or Meryl Nass, MD, IMMEDIATELY, at
mnass@netquarters.netAnthrax Vaccine Production Continues Michigan Biologics Remains Open
GERM WARFARE AGAINST AMERICA: PART IIc - FORCED INOCULATIONS OF U.S. TROOPS
LANSING, Mich., Feb. 16 (UPI) -- A plea from the Pentagon helped convince Michigan officials to delay Wednesday's scheduled shutdown of a state-owned lab that produces all the nation's anthrax vaccine.
State Health Director James Haveman (HA'-veh-man) says the state- owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute will continue making the vaccine being given to U.S. active and reserve military personnel under a recent Pentagon directive.
Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered the vaccination campaign last year as part of a massive effort to protect soldiers from Iraq's biological weapons, including the deadly anthrax virus.
Cohen's order came as Michigan officials prepared to close the institute, triggering a lobbying campaign by Army generals to keep the doors open.
The Lansing-based lab is the only government-run vaccine manufacturer of its kind. Efforts to sell the lab to a pharmaceutical company for $10 million failed last fall.
Haveman tells United Press International, "We had to keep this open because of the product. We're glad to be supportive."
An emergency bill to maintain the lab through September was passed by the Legislature last week and signed over the weekend by Gov. John Engler.
Haveman says the state is still "aggressively" seeking bidders while production of anthrax and other medical products continues without interruption.
Copyright 1998 by United Press International.
http://www.american-photo.com/paparazzi/diana/DianaWEBwords/DOCS/part-2c.html
Virtually all of the U.S. and allied troops were forced (on threat of court martial, or Article 15, if they refused) to take a series of experimental vaccines and pills which had NOT been approved by the FDA and which made many of our troops instantly and violently ill.
A staff report issued in December '94 by the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs said that troops were ordered to discuss their vaccinations with no one, not even with medical professionals needing this information to treat adverse reactions from the vaccine.
[ED. NOTE: Why the secrecy? What was being hidden?]
The report said that of responding veterans who had taken the anthrax vaccine, 85% were told they could not refuse it, and 43% experienced immediate side effects.
Of all responding personnel who had taken the anti-botulism medicine, 88% were told not to turn it down and 35% suffered side effects. None of the women given botulism toxoid were told of pregnancy risks. In one of the report's summations, it said, "Anthrax vaccine should continue to be considered as a potential cause for undiagnosed illness." The report added, "The botulism vaccine's safety remains unknown."
The only country (of 28 participants in the Desert Storm War) which refused to let their troops take the experimental vaccines and pills was France. When their troops were subjected to the Scud missile attacks, some did come down with GWI, but were immediately treated with doxycycline, and quickly recovered. 1. OUR GUINEA PIGS IN THE GULF
The 1/8/91 issue of the New York Times which carried an article entitled, "Our Guinea Pigs in the Gulf" wrote: The Defense Dept. on obtaining permission to give experimental drugs to American troops in the Persian Gulf, is about to violate the Nuremberg Codes, one of the primary moral documents to emerge from World War II.
At its request, the Pentagon has been given a special Food and Drug Administration waiver it sought to require the troops to take experimental drugs and vaccines during combat, or if there is a 'threat of combat.' Since Nuremberg no government has officially attempted to justify research on competent adults without their informed consent - - that is, not until our government said exceptions would be permitted so that specific unapproved drugs and vaccines could be administered to the troops without their consent. The Pentagon's rationale for radically altering the standard procedure in military life was that it was 'not feasible' to get informed consent from combat troops.
The code was enunciated by a U.S. tribunal that sat in judgment on Nazi doctors who conducted brutal nontherapeutic experimentation on concentration camp prisoners. Promulgated under the Army's authority, and intended to be universal, the code was based on 'moral, ethical and legal constructs.' Its first principle holds that no experimentation can be done on humans without their competent, voluntary, informed consent.
Since World War II, informed consent has almost universally been recognized as a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for ethical research, both therapeutic and nontherapeutic, on competent adults.
Military personnel, unlike civilians, have no constitutional right to refuse standard medical 'treatment' that could return them to active duty. But no rule has ever permitted military superiors to allow their troops to be guinea pigs for what amounts to medical experimentation or research without informed consent.
Under the new regulation, whatever experimental drug or vaccine military commanders and the FDA think is in the soldiers' best interest becomes obligatory 'treatment.'
The 2/1/91 issue of the San Gabriel Valley Times carried an Associated Press article entitled, "Troops May be Forced to Take Test Drugs" which said: The military may require troops serving in the Persian Gulf to take unapproved drugs to protect against biological and germ warfare. U.S. District Judge Stanley S. Harris dismissed a lawsuit that contended that the troops should be warned about the risk of side effects, allowed to refuse treatment, and required to give their consent beforehand. The action by the Defense Dept., allowed by the Food and Drug Administration, to give unapproved drugs to troops in the Gulf involved strategic military decisions', not research on involuntary human subjects, the judge ruled.
