Well, I guess that would be me to some account.. never thought I would be a member of the tree hugger organizations out there... but for this cause So Be It!!!!
walk a mile in my shoe's or the many others who Service before Self was their way of life.. only to be cut short by some son of a bitch, lining his wallet with Blood Money!!!!
MICHAEL FUMENTO SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
America's new 'opt-out' military
January 5, 2004
Anthrax is the "No. 1" biological or chemical weapon against which we need to protect our troops, according to Dr. Philip Russell, former commander of the U.S. Army Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick, Md. But the decision of a single federal judge would strip away that protection in a ruling that soldiers who don't want to be vaccinated against anthrax can simply refuse, even though it would weaken their units in case of an anthrax attack.
The decision of Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the D.C. District Court, which will be binding until the full court can hear the trial or the Supreme Court overturns it, was based on 1998 federal legislation that says service members cannot be forced to take experimental drugs.
Granted, it was a piece of bad legislation based not on scientific evidence but rather on kowtowing to "Gulf War Syndrome" activists.
Yet this "experimental drug" that the good judge claimed made soldiers "serve as guinea pigs" received FDA approval in 1970. Further, regardless that it has been approved for 33 years and that over a million servicemen and women have received it, if it's FDA-approved then by definition it's not experimental. Case closed; game over; choose your own metaphor.
The only "experimental" aspect of the vaccine is that its original purpose was to protect against natural anthrax from sheep, not weaponized bacteria, and that anthrax from sheep usually comes from cuts and not inhalation.
But the plaintiffs didn't sue because they thought the vaccine might not be helpful. After all, what would they lose if it didn't work since there are no alternative vaccines? Rather, the suit was based on hysteria that began circulating in the late 1990s.
Statements by self-proclaimed experts about supposed symptoms were spread rapidly by e-mail, news groups, and Web sites that should have as their URLs www.paranoia.com and www.conspiracy.org.
Thus, one Web site provided "The Detailed Story for Fifty Service Members at One Installation Alone," with a mouse click taking you to "shocking information of health for those at Dover Air Force Base." These mere 50 alleged victims had among them a symptom list longer than the stock tables in the Wall Street Journal. They claimed such bizarre symptoms as "lesions that turned into moles all over the body," "dry ear canals," "grayouts," "tightness in hands and wrists," and "pain in both toes." (Both?)
As these symptom rumors were making the rounds, physician and Lt. Col. Tom Luna, who supervised the Dover vaccination program, told me that the only common ones were "local reactions such as sore arm, redness, swelling at injection site."
But further research has supported the military's position. "FDA continues to view the anthrax vaccine as safe and effective for individuals at high risk of exposure to anthrax," a spokeswoman told Congress in 2000. (After the judge's decision it issued a "final rule and final order" that the vaccine "is safe and effective for the prevention of anthrax disease – regardless of the route of exposure.")
The National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine issued a March 2002 report on the vaccine. It found "no evidence that vaccine recipients face an increased risk of experiencing life-threatening or permanently disabling adverse events immediately after receiving AVA (the vaccine's initials), when compared with the general population" nor "over the longer term."
In statistics the government keeps on all self-reported adverse reactions to all U.S.-licensed vaccines, out of 27 vaccines tracked in 2001 only six had a lower percentage of adverse events than AVA. One vaccine (combined diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus) had an adverse report rate 35 times that of AVA.
Interestingly, the 2001 adverse event AVA rate was merely a sixth that of 1999. Why? Because 1999 was the height of the anthrax vaccine hysteria.
As to effectiveness, the NAS found "The available evidence from studies with humans and animals, coupled with reasonable assumptions of analogy, shows that AVA as licensed is an effective vaccine for the protection of humans against anthrax, including inhalational anthrax, caused by any known or plausible engineered strains of B. anthracis."
But Judge Sullivan, in his infinite wisdom and by virtue of having a law degree, allegedly looked at this same evidence and demanded anthracis vaccinus interruptus.
What's next? Can a soldier refuse to carry a machine gun because it's too heavy, or be allowed to opt out of operations he considers overly dangerous? President Bush must revoke this scienceless, senseless privilege and Congress must repeal the law it passed back in those halcyon pre-Sept. 11 days. We cannot defend our country with an opt-out military.
Fumento (U.S. Army Airborne, 1978-82) is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and author of "BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World." He can be reached via e-mail at (Removed so he does not get floods of emails)
I emailed him and will post it here...
I'm going to find out if this BOY has had his round of shots???
Hog
