ANTHRAX: What The Public Needs To Know

The following is a 1999 letter to the Department of Defense made public by Karin Schumacher of an organization called Vaccine Information & Awareness (VIA). For information about this organization, write: 12799 La Tortola San Diego, CA 92129; call: 619-484-3197; fax: 619-484-1187; email: via@access1.net See also:

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Wall Street Journal, in February 2000, reported that, of the 400,000 troops who had received the vaccine, 620 had side effects and six required hospitalization for reactions to the vaccine. The FDA and CDC both consider the vaccine to be safe. This counter view is published here to show public concerns about requiring citizens to be vaccinted.

We demand the following:

1. Immediately stop the forced inoculation of the United States military men and women with the Anthrax vaccination until further outside, independent studies and testing can be performed. Researchers unaffiliated with the Pentagon must be were permitted to conduct these studies on the vaccine. "The Pentagon should invite major civilian US public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and major non-governmental organizations such as the American Public Health Association, to participate actively in the design, testing, implementation, and oversight of this plan. It would be tragic if these agencies were only brought in later, as was done with nuclear bomb-test fallout and Agent Orange to write a post-mortem analysis." (The Anthrax Dilemma, by Victor W. Sidel, MD, Meryl Nass, MD, Tod Ensign, JD, LLM)
   
   
2. Make all military vaccinations voluntary, including those which are about to come in the next few years as part of the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program.
   
   
3. Rescind all punishments for refusal to be vaccinated, and reinstate service members [who refused vaccination] if they so choose. The Department of Defense, the Federal Drug and Food Administration, and medical authorities throughout the United States have admitted there are no data to support the long-term safety of this vaccine. In terms of effectiveness, the animal data suggest the vaccine is likely to be ineffective in humans. An F.D.A. report of the *only* plant in America that makes Anthrax vaccine says: "The manufacturing process for Anthrax vaccine is not validated." The report reveals that several batches of the vaccine actually failed the potency test. Some were so old they were expired—but they were not tossed out! Many were improperly re-dated and medical corpsmen in the military are concerned about other batches that are about to be injected into our sons and daughters in military service. There is also empirical data suggesting that the vaccine may have been and may be a cause for what is termed Gulf War Syndrome. We are also demanding that as our elected representative you directly answer the following questions. [Editor’s Note: The Department of Defense has taken steps to assure the consistency and potency of the vaccine since this letter was written.]
   
   
4. How can politicians pontificate about Human Rights to the world when they permit profit to be the motive for the violation of our sons’ and daughters’ human rights, the future human rights of their younger brothers and sisters, and the human rights of good people around the world who have come and will come to serve in our country and way of life?
   
   
5. Has our government ever used private citizens as guinea pigs? [Well, yes, that has happened before.] Studies were performed on 412 black individuals infected with syphilis, depriving them of a proven cure for the purpose of a 40-year study of the disease's effect—which, untreated, is nearly always death. (The Tuskeegee Experiments conducted by U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS)
   
   
6. The United States Government has conducted extensive radiation experiments over a number of years on individuals without their consent. Examples: 235 babies in five states were injected with radioactive iodine; 100 retarded Massachusetts children were been fed radioactive cereal; 800 pregnant Tennessee women were exposed to radioactive substances; eight people injected with various isotopes of strontium at the University of California Hospital at San Francisco. (This DOD activity was exposed in the Albuquerque Tribune.)
   
   
7. Dr. Arthur Friedlander, MC Colonel and head of Bacteriology at Fort Detrick's USAMRIID and a chief medical officer for the DOD, writing in a textbook published in 1994 [Brachman PS and Friedlander AM: Anthrax. In Plotkin SA and Mortimer EA (eds): Vaccines, ed 2. Philadelphia, WB Saunders, 1994, pp.729-739], state: "The current vaccine against anthrax is unsatisfactory for several reasons. The vaccine is composed of an undefined crude culture supernatant absorbed to aluminum hydroxide. There has been no quantification of the protective antigen content of the vaccine or of any of the other constituents, so the degree of purity is unknown. Standardization is determined by an animal potency test. The undefined nature of the vaccine and the presence of constituents that may be undesirable may account for the level of reactogenicity observed. The vaccine is also less than optimal in that six doses are required over 18 months, followed by annual boosters. There is also evidence in experimental animals that the vaccine may be less effective against some strains of anthrax."
   
   
8. President Eisenhower warned us about an unholy alliance that was developing between retired military personnel and private industry. [BioPort, Inc. now privately held, with a retired Admiral as a major shareholder, is the exclusive producer of anthrax vaccine in the US.] Do the math: 2.5 million military men and women) x (6 shots) x $3.50 = over $50 million

We do not want an apology after the damage is done. We are talking about our children.