WorldNetDaily: Mystery deaths fuel vaccine anxieties

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WorldNetDaily: Mystery deaths fuel vaccine anxieties

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Tuesday, September 16, 2003

IN THE MILITARY

Mystery deaths fuel vaccine anxieties

Pentagon accused of mislabeling adverse reactions, won't share autopsy

reports

Posted: September 16, 2003

1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: WorldNetDaily is pleased to have a content-sharing

agreement with Insight magazine, the

bold Washington publication not afraid to ruffle establishment feathers.

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By W. Maier

© 2003 News World Communications Inc.

Since Persian Gulf War II began about 6,000 soldiers have been shipped

home for recovery. Of these, 1,200

were wounded in combat.

Many of the others consider themselves part of an army of " walking dead "

– troops who appear to be so

physically and mentally exhausted that the military has no recourse but

to discharge them.

Why they are ill has become a matter of intense debate inside the

Pentagon. Some claim a series of anthrax

and smallpox vaccinations made them so gravely ill that they have

trouble breathing or sleeping and have

experienced a loss of memory. Others have been diagnosed with lupus and

heart problems.

At least six died shortly after rolling up their sleeves to receive the

anthrax and smallpox shots. But the

Pentagon dismissed related claims with such regularity and intimidation

that many GIs tell Insight they no

longer report the illness. They are told to " suck it up " and move on.

" Don't blame the vaccinations " has been a Pentagon mantra since it began

inoculating nearly half a million

troops almost two years ago and pumping millions of dollars into BioPort

Corp., the Lansing, Mich.-based

sole supplier of the anthrax vaccine.

But an alarming outbreak of more than 100 suspected pneumonia cases

among Gulf War II veterans

serving in Iraq and southwestern Asia has drawn the ire of Congress.

Rep. Shays, R-Conn., held eight congressional hearings on the

safety of the vaccination while

chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on National

Security, Emerging Threats and

International Relations, and issued a seething report that found serious

safety and regulatory problems

with the vaccine. Now Shays is asking again, " Could these vaccinations

be hurting our troops? "

The Pentagon reluctantly admitted that two Army soldiers – Spc.

M. Neusche, 20, of Montreal, Mo.,

and Sgt. L. Tosto, 24, of Apex, N.C. - died from complications

arising from pneumonia on July 12

and June 17, respectively. The Army is investigating their deaths.

Between 1998 and 2001, the U.S. Army

Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine reported 17 soldiers

died from complications of

pneumonia. The Pentagon has confirmed that this year at least 17 others

have been placed on respirators

but insists the vaccinations have nothing to do with the deaths or

illness.

The two pneumonia-related deaths reported recently apparently are an

understatement. Family members

of Army Spc. Zeferino E. Culunga, 20, of Bellville, Texas, and Staff

Sgt. S. Eaton, 37, of Guilford,

Conn., claim their sons died in August after being diagnosed with

pneumonia. A third death involved Spc.

Lacy of Lynwood, Ill. According to her autopsy, " smallpox and

anthrax vaccinations " contributed

to her death on April 4 after she first had been diagnosed with

pneumonia.

When the victims' families reached out to Defense Secretary

Rumsfeld, he ordered a team of

military investigators to Germany and Iraq to review the recent

pneumonia cases.

" We as a family are concerned that we are not being told the truth, "

wrote the family of Spc. Neusche in an

Aug. 12 letter to Rumsfeld. Like the other families, they asked to see

medical records in an effort to get a

second opinion on the cause of death. Culunga died of acute leukemia.

Lacy was never deployed, so she is

not considered part of the cluster of pneumonia cases.

" It is our right to receive truthful, honest and unfiltered answers just

as the military required truth, honesty

and commitment from our son, " says the Neusche-family letter to

Rumsfeld.

But the Army is not investigating the deaths of Culunga or Lacy, and is

awaiting autopsy results for Eaton.

Besides those who died from pneumonia-like complications, families of

six others claim the vaccinations

contributed to their sons' deaths – including two who committed suicide

because, say the complaints, the

vaccinations made them so seriously ill that it destroyed their will to

live.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged the nature

of these deaths, the Pentagon

has not because military doctors have refused to confirm that the

vaccines contributed to the deaths of any

of these victims.

Despite mounting criticism, the Pentagon repeatedly claimed the

pneumonia cases had nothing to do with

the anthrax or smallpox vaccinations.

