Posted on 05/26/2004 7:16:44 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows
WASHINGTON, May 26 (UPI) -- Six U.S. soldiers have been diagnosed by the military with permanent brain damage from an anti-malaria drug used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health officials must reassess its safety, a U.S. senator said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, said the drug, called mefloquine, has "serious risks" that have not been adequately tracked by the Pentagon, the Peace Corps and other government agencies that distribute it.
"I ask that you work with the Food and Drug Administration to reassess the safety of mefloquine," Feinstein wrote Thompson in a letter dated May 24.
Feinstein told Thompson she is concerned that "six service members have been diagnosed with permanent brainstem and vestibular damage from being given this drug despite the fact that alternative drugs might have been chosen to prevent infection."
The FDA last year warned that the drug, also called Lariam, is linked to reports of suicide, though a connection has not been established. It also said some psychiatric and neurological side effects have been reported to last long after taking it. The Pentagon this year announced a new safety study of the drug, which has been used by some 20 million people worldwide, and the Department of Veterans Affairs said it will look at possible long-term effects on veterans.
According to people familiar with the situation, the six service members were diagnosed in recent weeks by doctors at Naval Medical Center San Diego. Its Spatial Orientation Lab, a Department of Defense facility, specializes in balance disorders.
One service member who received a diagnosis is former Navy Reserve Cmdr. William Manofsky, who became severely ill after taking mefloquine in Iraq and Kuwait while deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Another soldier with a mefloquine diagnosis is a Green Beret who served in Afghanistan.
UPI reviewed a copy of Manofsky's medical report from the San Diego lab, which includes the notation, "Lariam induced," with the word Lariam underlined.
Earlier this month, Manofsky filed suit against Lariam's manufacturer, Swiss drug giant Hoffmann-La Roche, for alleged failure to warn of the drug's risks and marketing a product it knows is unsafe.
Asked for comment about the suit, Roche spokesman Terence Hurley told UPI: "We don't comment on pending litigation. Roche believes that the labeling that accompanies Lariam, and which has been approved by the FDA, is adequate. Information about the use of Lariam and neuropsychiatric events has appeared in the product's label since it was approved by the FDA in 1989.
"Roche takes issues of safety very seriously and works with regulatory authorities on an ongoing basis to ensure recommendations on product use take into account current scientific and medical evidence."
Manofsky said he became mentally and physically ill after taking the drug, at one point taking his gun apart because he was afraid he was going to kill himself. A year after he stopped taking the drug, he still suffers from severe balance problems, trembling and memory loss.
The diagnoses appear to put the Pentagon, and particularly the Army, in an unusual position: Military health officials continue to insist the drug is safe and to prescribe it widely. Army Surgeon General James Peake told a House subcommittee in February that "we don't think it is as big a problem as has been made out."
Peake also dismissed any association between the drug and a string of murder-suicides at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the summer of 2002 by U.S. soldiers who took Lariam while assigned to units in Afghanistan.
"There was absolutely no statistical correlation between Lariam use and those suicides," Peake said.
But the Army announced it will study possible Lariam side effects, including suicide, as a result of the controversy. The study could take up to two years, according to William Winkerwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.
In March another Special Forces soldier committed suicide after taking Lariam in Iraq and returning home to Monument, Colo. William Howell's wife believes Lariam triggered his bizarre behavior, in which he stuck a gun in her face and threatened to kill her before shooting himself. She accused the Army of not looking into whether the drug had played a role -- the same charge made by friends of the soldiers involved in the Fort Bragg incidents.
Howell's death in Colorado brought the number of suicides among Special Forces soldiers during the war on terrorism to five. At least four of the five took Lariam on deployments just prior to committing suicide, according to the Army.
Gosh, I hope Rice, Rumsfeld and Tenet resign because of this. When did Bush know???
If this report is accurate, and it comes out as true, then Feinstein will have actually supported the soldiers in deed, not just word.
Go Figure.
Who needs terrorists. The military establishment has always put pharmeceutical company profits ahead of our soldiers.
Most news outlets over here are a cause of permanent brain damage.
Many of the antimalarials are pretty potent. I've taken mefloquine/Lariam without any problems but it was for a few weeks only. Problem is that the mosquitos develop immunities so the drugs needed for prevention get stronger too. Bring back DDT and zap those mozzies !
