[Media] The case against anthrax vaccine
By Steve Weinberg
Special to The Denver Post
Article Published: Sunday, December 19, 2004
review http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~28~2602617,00.html
Post file
A picture of Morrison resident Lori Greenleaf's son looms behind her. He is
being disciplined for refusing anthrax shots.
Reading investigative journalist Gary Matsumoto's account of U.S. military
personnel severely incapacitated or killed because, he says, they received
vaccinations meant to protect them from anthrax poisoning is akin to
absorbing hammer blows to the head over and over for hours. In relentless
fashion, Matsumoto presents evidence that military commanders, physicians
and federal government drug regulators and pharmaceutical companies have
lied to Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force troops.
The lies continue today, Matsumoto says, despite severe illnesses and
deaths he and civilian medical researchers he has interviewed attribute to
an ingredient in the vaccine that causes the body's autoimmune system to go
haywire.
He mentions Erik Julius of Morrison, Colo., ordered to sit for the anthrax
inoculation while aboard the USS Independence in the Persian Gulf. The
reluctant Julius reached his mother, Morrison resident Lori Greenleaf, who
began researching the vaccine on the Internet. What she found alarmed her,
but by the time she could communicate with her son again, he had been
forced to take the first shot. When he refused the second shot, his
commanding officers allegedly reduced him in rank and threatened him with
brig time.
As word of Greenleaf's research spread, U.S. sailors and soldiers around
the world began contacting her. Eventually, she communicated with about
7,000 U.S. military personnel concerned about becoming sick or dying at the
hands of their own armed services.
Matsumoto is a lay person whose experience has come largely at the news
operations of NBC and Fox. Matsumoto is masterful at explaining complicated
terms and concepts. Still, there is only so much he can do to clarify the
science behind studies with titles such as "Effect of Stanol Ester on
Postabsorptive Squalene and Retinyl Palmitate." The key word is "squalene."
More on it soon.
Matsumoto cannot state with 100 percent certainty that any of the
individual cases he investigated so impressively are linked to anthrax
vaccinations required of military servicemen and servicewomen. The
circumstantial evidence is so massive, however, that it is persuasive.
Experienced journalists, and lawyers, know that circumstantial evidence is
as good as direct evidence if its quality is high and enough of it exists.
Readers with faith in the goodness of the U.S. military will resist the
hypothesis that commanders force vaccinations on troops when evidence
exists that disabling injuries and deaths result. Historically, however,
that faith is unjustified.
Matsumoto provides irrefutable information from wars before the U.S.
invasion of the Persian Gulf during 1990 that military personnel have
served as unwitting guinea pigs in medical experiments. Those unwitting
guinea pigs cannot sue the U.S. government for negligence; military
servicemen and servicewomen not only surrender the right to refuse
vaccinations, but also the right to litigate when illness or death results.
The military's justification for the anthrax vaccinations starting around
1990 and continuing through today seemed straightforward: Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein possessed biological weapons, including deadly anthrax, that
he might use. The cosmic irony as phrased by Matsumoto "is that after years
of United Nations inspections and now a war that has put Saddam Hussein
behind bars, no samples of Iraqi dried anthrax have been discovered."
Matsumoto covered the 1990 Gulf War for NBC News from Saudi Arabia. About
a year later, he heard reports of "a strange malady affecting returning
veterans. The symptoms were often vague, many subjective, but remarkably
consistent - aching joints and muscles, rashes, fatigue, weight loss,
weight gain, hair loss, sore gums, diarrhea, nausea, swelling of hands and
feet, short-term memory loss and headaches."
Knowing that such symptoms could stem from numerous causes, Matsumoto paid
little attention until 1997, when he heard an explanation from military
sources regarding what had become known as Gulf War Syndrome. The
explanation, involving an alleged inadvertent release of an Iraqi nerve
agent during a U.S. bombing, struck Matsumoto as so ludicrous that he
sensed a cover-up. So he began an investigation that lasted six years,
resulting first in a Vanity Fair magazine exposé, then this book.
Realizing that U.S. military doctors decided against treating veterans with
Gulf War Syndrome, Matsumoto delved into the civilian medical research
world, where he found a few fearless experts, especially in private
practice at a Memphis clinic and at Tulane University, devoted to
uncovering the truth so sick people could be treated and additional deaths
prevented.
"By developing an assay - a test to determine whether an individual has
antibodies to a particular substance in his or her blood - scientists from
Tulane University Medical School established what they say is a marker for
Gulf War Syndrome," Matsumoto reports. "This marker identifies whether a GI
has been injected with a substance called squalene. Those who had a
so-called Gulf War illness consistently tested positive for antibodies to
squalene in their blood; healthy Gulf War veterans do not have these
antibodies."
The Tulane researchers knew that the anthrax vaccine approved by federal
government drug regulators and the military contained no squalene, an oil
intended to stimulate the immune system to respond more quickly than
normal. Matsumoto marshals circumstantial evidence to suggest that military
doctors, realizing the licensed vaccine would not kick in fast enough to
protect U.S. troops from an Iraqi release of anthrax, decided to experiment
with squalene despite its known lethality.
Matsumoto concedes the military doctors probably harbored good intentions,
so could have defended their actions "as a hard judgment call." But their
outright denial of using an experimental vaccine containing squalene in the
face of seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary - some of that
evidence coming from reluctant government agencies and pharmaceutical
companies - struck Matsumoto as so heartless that he shows them no sympathy.
In the end, Matsumoto knows he cannot provide satisfactory answers to every
question: "The great mystery in this story, a mystery that I cannot
completely solve, is why the scientists developing these vaccines are
covering up their mistake and continuing to advocate the use of a new
vaccine that will have such devastating consequences on their own people.
There is some evidence that the corrupting influence of money has played a
role in this ... Let everyone be especially vigilant over companies making
military vaccines that are intended for sale to the large and lucrative
U.S. civilian market."
Steve Weinberg is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and a
veteran investigative journalist.