The 12/22/90 San Francisco Chronicle wrote in an article entitled, "Medication Rules Altered for Gulf Troops": The Food and Drug Administration altered a long-standing regulatory policy yesterday, making it possible for U.S. forces serving in the Persian Gulf to be given experimental drugs without their consent. The policy gives the FDA authority to permit administration of 'investigational drugs and biologies' without obtaining the 'informed consent' if the commissioner of food and drugs deems that such consent 'is not feasible' in battlefield conditions.
The federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires that people who are to receive investigational drugs be informed of the substances' experimental nature and risk, and give their consent to the treatment.
[ED. NOTE: This action by the FDA and Pentagon was illegal - - which undoubtedly will be noted in some future veterans' class action lawsuit against these two agencies. It is ironic that the FDA police, dressed in black ninja suits and armed with fully automatic weapons, are running all over the U.S. raiding health food stores and alternate health clinics, seizing so-called "dangerous" health supplements and vitamins, and then completely ignored their real job to investigate and approve or disapprove experimental drugs which were then administered to much of our active duty military forces].
In a 5/19/92 Washington Post article entitled, "Is it Ethical To Use Unapproved Drugs on Soldiers Without Informed Consent?" Sidney M. Wolfe, Director of the Public Citizen Health Research Group, wrote: The Pentagon's request for a waiver to test experimental drugs without informed consent departed radically from U.S. military policy of recent decades.
The military needed the waiver because it was asking both the FDA and the Dept. of Defense to violate their rules. There were good reasons for the rules, including the CIA's use of unknowing subjects to test LSD. When a person joins the Army, he or she gives up certain rights. But the right to be a human being is not one of them. It is simply unethical to test experimental drugs on people without their informed consent.
As a physician, I am appalled at the policy, and I cannot think of any of my colleagues, including those I know in the military, who do not feel this policy is immoral and unethical. That policy reduces human beings to guinea pigs. That was Nazi Germany's policy. It has no place in our country.
[ED. NOTE: Secret medical experimentation on troops and civilians by the U.S. government is not new. The CIA experimented on unknowing civilians with LSD some years back. The U.S. military intentionally exposed thousands of unknowing U.S. troops to nuclear radiation in the 1950s - - many of whom later died of various cancers. See Section III - B below for more details on U.S. government medical experiments on U.S. troops and civilians]. 2. WHAT DRUGS WERE EXPERIMENTED WITH ON OUR TROOPS?
With the exception of a few, no one who received them knows and the Pentagon and FDA refuse to tell! Numerous vaccine shots and pills were forcibly administered to all troops in the Gulf War theater of operations and to many (like Joyce Riley) who never went to Saudi Arabia. Refusal to take them meant court martial. Many of the same vaccines and pills are presently being forcibly administered to U.S. troops in, or going to, Bosnia.
As Joyce Riley has testified: They were given medications - - they didn't know what they were. You were not allowed to know what you got. I know. I got shots; before we were supposed to ship out. I had shots, and they wouldn't even tell us what we got. And we had to get eight or nine at a time. Everybody was incredibly sick afterwards. There was the pill pyridostigmine bromide that was supposed to combat germ warfare, and people became violently ill from that. We don't know what immunizations we got. We don't know what pills the troops took. We don't know what we were subjected to. A few which we do know about include:
a) Nerve agent pre-treatment sets (NAPS) tablets -- designed to protect troops against the effects of chemical attack. NAPS's primary ingredient is pyridostigmine bromide (PB). Suspicion of NAPS is heightened by the fact that French Gulf veterans, who did not receive this treatment, have NOT reported any unexplained illnesses. In addition, there are no reports of birth defects among children born to French veterans after the Gulf War.
Research done by the Sunday Times of London reveals that NAPS contains PB, a drug used in the treatment of a serious degenerative nerve disease called myosthenia gravis. An overdose causes a state of profound weakness, muscle cramps, diarrhea, sweating and hyperventilation -- the very symptoms many veterans complained of during and after the war. Many of the 400,000 plus troops who were forced to take the PB pills suffered from vomiting, speech disorders, and short-term memory loss.
As the New York Times wrote 5/7/94 in an article entitled, "Experimental Drugs Linked to Ills of Gulf War Veterans": Neil R. Tetalaff, a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, testified at the Senate hearing that he became ill shortly after taking his first dose of pyridostigmine on an airplane en route to the Persian Gulf. He became violently ill within days, but doctors could find nothing wrong and he has never recovered, he said. Since taking pyridostigmine while deployed for Desert Shield, I have been suffering moderate, severe and intolerable pain, fatigue easily and lately have developed one heck of a palsy, Mr. Tetzlaff said. I've lost my ability to speak because I cannot recall words, have extreme problems with my short-term memory. The last three and half years have been extremely difficult.
