damage, with Lariam being the probable cause for at least her balance problems.

The medical expert, Dr. Michael Hoffer, on Thursday confirmed the conversation and added that he suspects Lariam is also to blame for the physical problems Fort Carson soldier Georg Pogany suffers. Pogany became the first soldier since the Vietnam War to be charged with cowardice after his panicked reaction to seeing a dead Iraqi in a body bag. His career is in limbo, and, like Stanbro, he has balance problems and other troubles.

"I've had the ringing in my ears pretty much since I have been back," Pogany said. "I hear sounds when there is none. It can drive you crazy."

The two Fort Carson soldiers will be part of a new U.S. Navy study into the drugs and chemical exposures of several hundred servicemen and women who have complained of balance and vision problems, another Navy doctor told The Denver Post on Thursday.

Both soldiers were treated and evaluated by Hoffer, the director of the Department of Defense Spatial Orientation Center at Naval Medical Center, San Diego. The two Fort Carson soldiers are among 11 service members he has seen for balance problems in the past eight weeks.

Hoffer has treated hundreds of service members for balance problems, but something stands out in 10 of the 11 recent cases, he said Thursday.

The new Navy study, prompted by the 11 recent Iraq and Afghanistan returnees with balance problems, will take another look at several hundred service members earlier seen for similar problems.

An epidemiologist and captain for the Navy, Dr. Dean Bailey will be leading the new investigation to see if Lariam has caused the problems.

"There are quite a few things which can do this and, be honest, we are looking at all of them," Bailey said. "... There are several hundred patients, and we are trying to find out what the common factors and exposures are."

Another study was announced in March by the Department of Defense to investigate the effects of Lariam and other anti-malaria drugs.

The drug mefloquine was created by the military and is now manufactured under the brand name Lariam by Roche Pharmaceuticals. According to its warning label, Lariam can cause psychiatric symptoms ranging from anxiety, paranoia and depression to hallucinations and psychotic behavior.

"On occasions, these symptoms have been reported to continue long after mefloquine has been stopped," the warning on Roche's website says.

Department of Defense records indicate that between Oct. 1, 2002, and Sept. 30, 2003, the department bought 4,153,000 doses of mefloquine and issued 49,206 mefloquine prescriptions to 44,634 individuals.

But the department has decided that Iraq's mosquito problem is not so severe that the widespread distribution of the drug is needed.

"Based on the revised risk assessment, anti-malarial medications are not expected to be required next mosquito seasons in most parts of Iraq," the department said Thursday in a written answer to a question from The Post.

The two Fort Carson soldiers are angry that they took a drug they apparently did not need and now are suffering.

Stanbro said she probably took 32 pills before she was medically evacuated from Iraq after being injured in a mortar attack July 3.

Her condition at home continued to worsen. A March incident was the clearest sign that something was wrong.

"I had a psychotic episode; I cannot think of another way to word it nicely," she said.

After having two or three glasses of wine at a friend's house, she vaguely recalls lashing out at her husband, Jason, believing that he was trying to kill her and that someone's combat boot was crushing her throat.

"I was talking gibberish and started crying and screaming bloody murder at the top of my lungs, and he went to hug me and I beat him away," she said. "He grabbed my wrist to calm me down, and I bit his hand. I guess I felt like I had to escape."

The next morning, after a night in the emergency room, she was covered in bruises along her right side.

Pogany, the 33-year-old interrogator with the 10th Special Force Group at Fort Carson, has been battling the Army since his panic attack in late September. Pogany made national headlines when he was charged with cowardice - a crime potentially punishable by death.

ABOUT THE DRUG Lariam, the brand name for mefloquine hydrochloride, is a widely used malaria preventive. Developed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and licensed to Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche, the drug received FDA approval May 2, 1989. The Centers for Disease Control declared the medication its "drug of choice" for the Peace Corps, the State Department and the U.S. Army in March 1990, and by fall of that year it recommended the individual dose be doubled from once every two weeks to once a week. Nearly 400,000 Americans who travel abroad are prescribed Lariam each year.

Soldiers serving in Somalia in the early 1990s reported problems to an outside advocacy group: outbursts of rage, anxiety, paranoia, depression and suicidal urges. The military medical officers in charge of giving Lariam to more than 20,000 U.S. troops there in 1992 and 1993 said they saw no evidence of a problem.

