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Home > Archive > Alternative health > December 2005 > 20,000 who got anthrax shot were hospitalized
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20,000 who got anthrax shot were hospitalized
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| Reminder of the lengths they will go to to lie to you and injure you
20,000 who got anthrax shot were hospitalized
BY BOB EVANS
DAILY PRESS (NEWPORT NEWS, VA.)
http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/a...0/NEWS/51210003
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - The Pentagon never told Congress about more than
20,000
hospitalizations involving troops who'd taken the anthrax vaccine,
despite
repeated promises that such cases would be publicly disclosed.
Instead, a parade of generals and Defense Department officials told
Congress and the public that fewer than 100 people were hospitalized or
became seriously ill after receiving the shot from 1998 through 2000.
They also showed Congress written policies that required public reports
to
be filed for hospitalizations, serious illnesses and cases where
someone
missed 24 hours or more of duty.
But only a sliver of those cases were reported, while the rest were
withheld from Congress and the public, records obtained by the Daily
Press
show.
Critics of the vaccine, veterans' advocates and congressional
staffers say
the Pentagon's deliberate low-balling of hospitalizations helped
persuade
Congress and the public that the vaccine was safe.
Keeping the actual number of illnesses secret contributed to a shorter
list
of government-recognized side effects for the drug, giving patients and
physicians a false idea of what might constitute a vaccine-related
illness
or problem. Doctors are expected to know the full list of side effects
and
alert federal drug safety officials whenever they see a repeat of those
symptoms.
Repeated evidence of the same adverse side effect after a vaccination
is
one of the most telling signs of a systematic problem with a drug or
vaccine, as opposed to a coincidental relationship, vaccine safety
experts
say.
Lou Gehrig's disease During the Daily Press' investigation of the
vaccine
and its effects, the newspaper found three cases of amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis - ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease - that the military
hadn't
reported. The disease destroys muscles and nerves, is always fatal and
rarely hits people younger than 45.
One of the three cases involves Navy Capt. Denis Army of Virginia
Beach,
Va. Army died in 2000, after developing symptoms less than a week after
his
first anthrax vaccination - and a few days before his 45th birthday.
His
widow filed the first public acknowledgement of his death and its
temporal
connection to the vaccine this year. That occurred after she talked to
a
Daily Press reporter and learned that she could file a report with the
federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Kristin Shemeley died of ALS in 2001, at
29.
Her symptoms began about two months after her third shot, a sworn legal
document detailing her illness says.
Before Shemeley died, she spent 14 months in Walter Reed Army Medical
Center in Washington, D.C., where she was regularly visited by
high-ranking
military officers, said her mother, Ginger Shemeley of Quakertown, Pa.
She
says her daughter repeatedly told those generals and admirals that she
was
suffering because of the vaccine and even pleaded with one of them to
stop
giving it to troops. Several of those generals and admirals had
promised
Congress that such cases would be publicly reported to VAERS.
The military never filed a VAERS report on Kristin Shemeley. Ginger
Shemeley filed one after her daughter died.
Col. John Grabenstein, director of the military's vaccine agency,
said no
one from the military intentionally misled Congress or the public. He
said
the 20,765 hospitalizations merely followed vaccinations in time,
without
documented proof of a cause-and-effect relationship.
He said a statistical analysis showed that those who'd been
vaccinated
weren't more likely to be hospitalized or likely to seek medical
treatment
than those in the military who hadn't been vaccinated from 1998
through 2000.
Some medical experts say this approach doesn't adequately address the
problems of many people who report illnesses after anthrax vaccination.
That's because the approach is limited to comparing rates of illness
involving one symptom or disease - instead of the complex combination
of
symptoms and illnesses that many veterans report after getting their
shots.
The data that the Daily Press used to document the underreporting of
hospitalizations came from a report that Grabenstein supplied in
response
to the newspaper's request. It had never been made public.
It covers 1998 through 2000, when the Pentagon did detailed evaluations
every three months to compare hospitalizations, clinic vis-its and
medical
treatment data for those who'd been vaccinated, compared with troops
who
hadn't. This quarterly analysis stopped and hasn't been done since,
Grabenstein said.
The practice of not reporting all hospitalizations continues.
Quarterly analysis of the vaccine's effects ended just as the
nation's only
manufacturing site for the drug regained its license. That was in 2002,
after federal inspections found many safety and other problems that
prompted a shutdown and renovation that began in early 1998.
The company's current manufacturing techniques provide greater
potency
compared with earlier versions of the drug, said the Government
Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm. The manufacturer,
BioPort Inc., says there's no difference in the drug made since 2002
that
might cause health problems.
No long-term study The decision to discontinue the quarterly health
monitoring program means that the biggest gap in research about the
vaccine
remains: There are no systematic long-term studies of the health of
those
who've taken the drug. Most studies that the Pentagon cites as
support for
the vaccine's safety involve monitoring that lasted days to a few
months.
None lasted as long as five years, the minimum length of time
recommended
by a nationally recognized panel of scientists assembled by the
Institute
of Medicine in 2002. The institute is a nonprofit organization that
provides expert advice to Congress and other government agencies.
After the quarterly reviews of the vaccine's effects stopped, more
than a
million troops were forced to take the vaccine - until a federal
judge
ruled last year that the drug had never been adequately licensed for
protection against anthrax use in warfare.
He ordered the military to make vaccination voluntary. The Pentagon is
appealing that ruling. A decision is expected by February.
Grabenstein said he decided to halt the quarterly studies after
consulting
the chairman of the Institute of Medicine panel and its staff, and with
doctors affiliated with the military. He acknowledged that he didn't
consult the general who ultimately was responsible for the anthrax
program.
The chairman of the institute panel, Brian Strom, said he didn't
recall
what was discussed at the time about the quarterly reports. But he
said, "I
think they should continue to be using it," in case there's a
problem.
Another panel member, Linda Cowan, said she's sure the committee
expected
quarterly reviews to continue and pointed to a number of the panel's
recommendations and findings that she said clearly contradicted
Grabenstein's interpretation of its report.
Strom and Cowan emphasized that they thought the vaccine was still
safe.
Beth Clay isn't so sure. She directed the staff of Congress' House
Government Reform Committee investigation into the anthrax vaccine from
1998 to 2001. She continued working on the subject as a congressional
staff
member through 2003, after her Republican boss was no longer chairman
of
the committee.
Clay said the military's decision not to report all the
hospitalizations
gave the public and Congress a rosier picture of the vaccine than it
deserved.
"We were never given this data," she said. "Had we seen this, the
committee
would have had significant questions" and would have demanded more
information about the program.
After reviewing the report obtained by the Daily Press, Clay said it
raised
several questions about the vaccine's safety. She said Congress was
never
told about the detailed level of data in the report but was assured
regular
monitoring of the vaccine and its health effects would continue.
Terminating the quarterly reviews would seem to break those promises,
she
said. "It's just appalling that they didn't keep up with this,"
she said.
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