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From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 20:11:35 GMT
In article <rqwo2.3418$gR4.2421@newsr2.twcny.rr.com>, David Lentz
<dlentz10@rochester.rr.com//NO-SPAM//> wrote:
> >I gotta admit that refusing mandatory DNA samples and non-FDA
> >approved or tested vaccinations would make me nervous, too.
> >
> >They shouldn't be court-martial offenses.
>
> How can they not be court-martial offenses? Service personnel are
> only an asset if they can be deployed. Refusing a vaccination that
> would make you non-deployable, would be like making all deployments
> voluntary.
I don't see any good reason to require that service personnel submit
to medical experiments (and that is exactly what a lot of these
mandatory vaccinations are) just to be "deployable." Things like
AIDS and TB tests, smallpox vaccinations (in the old days), etc.
actually have a basis in science. The anthrax vaccine might well,
also, but some of those shots troops were given during Desert
Shield were crimes against medical ethics.
> When you raised your right hand and took the Oath, you were
> promising to risk your life for your country, even if the risks are
> mircobes and not munitions.
Of course, the risks are supposed to come from the *enemy*. If the
enlistment contract had spelled out that I was agreeing to be a guinea
pig for any medical experiment that might be dreamed up by some
Medical Corps O-3 on the theater commander's staff, I might have had a
bit of a different perspective on the idea of military service.
The US Navy Medical Corps has a "Patient Bill of Rights," which spells
out (among other things) that you have the right to refuse
experimental treatments. The fact that this document is supposed to
be posted prominently in naval medical facilities could, it might be
argued, form the basis for a reasonable belief that this prohibition
carries the force of law. Thus, it is entirely possible that one
might form a reasonable good-faith belief that the order to submit to
one of these shots constitutes refusal of an unlawful order. Such a
belief is an absolute defense to insubordination charges at a court-
martial.
> I had to get that stupid swine flue shoot, that killed more people
> than the stupid disease did. Then nobody ever promised me that all
> my duty would be pleasant.
It *is* entirely possible that the reason the vaccine killed more
than the disease is that the vaccine was highly successful at
suppressing transmission vectors. It doesn't necessarily mean that
the vaccine was either dangerous or unnecessary. However, given
the track record of medical science on this sort of thing, that's
how I'm betting.
When flu shot time came around every year, I routinely told my
superiors that if they wanted me to get a flu shot, they should
arrange to have the base (or ship) security force on hand to escort
me to sick bay in irons, because that was the only way in hell I
was submitting to a shot that I *knew* would make me sick, and
had every reason to doubt would do me any good whatsoever.
The reaction? "Fine, if that's the way you feel, I'll just put
down that you're allergic to eggs." Or something similar to that,
every single time.
Thank God I served before stuff like this became a bureaucratic
pissing contest.
BTW, what do you think would happen if an active duty woman was
ordered to get an abortion (in order to be "deployable"), and refused?
What if she was ordered *not* to get an abortion, and went ahead and
did so anyway? There are limits to this "You signed away all your
freedoms" stuff, you know.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 02:31:49 GMT
In article <36A3E48A.D80A6C1F@azstarnet.com>, Michael Williamson
<speed13@azstarnet.com> wrote:
> > I don't see any good reason to require that service personnel submit
> > to medical experiments (and that is exactly what a lot of these
> > mandatory vaccinations are) just to be "deployable." Things like
> > AIDS and TB tests, smallpox vaccinations (in the old days), etc.
> > actually have a basis in science. The anthrax vaccine might well,
> > also, but some of those shots troops were given during Desert Shield
> > were crimes against medical ethics.
>
> The Anthrax vaccine is not experimental, and has been in use for
> many years as has been noted in previous posts.
The Anthrax vaccine isn't what I was talking about. Some of the drugs
administered to troops during Desert Shield were NOT FDA approved for
use in humans.
> > When flu shot time came around every year, I routinely told my
> > superiors that if they wanted me to get a flu shot, they should
> > arrange to have the base (or ship) security force on hand to escort
> > me to sick bay in irons, because that was the only way in hell I
> > was submitting to a shot that I *knew* would make me sick, and
> > had every reason to doubt would do me any good whatsoever.
>
> Under the current regulations, as your superior, I'd simply order
> the security forces to escort you to the base detention facility to
> await your court martial. It has been ruled in military courts (and
> appealed to civilian courts where the decision was upheld, IIRC) that
> ordering flu shots is a legal order, given the loss of military
> readiness inherent in large scale influenza. Seeing that the flu can
> easily render a flier DNIF (Duties Not to Include Flying) for a week
> or more, that is a serious hit that can remove a squadron's ability to
> carry out its duties.
Of course, the *shot* always rendered me out of action (at least by
flight standards) for a week or so, so what's the bloody difference?