Tezlaff told the Senate Committee that he hears from numerous other soldiers who had suffered similar drug reactions. He said they were treated badly by the VA when they sought help for their ailments because they were unable to prove that the medications were responsible.
In the November '96 Life special report, "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm", a section of the article posed the question, "Did Pyridostigmine Bromide Hurt Rather Than Help?.
The answer: Whether or not it proves to have caused birth defects, the way pyridostigmine bromide was used in the Gulf was highly questionable. For one thing, its effectiveness against the nerve gas Soman may have been undermined by bad planning. U.S. troops (and those of several allied countries) took PB as a pretreatment for exposure to Soman.
But by itself, PB does nothing -- it only helps the antidote to Soman work better once exposure has occurred. Atropine is one of the two chemicals used in the antidote, but the dose of atropine contained in U. S. personnel antidote kits was inadequate, according to a December 1994 report by the Senate Committee on Veterans' affairs.
Worse, says the report, experiments show that PB makes animals more vulnerable to some nerve agents such as Sarin (the gas used in this year's Tokyo subway attack). As it happened, Sarin was one of the gases detected by chemical monitors during Desert Storm. The Pentagon says these detections were unreliable, but if there were even minute traces of Sarin on the battlefield, PB may have exacerbated its effects.
The Life article continued: Animal experiments with PB may provide some protection from the nerve gas Soman. The U.S. military therefore gave the
drug to most Americans in the Gulf. The Defense Dept. may have taken a big chance with PB. In earlier, small scale safety trials, Air Force pilots had reported serious side effects, including impaired breathing, vision, stamina, and short-term memory. (Many soldiers would experience such symptoms during the Gulf War). Even more alarming, PB was know to worsen the effects of some nerve gases.
The Life article also pointed out that the toxicity of PB is multiplied when used in conjunction with the insect repellent DEET. Experiments with rats and chickens have found extreme neural damage when PB and DEET are both used -- a sort of "cocktail" effect. As Dr. Sidney Wolfe, Director of Public Health Research Group, said on 5/8/96: "It was pretty reckless to give over 400,000 troops to a drug that would increase their exposure to nerve agents."
The 6/13/94 Orange County Register carried an article entitled: "Mix of Chemicals Cited in Study of Gulf Syndrome: Researchers Wonder if Anti-Nerve Gas Pill, Insecticides Could Have Sickened Veterans" which said: The anti-nerve gas pill that soldiers used in the Persian Gulf War increased the potency of military-issued bug repellent by 10 times, possibly contributing to postwar sickness, according to a published report.
Government researchers looked at how three chemicals -- the anti-nerve-gas pill, an insecticide soaked into soldiers' uniforms and an insect repellent -- mixed together may have caused symptoms similar to what is known as "Persian Gulf Syndrome", the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported Sunday.
Though the Defense Department had tested the pills and insecticides separately, it never tested what happens when the three are used together.
U.S. soldiers' uniforms were treated with a powerful agricultural insecticide that repelled and killed bugs. Soldiers were also given insect repellent to put on their hands and faces, and some camps were sprayed with pesticides.
While researching how to make pesticides more effective, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture scientist James Moss found that when insect repellent DEET was mixed with the anti-nerve-gas pill, the repellent became 10 times more toxic to cockroaches, the Sentinel reported. b) BOTULISM AND ANTHRAX VACCINES -- were among the numerous other vaccines which the Dept. of Defense experimented with on our troops. According to the New York Times, 150,000 of the troops in the Gulf War were vaccinated with an anthrax bacteria vaccine and 8,000 troops got an experimental botulism vaccine. The toxin which causes botulism is produced by bacteria that stay dormant in spores in the soil.
[ED. NOTE: It is not surprising that when troops were injected with anthrax and botulism that they got sick. It should be remembered in the 1970s how the Center for Disease Control in conjunction with the FDA pressured Swine Flu inoculations on millions of Americans. Tens of thousands of those who were vaccinated became deathly ill and several hundred (or more) died -- which proves that the CDC and FDA don't always get it just right].
This entire report is available for $5 from McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, P. O. Box 84904, Phoenix, AZ 85071 Phone 1-800-528-0559. The Copyright has been lifted from this report so that it can be distributed widely - especially to Gulf War Veterans, physicians and health care providers.
I am not encouraging you to disobey a direct order. however, the Pentagon has lied to us for the last six and a half years, why are we to believe they are telling the truth now. Read the inforniation that exists on Anthrax with regard to safety and efficacy and then make an informed decision yourself.