Forced Vaccines Haunt Gulf Vets

Wired News ^ | November 7, 2002 | Elliot Borin

[Truth Telling Guy]

It was, the doctor at the Long Beach Veteran's Administration Hospital said, an incidental finding. A little gray smudge on the X-ray, a blob next to the pituitary gland.

Six months later, University of California at Los Angeles surgeons worked six hours to sever a tumor from the brain of a muscular, 25-year-old ex-Special Forces Ranger and Gulf War veteran. The costly surgery was performed at UCLA, the patient said, because VA doctors denied that the "incidental finding" caused his excruciating, unremitting headaches.

[Truth Telling Guy]

Pentagon: No More GI Guinea Pigs

02:00 AM Oct. 29, 2002 PT

Wired News

American soldiers may -- or may not -- soon be marching off to war against Iraq, but if they do they'll be going into battle protected by some of the same controversial drugs administered to soldiers during the Gulf War.

But this time, the Pentagon vows, adherence to proper medical practices will take the place of a haphazardly administered mass-vaccination program in which tens of thousands of shot records disappeared.

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The Pentagon has assured Congress and military personnel that only FDA-approved drugs will be used, FDA dosage and administration requirements will be met and proper records will be kept.

Critics remain unconvinced. They claim Gulf War GIs were dosed with unapproved compounds responsible for chronic and sometimes fatal ailments. And they contend that the Pentagon's standard operating procedures and attitudes regarding drug administration are the antithesis of good medical practice.

"There are required protocols for meeting the standard of proper medical practice, and the Pentagon is not meeting them," said Dr. Garth Nicolson, president of the Institute for Molecular Medicine and an Albert Schweitzer Award-winning biochemist.

According to Nicolson, there are several forms of FDA approval. For example, pyridostigmine bromide, injected into Gulf War soldiers to protect them from the nerve gas sarin, was FDA approved only as an "investigational new drug." It was not certified as safe for general administration as a nerve-gas antidote.

"You must use only FDA-approved vaccines in an FDA-approved manner (of administration) ... standard approval, not approval under an experimental waiver," Nicolson continued. "You must administer the vaccinations under a normal schedule ... not give 20 or 30 vaccines within two or three days."

Nicolson said the Department of Defense method for monitoring potential drug side effects also fails the "proper-practice" test.

"The military uses passive-surveillance monitoring," he said. "In civilian life this works.... If people feel ill they go to a doctor. In the military there's a lot of pressure not to report anything unusual.

"And if you're not hospitalized within 48 hours after inoculation, the DOD assumes that whatever happens to you afterward has nothing to do with the vaccines."

Other critics suggest the Pentagon has lied about toxic substance testing for decades and has no intention of stopping now.

"They used untested and untried drugs in the Gulf War," said American Gulf War Veterans Association spokeswoman Joyce Riley, a registered nurse and former Air Force captain who served in Operation Desert Storm. "Maybe 50 years from now they'll be forced to admit what they did to us."

Riley has a point. Under congressional prodding, the Defense Department in October reversed four decades of denials regarding nerve gas and other toxic material testing in the 1960s. Among its admissions:

* At least 14 open-air tests of the lethal nerve gas VX were performed at Maryland's Edgewood Arsenal.

* Soldiers were exposed to VX to test unproven protective suits.

* Bacillis globigii, a bacteria closely related to anthrax, was sprayed airborne in Alaska and Hawaii.

* Hallucinogenic chemicals were tested on unsuspecting soldiers.

* E. coli was deliberately released during chemical-dispersion testing on Oahu, Hawaii.

* Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense serves as an umbrella term for at least 40 and possibly over 100 open-air tests of biowarfare agents at its now-closed Desert Test Center in Utah.

* Infectious bacteria was released into the air above San Francisco.

* A two-year test was executed in which artillery shells and bombs filled with sarin and VX were exploded near Fort Greeley, Alaska.

* Military barracks in Oahu were sprayed with a biological agent shown to cause infections in individuals with diminished immune-system capacity.

* A benzilic-acid derivative known to cause hallucinations and confusion was sprayed under the jungle canopy near Hilo, Hawaii, in two separate series of tests.

[backhoe]

Locator ^

[donozark]

BZ testing in Hawaii, 60s.

[Truth Telling Guy]

What?

[backhoe]

The carat points up ( back to the top )- "locator" is just a filler, really- it's a "locator BTTT," and it will appear in "replies to you" so I remember to come back to it.

[Michael Barnes]

25-year-old ex-Special Forces Ranger and Gulf War veteran

This doesn't add up. 25? Surely this is a typo. If not, he must have joined the military at 15 in order to make the Gulf War, something I don't see happening.

[pfflier]

25-year-old ex-Special Forces Ranger and Gulf War veteran.

Explain how he got into the Gulf war at about 15 Years old???

[Blue Screen of Death]

I might be confused. Isn't a Ranger one thing and the Special Forces something else. I can see someone who was a Ranger at one time and a Special Forces soldier at another time. Is a Ranger also a Special Forces soldier?

[2banana]

25-year-old ex-Special Forces Ranger

You can't be in a Ranger unit and a Special Forces unit at the same time. He was either in one or the other during the Gulf war. He may have attended both schools and have the tabs. If someone walked up to you and said he was ex-Special Forces Ranger I would ask if he was watching too many movies. Green Berets say they are SF, Rangers say they are Ranger - these two sides of the army really don't like each other and don't want to be confused with the other guy (ie - SF thinks Rangers are Neanderthals and Rangers think SF are blow-dryed pre-madonnas).

Also - 25 years old is awful young to be a qualified Ranger in a Ranger unit AND also have been a qualified green beret in a SF unit. I am not saying it can't be done but it is very rare.

[cavtrooper21]

I imagine that the author was trying to say "Ranger qualified member of Special Forces" but failed. Yes, Rangers and SF are different, however there are a good # of soldiers who wear the Tab and are not in one of the Batts. Ranger school is the "finishing" course for the infantry, and most SF troops that come from the infantry are Ranger qualified. Confused?

[pfflier]

Tou are right. In the pecking order of special operations you have, at the lowest level the common grunt. The next level up is usually Airborne training. At the third tier is Ranger training then at the top is the special forces (Green Berets) who have gone through all of the previous steps.

[joesnuffy]

Except after a prolonged period of actual war...when the wheat is separted from the chaff in all branches and units....the cream rises to the top ...regardless of what kind of hat you wear...
or school you went to...
It just takes the fire of war to reveal the gold from the dross...
enough metaphors? :)

[joesnuffy]

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation."
-George Washington

[Poohbah]

25-year-old ex-Special Forces Ranger

Who is a Gulf War veteran. I didn't know they accepted 15-year-olds into Ranger and Special Forces training.

Can we all say "Stolen Valor?"

[sport]

BTTT

[pfflier]

You are so right. Look at Audie Murphy.

[Centurion2000]

Hmm ... why is it that I got that same innoculations and funny white little pills for nerve gas and nothing fried me ?

[Michael Barnes]

I remember those pills....The only effects I ever got off of them were nasty headaches.What was their acronym? NAPS wasn't it? I actually had some of them as of about 3.5 years ago (That I kept from the gulf). Got rid of them when I had kids..