That, after all, is why I stopped getting the things -- after three
years in a row, the only time I ever got the flu was right after
getting this annual shot. Even *I* finally figured out that the way
to stay well was to steer clear of the docs.
I have no doubt that this abominable practice has been upheld to be a
legal order. (Although I'd bet that in the right circumstances, the
'reasonable belief that the order is unlawful' gambit could pay off in
court.) The actual truth is that if someone had, like yourself,
wanted to be an incredible asshole and pushed the issue, I would just
have knuckled under and gotten the goddam shot. The "call the
security force" thing was mostly a joke, really. In practice, no one
actually *did* ever try to force me to get the shot. Nowadays, it's
big headlines when someone tries to avoid the handiwork of the
masters of malpractice.
But that doesn't mean it's right to inject iffy drugs into people
without their consent.
I note that you skipped over my abortion example. Pregnancy can
render women unfit for flying and a lot of other things for a hell of
a lot longer than a week. Why would it be so different, in principle,
to order a pregnant woman to have an abortion?
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 15:21:22 GMT
In article <7824ki$p96$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, Wayne & Sandy Bucklaew
<bucklaew@erols.com> wrote:
> For some reason you don't understand this thread. First off
> this refusal was in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Well, no. The news item that started this thread was the resignation
en masse of some Connecticut (I think) Air National Guard officers
who didn't see this program of vaccination as within the reasonable
scope of their military duties. Personally, I applaud them, but
that's another issue.
> Secondly, the Amtrax Vaccine has not been approved for use by their
> equivalent of our Food and Drug Administration, therefore it would
> be considered as an experimental drug.
There may well be an equivalent Canadian incident. I don't know
that formal regulatory approval is really the issue around which
all of this turns. The anthrax vaccine *has* been used in humans
for decades; it's hardly experimental. Just because the Canadian
government hasn't had the political motivation to approve it doesn't
really have a lot to do with whether it's "proven."
Now, those "inoculations" given to troops during Desert Shield,
on the other hand . . .
> Also Mike, if you were in the US armed forces during the 70's
> you would have found that the US Armed forces routinely perform
> social experiments, as well experiments with weapons, without
> notifying the soldiers of the consequences. Several experiments of
> this took place during W.W.II and more in the 50's. One experiment
> during W.W.II was biological in nature and was preformed off the
> coast of Panama. White Sands NM was the place soldiers were exposed
> to atomic radiation, during atom bomb tests, an when they developed
> cancer, the VA would not acknowledge that it even happened, and DOD
> refused to make public the records of these exposures.
I don't think there was much above-ground testing in White Sands.
(There was, of course, one very famous one there.) You are probably
thinking of the Nevada Test Site. Other than that detail, your point
is well taken. (There was also a lot of exposure to service personnel
during testing at the Pacific Test Range.)
[Agent Orange, GWS, stuff snipped.]
> Also it has been proven that the US troop were inoculated with a
> combination of agent supposedly to protect against biological agents,
> but the mix of agents had never been tested together, to see what
> effects they might cause. So I would say that in the US it is routine
> for DOD to experiment on the troops.
This is the big one. This, and a couple of "medical miracles" I
witnessed first hand on the part of that group of doctors who are
simply too brilliant to go into private practice and end up serving in
the military, are what convinced me just not to trust them. Sure,
most of them were perfectly competent, and some of them were outright
great doctors. But the fact that the good ones let the kooks get
away with this kind of crap leads me to condemn them all.
In the past, there was enough residual trust left of the leadership
that even people who were a bit nervous about submitting to
God-knows-what in a shot would just shrug and go along with it. Now
we're seeing mass resignations rather than "go along with it." Any
way you look at it, this is not good. But the situation wasn't
created by those CANG officers; they're just the symptom.
It's come to this: God help you if you don't have an MSDS on hand
for the White-Out in your desk drawer, or the Windex on the shelf,
because those are HAZMAT, don't you know. But if the docs want to
inject lighter fluid into your veins, just to see what happens, well,
hey, "orders are orders," right?
My ass. There's a limit to that "orders are orders" stuff, and doing
medical experiments on me without my consent (or even *informing* me)
is way, way past it.
I'd say that military medicine is one step above veterinary practice,
but I don't want to get sued for defamation by some irate veterinarian
out there. Besides, there are laws against cruelty to animals, and
one can, after all, hold a veterinarian accountable for malpractice.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 05:56:43 GMT
In article <36a64f22.7697948@news>, Sean Malloy <srmalloy@home.com>
wrote:
> >I note that you skipped over my abortion example. Pregnancy can
> >render women unfit for flying and a lot of other things for a hell of
> >a lot longer than a week. Why would it be so different, in principle,
> >to order a pregnant woman to have an abortion?