A 1994 internal Hoffman-La Roche safety report says Lariam can cause depression, which can lead to suicide, and that "therefore a causal link to Lariam can in theory not be ruled out." It also says that reports of suicide attempts linked to Lariam are rare and fall within the incidence of suicides among the general population. In 2002, after several murder-suicides among Fort Bragg soldiers and their families, the Army concluded that Lariam toxicity was an "unlikely" explanation for such a cluster of domestic-violence incidents.

Sources: Salon.com, June 9, 2004; United Press International, Sept. 8, 2003; United Press International, May 21, 2002; PR Newswire, May 5, 1989; Consumer Reports, March 2002; United Press International, April 12, 2004

Pogany and his attorney have maintained that he had a normal combat stress reaction that was exacerbated by the use of Lariam. On that September day, he was given the third of what would be four doses of the anti-malaria drug.

Charges against Pogany were dropped, but he remains in a legal limbo. He is still without his security clearance and without written word from commanders that charges have been dropped.

When asked if he felt vindicated after learning of the brain-stem damage believed to be caused by the Lariam, Pogany responded: "Redeem myself from what? Redeem myself from having an adverse reaction to a medication they gave me?"

Last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., released letters to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi urging the Pentagon to come up with a plan that would allow service members to report side effects of the drug without retribution.

"I had to beg them for a post-deployment health assessment because when I asked them for one I was told that I was not entitled to one," Pogany said.

"They ignored the facts or failed to research the side affects of Lariam," said Pogany's lawyer, Richard Travis. "Georg is the poster child for the effects."

Doctors in California say they are concerned about the well-being of Pogany, Stanbro and the other service members. They say they intend to help them to overcome their physical problems.

"We think, based on our extensive experience, that we can get these folks better," Hoffer said.

Pogany's career with the Army Special Forces is effectively over. Stanbro, too, appears to be on her way out of the service.

"The Army finds me unfit for duty with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), so how many jobs are going to (find) me fit, especially with the Lariam damage?" Stanbro said this week.

She says the Army has offered her a discharge and $20,000 severance for her injuries, but no monthly disability pay.

"I got screwed. ... Everything is all jumbled up. There are so many things that have happened in not even a year," she said. "It's frustrating. I am 25 years old and I'm happily married, and then I go off to war to fight for the freedom of another nation, and this is the thanks I get."

did you hear about the case last year in which a woman in the military refused to get a certain vaccine because these vaccines are made with aborted fetuses... she was a Catholic woman and was court martialed for adhering to her religion. she refused to get cells grown with the help of aborted fetuses injected into her arm. Good thing we have a "conservative Christian" administration who went along with the prosecution of this woman, eh?

luckily she didnt get any jail time, which she could have. they probably didnt want a public relations nitemare.. so went easy on her.

the irony is that many people have no clue that aborted fetuses are used in the production of many of these vaccines, they hear that and claim that it's "all made up" or "make believe". when in reality it is known fact and the Catholic church even gave official statements opposing it. I would never accept such a vaccine, either. there is a lot of good info at www.thinktwice.com

many people also falsely believe that their kids must get all these vaccines to attend school. Again, another lie by the establishment.

The drug mefloquine was created by the military and is now manufactured under the brand name Lariam

I started taking mefloquine before going on a trip to Cambodia a number of years ago. My body did not like it at all. I stopped a few days later. I figured I would take my chances.

I took a trip to Cambodia last year and my doctor recommended Lariam. I told him I'd rather have malaria.

I don't see why anyone takes Lariam when many places in the world have become Lariam resistant, and doxycycline is much cheaper and works just as well. That's what I opted for instead.

The Chloroquine/Primaquine tablets, issued to troops in Vietnam, on a weekly basis, as well as Dapsone, issued on a daily basis (for troops "outside the wire") have been shown to have many ill-effects. Associated with certain types of cancers. Also, many medical professionals believe an interaction between C/P and Dapsone and herbicides caused many of the illnesses VN veterans presented with in the post-war years.

Will we ever know? Doubtful...

A substantial number of medical researchers feel that PTSD may have malarial exposure as it's etiology

Not to disagree with said unnamed medical researchers, but I think it has more to do with bombs and mortars going off all around you and watching your friends get dismembered and killed.

One would think that, yes.

Make a list of all the symptoms of PTSD. Then a list of symptoms of Falciparum Malaria. Note a similarity?

U.of Iowa did a study a couple years ago that showed vets that had actual injuries from combat actually had a lower level of PTSD in their ranks than did a cohort of their peer group that had no combat injuries but had been diagnosed with Malaria.

For a better explanation than what I can offer? Just enter 'malaria and PTSD' in GOOGLE search function. Many articles.

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