" In 200 years of vaccination, no vaccine has ever been shown to cause

pneumonia, and there are multiple

reasons to believe that the vaccines have no role, " Col. D.

Grabenstein, deputy director for clinical

operations at the Military Vaccine Agency, told United Press

International.

Could Grabenstein be wrong? During congressional hearings on the

vaccination program in 1999, Pentagon

officials acknowledged there had been three reports of serious illness

coincidentally associated with the

vaccination involving hypersensitivity pneumonia. A study last year in

Pharmacoepidemiolgy and Drug

Safety said the vaccine was the cause of pneumonia in two soldiers.

But Grabenstein dismisses such evidence. In fact, in his recent study of

vaccination patients published in

the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, he insists

there have been no deaths related to

the smallpox shot. He ignores the Lacy case because she was never

deployed overseas.

" Totally bogus, " says Meryl Nass, a civilian doctor who has treated

soldiers who became ill after receiving

the vaccinations. " I e-mailed JAMA a copy of the death certificate for

Lacy. I asked him why he didn't report

it. He said, 'We don't accept diagnoses from outside the military.' The

Mayo Clinic [in Rochester, Minn.]

did the autopsy. They don't believe the Mayo Clinic! "

In fact, Lacy's death is not even listed in the military's Noteworthy

Adverse Events report – an omission

that critics suggest smells of cover-up.

" My concern regarding the Lacy case is that it was parsed to death in an

effort to keep it out of the official

reports, " says Sartin, a former U.S. Air Force doctor who now

works in the Infectious Disease

Department at the Gunderson Clinic in La Crosse, Wis. " If it could not

be proven with 100 percent certainty

that vaccines caused her illness, it was not going to be reported as

such. "

While Sartin says it should have been reported, Nass wonders if

Grabenstein may have a serious conflict of

interest that has prevented him from reporting such incidents. She notes

Grabenstein sits on a number of

pharmaceutical boards and is well known for advocating legislation that

would allow pharmacists to

administer vaccinations.

Some civilian doctors charge that the Pentagon mislabeled these cases in

an effort to avoid making

adverse-reaction reports that the military keeps to monitor vaccination

programs.

Indeed, Lacy may not be the only death overlooked. The death of NBC

correspondent Bloom, who

died of a blood clot after receiving vaccination shots, as well as the

death of a 55-year-old Missouri

National Guardsman who had a heart attack under similar circumstances,

also were disregarded.

" I am not sure they had pneumonia, " Nass says. " They are trying to

obscure it. They have something else in

the lungs and they're not telling us what it is. The Pentagon knows

something, but they are not sharing it.

And if it isn't pneumonia, what is it? "

What is known is that about one-half of these military patients with

pneumonia also had elevated

eosinophils in their blood. Eosinophils are responsible for allergic

reactions and also help defend against

parasites, says Sartin, who worked with a team of doctors that treated

Lacy.

" Elevated eosinophils were seen in the blood count of Lacy

before she died, and both her autopsy

and the heart biopsy of a servicemember who had myopericarditis showed

eosinophilic infiltration of heart

tissue, " reports Sartin. " This suggests to me the possibility of an

immune-mediated reaction to something

such as a vaccine. "

Another possibility, he says, could be Churg-Strauss syndrome, an

autoimmune disease in which " you get

asthma, pulmonary infiltrates [in other words, the chest X-ray can look

like pneumonia] and eosinophilia. "

Sartin reports this can lead to vasculitis, which is what killed Bioport

employee Dunn. A coroner

claimed the anthrax vaccine contributed to Dunn's death.

" If we could get the test results on these patients, and in particular

the autopsy results on Neusche and

Tosto, we might be able to draw some conclusions about what caused their

illnesses and whether it was

vaccine-related, " he believes.

Pointing to the sharing of information on the SARS outbreak and how that

helped civilian doctors diagnose

and treat the disease, Sartin argues that the same could be done with

data about the sick soldiers. However,

for now, the military would rather keep those records under wraps, which

puzzles Sartin.

" All of us close to the [Lacy] case, including her family members,

wonder why a perfectly healthy young

woman, in the top 10 percent of her PT [physical-training] testing,

would get sick right after her

vaccinations without any other explanation and the authorities would not

consider that the vaccine

probably, or at least possibly, caused her illness and death. "

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W. Maier is a writer for Insight.