>
> I've always wondered, given what I've read about the numbers of
> female sailors who turn up pregnant right before their ship deploys
> (and are therefore undeployable), or while on deployment, why
> long-term contraception isn't mandatory; it seems to _me_ that
> becoming pregnant shortly before or during deployment falls under
> the heading of 'voluntarily rendering yourself unfit for duty'.
It is the only form of malingering that isn't punishable.
But the answer is that we recognize that there are *limits* to the
"orders are orders" stuff, and most Americans -- especially those who
are actually familiar with recent events -- get, at a minimum, a bit
queasy about ordering someone to submit to certain medical treatments.
Call it "The Mengele Effect" or something.
Ordering a guy to charge a machine gun nest is one thing. Ordering
him to try out a hastily-put-together, untested "inoculation cocktail"
is quite a different one.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 06:06:20 GMT
In article <19990120005652.27948.00000898@ng-fp1.aol.com>, Agtabby
<agtabby@aol.com> wrote:
> >The Anthrax vaccine isn't what I was talking about. Some of the drugs
> >administered to troops during Desert Shield were NOT FDA approved for
> >use in humans.
>
> what drugs? Is there any real proof (studies in peer reviewed
> journals) of any significant ill effects?
Someone else with more time and energy than I have is going to have
to recount the highlights of the long, sordid tale of what was done
to our troops in Desert Shield. Or you could look it up on the web.
The executive summary is this: No, there's no proof of a causal
relationship between the experimental inoculations and reported
ill effects among Gulf War veterans. But there is also a long and
shameful record of cover-ups and lies by the Defense Department
on the matter, so who the hell knows *how* good the raw data
provided by them is?
There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that Gulf War veterans are
experiencing some pretty weird health problems. Given the behavior of
the DoD, we may never have a way of examining the problem any more
rigorously than that.
> Remember the FDA is notoriously slow to approve drugs. many useful
> drugs are in use in Europe years before they are here.
And many useful drugs are available in the US before seeing the light
of day in Europe, too. It all depends on the political interests
(not always the drug companies) pushing an approval.
I'm not a big fan of the FDA -- I'd abolish it tomorrow, if I had the
authority -- but even I have to admit they've streamlined their
approval process dramatically over the last decade.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 17:35:08 GMT
In article <19990120011308.27948.00000902@ng-fp1.aol.com>, Agtabby
<agtabby@aol.com> wrote:
> > Also Mike, if you were in the US armed forces during the 70's you would
> >have found that the US Armed forces routinely perform social experiments, as
> >well experiments with weapons, without notifying the soldiers of the
> >consequences.
>
> yes, the military has done bad things to its soldiers, but that does
> not prove wrongdoing here. I could claim that MRE's give you
> cancer, but I'd hope that I'd be expected to provide proof and not
> just point to previous military wrongdoing.
When the FDA receives a regulatory submission proposing the marketing
of a new drug, is the burden of proof on *them* to show that it's
unsafe? Quite the contrary.
That's not really the issue anyway. The military has a track record
of gross mistreatment of its servicemen in this respect. Furthermore,
it has a solid track record of lies and cover-ups and a total failure
to hold responsible parties accountable in these matters. I'm amazed
it took this long for enough outrage to build that officers are
resigning from units en masse. Of course, when I was on active duty,
I pooh-poohed a lot of this stuff, too. Then the DoD was caught in
outright lies about exposure of troops to chemical and biological
agents during Desert Storm, and I woke up a bit.
> >The same is true of the Gulf War syndrome. Men exposed to
> >biological, and chemical agent during that conflict have routinely
> >been denied medical care in VA facilities.
>
> Likewise Gulf War Syndrome has so far not been established. Yes, the
> media has given this issue a lot of play time, but when was the last
> time the media ever looked at science? Have you ever read anything by
> M. Fumento on this? While the media has reported higher cancer rates
> in GW vets, he found that the New England Journal of Medicine found
> slightly lower cancer rates in these vets.
The problem is that GW vets are not a homogeneous group. Hell, I'm
technically a Desert Storm vet, though I wasn't in theater until early
1993, long after the last alleged exposure. So, is my presence in
theater lowering those statistics?
No one has, as yet, studied known exposed cases only. Want to know
why? Because there's no way to find out just what exposures occurred!
It's rather brilliant, you must admit: just deny, deny, deny that
anything like that ever occurred. When caught in your lie, just
point to the great health of the millions of those involved who were
*not* exposed (or "inoculated") and claim that there are no "proven"
ill effects.
The fallacy here is a particularly common and subtle one:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/composition.html
> My favorite quote of his is that arguing about what causes GWS is like
> arguing about who assassinated President Eisenhower.
Well, Michael Fumento is a pretty witty guy. And he's right that
there's a lot of junk science being promoted by the media, on this and
other issues. But he's wrong to conclude that just because group A is
using junk science to support proposition X, that proposition X
automatically must be untrue.