Why would you infer that? Six out of 150-200,000 may be much better than the sequelae of malaria if all these people are untreated. My Multum Clinical Database does say, however, that chloroquine is the CDC drug of choice.
Slings, yes, you can take it with a grain of salt, but transient nervous system side effects are relatively common and psychiatric side effects are also relatively common, perhaps as part of acute brain syndrome. So, it's not so far-fetched.
I somehow managed to get out of taking these drugs when I was in the service. The drug for anthrax (and others)can screw with ones genetic code. Dumb children and all...according to toxicologists I dated.</p>
Now to honor her valiant effort, please look the other way as she votes to slash military pay in half.
true true
These drugs are popularly used in the jungle, for knocking out parasites that are usually found in the water.
The determining factor seems to be the kind of liver that you have, and how it metabolizes, given what you have ingested.
Generally, if I recall this correctly, these drugs break down to a point where in some people, the breakdown continues, but in other people, the breakdown of the drug hangs up and a larger than "what is good for you" level accumulates, attacking your nerves.
Basically, its a form of alcohol at that stage, acting as a a corrosive that eats away at the protection of your nerves' covering(s).
Something like that.
Happened to me, and it was rough going. Can take a few years for the nerves to heal up, but they can with rest and generally taking good care of yourself.
One of the more frightening "side effects," was when, after taking the drug for about 40 hours, I simply stepped off a curb and was "blindsided" by a shower of stars.
I knew, because I'd heard of something like this before, that the drug was attacking my retinae.
So I stopped taking that darned drug, Quinacrine.
Later, I barely made it through a course of Flagyl.
This is just a guess, but based upon what I had to read up on long ago, the gist of it is, that if you have a high tolerance for drinking alcohol, you probably will not have much trouble with such drugs.
If you have a low tolerance for drinking alcohol, stay close to the doc who issued the drug, with which you are trying to knock out that jungle bug.
Stay away from the jungle and even the desert, where the parasites roam.
Final note: If you have had your gall bladder removed, the problems above are several times worse. That is because bile fluid travels further into your small bowel in larger concentrations, and so along with it, go the parasites.
Don't let the bed bugs bite!
Bump.
There haven't been any reports that Ciprofloxin (drug of choice for anthrax) has been specifically tied to genetic abnormalities. Cipro is used all the time for many different reasons.
But I think the key word here is "dated", not "date" ;->
In addition to the things mentioned above, I wonder what other drugs or intake these people have had. The 'quines and many other drugs can have cross-reactions or problems when taken together.
Of course what the purpose of "outrage" is to try and find yet another way to attack Bush and Rumsfeld.
My outrage has nothing to do with Bush or Rumsfeld. The military establishment has used soldiers as medical guini pigs for decades, and then refuses to recognise the problems afterwords.
IN the fifties, they put soldiers in a ditch near an A bomb, then marched them to ground zero after the blast. Of course, they denied the resulting cancer claims. Agent orange health problems - ignored and denied. Anthrax vaccines crippled soldiers - ingored and denied.
It looks as if the diagnosis is correct, or at least likely:
http://www.pharmacology2000.com/Antiparasitic/antipro2.htm
As it happens, one part of the army even knows (part of) how these side effects happen:
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA.
CONCLUSIONS:
Mefloquine was found to disrupt neuronal calcium homeostasis and
induce an ER stress response at physiologically relevant
concentrations, effects that may contribute, at least in part, to the
neurotoxicity of the drug in vitro.
The first horrible thing about this case (and certain other infamous cases) is that some person, or committee, when confronted with evidence that the army has made a medical miscalculation, decides to "pretend it away," instead of taking responsibility. This foolishness has caused untold damage to various groups of sick veterans.
The other horrible thing in these cases is the fact that certain people who "despise the military" use these cases, and the suffering of the vets, as a stepping stone in their movement toward their hateful agenda. Of course, PART of the reason the foolish people in the military make these foolish decisions, is precisely because of this agenda driven antagonism of the military. Feinstein, and a lot of "antiwar" radicals (some of whom reside here, on FR) are not interested in helping sick soldiers, instead, they are helping to keep them sick. And, REVELING in it.
DG
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