To continue the Eisenhower analogy, what if we found out that the
"Eisenhower" we think of as President had, for some unknown reason,
been replaced by a look-alike actor in late 1959 and that our
government had lied to us then and had been lying to us all along
since then. Now, that doesn't *prove* the real Ike was assassinated,
but it raises some pretty reasonable doubts about the proposition that
he wasn't!
The science of the analysis of the known data isn't the only issue
here. The credibility of the data and the credibility of the people
who have "assured" us, time and time again, that there is no such
thing (for example) as GWS is very much in question. For all I know
they are telling the truth. OJ Simpson probably tells the truth when
someone asks him the time, too. Bill Clinton might occasionally
(probably by mistake) tell the truth about something, too. But both
of them are still lying sacks, and so is the senior leadership of the
DoD and the DVA.
> But please, if you can name any real science to support GWS go
> ahead. I mean peer reviewed journals writen by scientist, not
> journalist.
There aren't any. Neither are there any disproving the thesis.
(There are some that disprove the thesis that *all* GW vets received
the same level of exposure to toxins, but that's not a reasonable
hypothesis.) There also aren't any good studies linking the
presence or absence of adverse events (NOT the same thing as
*rates* of diseases) to exposure. It's pretty damn hard to get
decent data on exposure when the people who keep the records just
plain lie to you about whether there even *was* any exposure!
There are volumes of anecdotal evidence suggesting that a hell of a
lot of guys went over there perfectly healthy, and came back
completely screwed up. Despite what you've heard about anecdotal
evidence from Usenet amateur logicians, it's not completely worthless.
Almost every medical study ever done started out to prove or disprove
a hypothesis that was formed from observations of anecdotal evidence.
For example, no physician in the developed world would *ever* give
aspirin to an infant, yet this prohibition is based entirely on
anecdotes of adverse events.
The studies out there demonstrate that there's no significant rate of
additional health problems when considering *all* -- or very large
bodies of -- GW personnel. That, unfortunately, is not the question
of interest, or not the only one.
> > Also it has been proven that the US troop were inoculated with a
> >combination of agent supposedly to protect against biological agents, but
> >the mix of agents had never been tested together, to see what effects they
> >might cause. So I would say that in the US it is routine for DOD to
> >experiment on the troops.
>
> again, you can speculate on what causes GWS after you show it
> exists. I am amazed by the variety of theories . . .
Whether or not GWS exists is irrelevant to the question of whether
irresponsible medical experiments were performed on troops in that
theater of operations. That they were is not in dispute. Even if
nothing ever came of it (and *that* remains to be proven), it doesn't
change the fact that the experimental, unapproved inoculations *were*
administered. A physician in private practice in the US who pulled
such a stunt would be liable for malpractice. Of course, physicians
in private practice don't ordinarily go around covering for blind
heart surgeons, either (or if they do, they are subject to sanctions
for misconduct), unlike naval medicine.
And you wonder why the level of trust has eroded so dramatically that
this has become a major issue in the service?
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 01:41:54 GMT
In article <u0d848iilq.fsf@reseng2.dfrc.nasa.gov>, Mary Shafer
<shafer@reseng2.dfrc.nasa.gov> wrote:
> It's against the law to perform abortions in US military hospitals
> (even if the woman were to pay for the procedure herself) or to pay
> for them via US military health insurance. [...]
>
> Anti-abortion forces pushed these laws through to ensure that no one
> supported by the government managed to avoid having babies on the
> taxpayers' nickel. There was no exemption for contraception or
> abortion based on preserving the health of the mother and is no
> exemption for terminating pregnancies that result from rape or
> incest.
If you can put aside what is obviously a deep animosity toward
"anti-abortion forces" long enough to check the statute (10 USC
Sec. 1093), you'll see that you're wrong on both counts. Only
elective abortions are prohibited by law, and even elective abortions
in rape or incest cases are perfectly OK. It *is* prohibited (per
that section) to appropriate funds for the latter case (OK to fund an
abortion for the health exception), but funds don't need to be
disbursed to perform a procedure in a military hospital.
In any case, what difference does it make to the original point? "You
can't make me pay for it" isn't a defense to disobedience of an order
-- people are ordered to pay for things all the time! The fact that
she'd have to pay for it isn't why we'd be outraged to hear that a
military woman was ordered to abort a fetus. We'd be outraged because
that's just too gross an intrusion for even military exigency to
justify. "Orders are orders" has its limits.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: gjpatton@mindspring.com (Gary Patton)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: 24 Jan 1999 10:51:20 GMT
On Tue, 19 Jan 1999 02:31:49 GMT, J.D. Baldwin <baldwin@netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>> The Anthrax vaccine is not experimental, and has been in use for
>> many years as has been noted in previous posts.
>
>The Anthrax vaccine isn't what I was talking about. Some of the drugs
>administered to troops during Desert Shield were NOT FDA approved for
>use in humans.
J.D., I've been lurking here and on s.m.n for quite a while, and,
though I respect your opinion on things with wings and things that float,
I've got to tell you that you're off-base here. I was deployed to SA as
part of a Marine artillery battalion, and I stayed there for the whole
show; I was given the anthrax vaccination, and the 2 so-called
experimental drugs. I wrote down their names (which were on the
manufacturer's packaging) and researched them when I got back. One was
standard garden-variety ciprofloxacin, a prescription antibiotic. The
other was <mumble>, which name I can (embarrasingly) not recall, but it
turned out to be a drug clinically administered as an antidote for
organophosphate poisoning (understandable, since organophosphates,
commonly used in pesticides, are closely related to nerve agents). The
drugs themselves were not experimental or untested in humans; only their
use a prophylactic measure was.
-GP
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 17:18:09 GMT
In article <slrn7alvqe.20v.gjpatton@shiva.lighthouse.org>, Gary Patton
<gjpatton@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >> The Anthrax vaccine is not experimental, and has been in use for
> >> many years as has been noted in previous posts.
> >
> >The Anthrax vaccine isn't what I was talking about. Some of the drugs
> >administered to troops during Desert Shield were NOT FDA approved for
> >use in humans.
>
> J.D., I've been lurking here and on s.m.n for quite a while, and,
> though I respect your opinion on things with wings and things that
> float, I've got to tell you that you're off-base here. I was deployed
> to SA as part of a Marine artillery battalion, and I stayed there for
> the whole show; I was given the anthrax vaccination, and the 2
> so-called experimental drugs.
Let's get one thing straight here: I am NOT a subject matter expert on
the medical stuff here. I formed my opinions mainly by assessing the
credibility of the DoD's senior leadership (zero, since they were
already caught in undisputed lies about exposure to chemical and/or
biological agents) and weighing that against the opinions of two
doctors of my acquaintance -- once military, one civilian -- who
believe that medical practices in Desert Shield violated what would be
considered ethical practices and standard of care by essentially
*all* ethical physicians.
I also work in the pharmaceutical industry, though not in a medical
capacity (I run the servers for the clinical submissions
documentation), and I am somewhat familiar with drug investigation
protocols and the rules governing their administration. I work
directly with people who *are* actually doing new drug applications
from these protocols.
I don't have a problem with people who interpret facts differently, or
have a different perspective on medical ethics vs. wartime exigency.
What I object to are people who come forward, with no more knowledge
of the medical issues here than I have, and a damn sight less, and
proclaim that the government would NEVER do something like that to its
troops (despite numerous undisputed instances of exactly that in the
recent past), and that it must all be some sort of kooky conspiracy
theory.
> I wrote down their names (which were on the manufacturer's
> packaging) and researched them when I got back. One was standard
> garden-variety ciprofloxacin, a prescription antibiotic. The other
> was <mumble>, which name I can (embarrasingly) not recall, but it
> turned out to be a drug clinically administered as an antidote for
> organophosphate poisoning (understandable, since organophosphates,
> commonly used in pesticides, are closely related to nerve agents).
Interestingly, you had to dig this information up yourself, when
federal law (10 USC 1109) requires that you be informed -- up front,
if possible, but "in no case" more than 30 days later -- of just what
it was you were given and all other IND protocol (see below)
information. There are of course -- brace yourself for a shock, here
-- no consequences or accountability for officials who violate this
law.
> The drugs themselves were not experimental or untested in humans;
> only their use a prophylactic measure was.
The drug you are forgetting was probably pyridostigmine bromide. Even
if it wasn't, this is the main drug of controversy and is the one that
constitutes medical experimentation on troops.
PB was on an Investigational New Drug (IND) protocol for the
Department of Defense. The medical ethical rules governing these
protocols are strict and unambiguous: you simply do not put someone on
one of these medications, under such circumstances, without informed
consent. (There is a narrow exception that does not remotely apply
here.) The DoD used the prelude-to-war frenzy as a political tool to
bludgeon the FDA into adopting an extremely ill-advised (and much
regretted) "interim rule" that permitted them to do exactly that.
By the standards of ordinary medical ethics, this decision treated the
Desert Shield troops as the exact moral equivalent of laboratory rats.
(Oddly, PETA has not come forward to protest just yet.) A civilian
doctor who pulled a stunt like this on his patients would be liable
for the tort of medical malpractice in every country in the world, and
would be criminally liable in a great many US states. His license
revocation hearing would take all of ninety seconds (and that's
assuming he gets eighty of them to tell his side).
PB had been around as a treatment for some disease or another for a
long, long time. It's possible you're right about it being used as an
antidote to poisoning; I hadn't heard that use before. But there are
reasons for the protocols governing "applied use" of a drug. In a
course of treatment for a disease, or in an emergency medicine
situation, medical history, other drugs, chemicals present in the
environment, etc., can all be assessed. It's a whole qualitatively
different matter to administer a drug to hundreds of thousands of
humans with no regard for those details.
Again: it's one thing to sign up for military service and have to face
a threat from the enemy that might wound you, damage your health or
even kill you. It's another thing to have a bunch of bureaucrats in
Washington concoct medical experiments and implement them on you
without your informed consent, and then to wash their hands of you
completely when it all blows up.
I can't say I blame all those of you in denial about this. It took me
a long time and a LOT of evidence, and the word of knowledgable
individuals whom I personally know and trust before I even *began* to
see that this sort of dereliction of duty toward service members and
veterans on the part of our nation's senior leadership is closer to
the norm than the exception. Indeed, things actually seem a bit worse
today than in the days of deliberate exposure to radiation (just to
see what would happen) during nuclear tests. At least *those*
veterans got their meager entitlement out of the DVA.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: gjpatton@mindspring.com (Gary Patton)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: 27 Jan 1999 09:18:35 GMT
On Tue, 26 Jan 1999 17:18:09 GMT, J.D. Baldwin <baldwin@netcom.com> wrote:
[snip]
>I don't have a problem with people who interpret facts differently, or
>have a different perspective on medical ethics vs. wartime exigency.
>What I object to are people who come forward, with no more knowledge
>of the medical issues here than I have, and a damn sight less, and
>proclaim that the government would NEVER do something like that to its
>troops (despite numerous undisputed instances of exactly that in the
>recent past), and that it must all be some sort of kooky conspiracy
>theory.
I have a healthy scepticism, I think, for the actions and motives of the
US government and its officials, and having at least researched the drugs
and their side effects I think it's allowed for me to put my USD .02 in.
Since below you indicate that you _are_ indeed aware of PB having been
a prescription drug, I don't understand why you decided to call it an
'experimental drug' when they know that it wasn't.
>> I wrote down their names (which were on the manufacturer's
>> packaging) and researched them when I got back. One was standard
>> garden-variety ciprofloxacin, a prescription antibiotic. The other
>> was <mumble>, which name I can (embarrasingly) not recall, but it
>> turned out to be a drug clinically administered as an antidote for
>> organophosphate poisoning (understandable, since organophosphates,
>> commonly used in pesticides, are closely related to nerve agents).
>
>Interestingly, you had to dig this information up yourself, when
>federal law (10 USC 1109) requires that you be informed -- up front,
>if possible, but "in no case" more than 30 days later -- of just what
>it was you were given and all other IND protocol (see below)
>information. There are of course -- brace yourself for a shock, here
>-- no consequences or accountability for officials who violate this
>law.
It's now found under 10 USC 1107, and indeed says that when US armed
forces are 'to receive an investigational new drug or a drug unapproved
for its applied use' then notification is required. Not all laws are
criminal statutes, and very few 'laws' (by which people usually mean the
vast corpus of codes and regulations that the government nominally abides
by) actually have penalties. I wish I could remember whether or not the
packaging had an informational pamphlet in it, like all the other
prescription drugs I've seen.
>> The drugs themselves were not experimental or untested in humans;
>> only their use a prophylactic measure was.
>
>The drug you are forgetting was probably pyridostigmine bromide. Even
>if it wasn't, this is the main drug of controversy and is the one that
>constitutes medical experimentation on troops.
Thanks for refreshing my memory, it was indeed pyridostigmine bromide
that I was referring to.
>PB was on an Investigational New Drug (IND) protocol for the
>Department of Defense. The medical ethical rules governing these
>protocols are strict and unambiguous: you simply do not put someone on
>one of these medications, under such circumstances, without informed
>consent. (There is a narrow exception that does not remotely apply
>here.) The DoD used the prelude-to-war frenzy as a political tool to
>bludgeon the FDA into adopting an extremely ill-advised (and much
>regretted) "interim rule" that permitted them to do exactly that.
I was unaware of this, and I'm kicking myself mentally since I always
tell people that opinions are worthless unless they're informed. But
what counts as bludgeoning? A request? How are you saying the DoD
applied pressure to the FDA? The FDA's entire raison d'etre is to make
sure that the food, drugs, cosmetics, etc. we use are safe, and is
famously obstinate about refusing to approve new drugs until they've been
demonstrated safe. I don't blindly trust that the government will always
do the right thing, but I think that saying that the FDA, under some
'pressure' from the DoD, approved the use of PB without first checking to
see if it was safe requires some support.
>By the standards of ordinary medical ethics, this decision treated the
>Desert Shield troops as the exact moral equivalent of laboratory rats.
This is where I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think
that administering to troops a drug already in clinical use in the United
States at a much higher dose level can even be remotely analogized to
'let's pump a lab rat full of this stuff and see how much it takes kill
it'.
[snip, 'civilian doctors can't do this']
>PB had been around as a treatment for some disease or another for a
>long, long time.
Myasthenia Gravis. Also, interestingly, being tested for repetitive
strain injuries like carpal tunnel syndrom.
>It's possible you're right about it being used as an
>antidote to poisoning; I hadn't heard that use before. But there are
>reasons for the protocols governing "applied use" of a drug. In a
>course of treatment for a disease, or in an emergency medicine
>situation, medical history, other drugs, chemicals present in the
>environment, etc., can all be assessed. It's a whole qualitatively
>different matter to administer a drug to hundreds of thousands of
>humans with no regard for those details.
We were active duty US Marines, by default we were all pretty healthy,
and our medical history well known. It's not like we got PB mixed in our
MREs; a medical officer came out and gave us a lecture on which pills to
take and when. It's a shame I don't have more to go on than my memory,
since it'd be helpful if I could remember exactly what he said.
>Again: it's one thing to sign up for military service and have to face
>a threat from the enemy that might wound you, damage your health or
>even kill you. It's another thing to have a bunch of bureaucrats in
>Washington concoct medical experiments and implement them on you
>without your informed consent, and then to wash their hands of you
>completely when it all blows up.
I think we'll have to agree we don't see eye to eye on this. In
retrospect, not handing out a pamphlet informing us of pyridostigmine
bromide's status as an IND was politically stupid. That's a far cry from
your characterization of PB administration as one big LD50 test.
>I can't say I blame all those of you in denial about this.
I deny that I'm in denial.
[snip]
-GP
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 21:18:05 GMT
In article <slrn7atnnb.3q5.gjpatton@shiva.lighthouse.org>, Gary Patton
<gjpatton@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Since below you indicate that you _are_ indeed aware of PB having
> been a prescription drug, I don't understand why you decided to call
> it an 'experimental drug' when they know that it wasn't.
PB was administered to troops under an Investigational New Drug (IND)
protocol. This is what is commonly understood by most people by the
term "experimental drug," which is clinically meaningless anyway.
The general perception of this practice is reinforced by two
things that are not in serious dispute:
1. A civilian doctor who did this [administered a drug under an IND
without informed consent] to a civilian patient would certainly and
immediately lose his license to practice, and might well, in some
states, go to prison for the practice.
2. Medical ethics simply does not permit this practice. Informed
consent must ALWAYS be obtained under such a protocol, by that
standard. (Well, okay, not *always* -- an incompetent patient may be
given such a drug with the informed consent of the family.) That the
FDA acted to put military troops outside the scope of medical ethics
does not diminish the truth or impact of that statement.
> >Interestingly, you had to dig this information up yourself, when
> >federal law (10 USC 1109) requires that you be informed -- up front,
> >if possible, but "in no case" more than 30 days later -- of just what
> >it was you were given and all other IND protocol (see below)
> >information. There are of course -- brace yourself for a shock, here
> >-- no consequences or accountability for officials who violate this
> >law.
>
> It's now found under 10 USC 1107, and indeed says that when US armed
> forces are 'to receive an investigational new drug or a drug
> unapproved for its applied use' then notification is required. Not
> all laws are criminal statutes, and very few 'laws' (by which people
> usually mean the vast corpus of codes and regulations that the
> government nominally abides by) actually have penalties.
Yes, it's awfully convenient, isn't it? The laws by which you and
I are required to abide all carry stiff prison terms for failure
to do so. Laws by which government officials must abide have all
the legal force of a casual suggestion. But that's another topic
for another time, I suppose.
> >PB was on an Investigational New Drug (IND) protocol for the
> >Department of Defense. The medical ethical rules governing these
> >protocols are strict and unambiguous: you simply do not put someone on
> >one of these medications, under such circumstances, without informed
> >consent. (There is a narrow exception that does not remotely apply
> >here.) The DoD used the prelude-to-war frenzy as a political tool to
> >bludgeon the FDA into adopting an extremely ill-advised (and much
> >regretted) "interim rule" that permitted them to do exactly that.
>
> I was unaware of this, and I'm kicking myself mentally since I
> always tell people that opinions are worthless unless they're
> informed. But what counts as bludgeoning? A request?
The FDA strongly resisted adoption of this interim rule, and the rule
was adopted without even a nod to the usual process for implementation
of federal regulations (e.g., a period of public review and comment).
> How are you saying the DoD applied pressure to the FDA?
Well, it's not the sort of thing you'll find in the Congressional
Record, but the story is that the DoD undersecretary for health
affairs (or whatever his title is) pushed this through over
the objection of the actual medical professionals there. It's not
hard to picture a scenario in which DoD paints a scenario in which
the FDA is portrayed as "obstructionist" and "being on the side of
the enemy" etc. etc. FDA-bashing (in which I occasionally engage,
myself) isn't exactly a difficult or unusual practice.
> >By the standards of ordinary medical ethics, this decision treated the
> >Desert Shield troops as the exact moral equivalent of laboratory rats.
>
> This is where I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think
> that administering to troops a drug already in clinical use in the
> United States at a much higher dose level can even be remotely
> analogized to 'let's pump a lab rat full of this stuff and see how
> much it takes kill it'.
Lab rats are used for more than just testing toxic levels of
compounds. The critical distinction here is whether informed consent
was required. For every other human in the world, it is. For
military members and lab rats, it isn't.
> [snip, 'civilian doctors can't do this']
>
> >PB had been around as a treatment for some disease or another for a
> >long, long time.
>
> Myasthenia Gravis. Also, interestingly, being tested for repetitive
> strain injuries like carpal tunnel syndrom.
And how many of the patients in this latter case have been given the
drug without informed consent?
> >It's possible you're right about it being used as an antidote to
> >poisoning; I hadn't heard that use before. But there are reasons for
> >the protocols governing "applied use" of a drug. In a course of
> >treatment for a disease, or in an emergency medicine situation,
> >medical history, other drugs, chemicals present in the environment,
> >etc., can all be assessed. It's a whole qualitatively different
> >matter to administer a drug to hundreds of thousands of humans with no
> >regard for those details.
>
> We were active duty US Marines, by default we were all pretty
> healthy, and our medical history well known.
Good general health isn't the whole story. Evaluation for genetic
predisposition to problems (one of the GWS theories rests on this,
but I'm not competent to evaluate it specifically), the enviroment,
other drugs, etc. are all factors that should be evaluated very
carefully in any IND. Clearly, that wasn't done here.
> It's not like we got PB mixed in our MREs; a medical officer came
> out and gave us a lecture on which pills to take and when. It's a
> shame I don't have more to go on than my memory, since it'd be
> helpful if I could remember exactly what he said.
The point is, it's still an order and therefore informed consent is
missing from the equation. There aren't any other cases in which
this is considered medically ethical, short of laboratory animals.
True, military people are *expected* to follow orders, but that's not
supposed to mean they have to submit to absolutely anything at the
whim of absolutely anyone who happens to outrank them. I think I
demonstrated pretty conclusively (judging from the lack of rebuttal)
that there are limits to this "orders are orders" stuff. To me,
requiring participation in an IND trial without informed consent goes
*way* past that limit. So far beyond, in fact, that I think there's
an excellent case to be made for disobedience of such an order on the
grounds that the order is not legal.
> >Again: it's one thing to sign up for military service and have to face
> >a threat from the enemy that might wound you, damage your health or
> >even kill you. It's another thing to have a bunch of bureaucrats in
> >Washington concoct medical experiments and implement them on you
> >without your informed consent, and then to wash their hands of you
> >completely when it all blows up.
>
> I think we'll have to agree we don't see eye to eye on this. In
> retrospect, not handing out a pamphlet informing us of pyridostigmine
> bromide's status as an IND was politically stupid.
A pamphlet wouldn't have helped. Informed CONSENT is required for all
IND protocol subjects. That's fundamental medical ethics.
> That's a far cry from your characterization of PB administration as
> one big LD50 test.
That would be a fair statement if I'd ever made or even contemplated
such a characterization. As it is, it's a crude straw man. An LD50
test on humans would be unethical on safety grounds. Informed consent
for IND trials is a separate issue.
But it seems that we are now arguing whether this whole mess was a
Good Thing or a Bad Thing and seem to have moved past this nonsense
about how the PB administration was "FDA-approved" and that there was
absolutely nothing "experimental" about it. It was, justified or not
(my position is that it was not), a clear bending (that's the
charitable word) of ordinary medical ethics in the name of (a false)
military exigency. Anyone of ordinary moral sensibilities ought
at least to be a little queasy about that sort of thing, even if one
ultimately concludes it was justified.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: gjpatton@mindspring.com (Gary Patton)
Subject: Re: Pilots Refuse Anthrax Shots
Date: 30 Jan 1999
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,
alt.military.retired
On Wed, 27 Jan 1999 21:18:05 GMT, J.D. Baldwin <baldwin@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <slrn7atnnb.3q5.gjpatton@shiva.lighthouse.org>, Gary Patton
[snip of, well, everything]
J.D., I've appreciated this discussion, and I was wrong in equating your
opinion of the (ordered) use of an IND drug by US troops during the Gulf
Unpleasantness to an LD50 experiment. I do still believe, however, that
the DoD was justified in requesting, and the FDA in granting, a waiver of
the requirement for informed consent, based (I believe) upon the drug's
record of safety in clinical trials. I think that our mutual impressions
of this practice have reached a point of "Yes it is!" "No, it isn't!"
vis-a-vis the morality of PB administration to troops.
Also, it's a lot more fun reading F-22 vs. MiG 1.42/EF2000 threads.
You have my respect, sir.
-GP
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