-Caveat Lector-
Victims of
vaccine?
N.C. troops say military program is unsafe
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/9763416.htm?1c
ELIZABETH LELANDCharlotte Observer
Sun, Sep.
26, 2004
Two days after a
military nurse injected Lavester Brown with the anthrax vaccine at Pope Air
Force Base near Fayetteville, his heart failed.
Brown was 34, an avid athlete, career military. Doctors had
warned him to avoid vaccinations, he said, because of a reaction to a malaria
drug in the early '90s. But when Brown told superiors, he said, they warned he
could be kicked out of the military if he didn't get vaccinated for
anthrax.
Brown was afraid: of the vaccine, of losing his job. He had a
wife and four young children to support.
"I kept telling them, `I can't take the shot.' "
The vaccination is mandatory, part of the military's war on
terrorism. Brown had been in the Air Force 14 years and was trained to follow
orders. So when a commander, a major, a captain and a first sergeant all ordered
him to be vaccinated, Brown, a technical sergeant, rolled up his sleeve and took
the jab.
He is now awaiting a heart transplant.
Thousands of soldiers have suffered unexplained illnesses after
getting the anthrax vaccine, ranging from muscle aches to death. The federal
Food and Drug Administration says the vaccine has no more side effects than
other vaccines, but cases like Lavester Brown's raise troubling
questions:
Is the vaccination safe?
Should the military require troops to take it?
There was concern about the anthrax vaccine long before the
threat of global terrorism.
In the 1990s, the FDA found problems with quality control
procedures at the only U.S. company that makes the vaccine, then owned by the
state of Michigan. The FDA warned that if the problems were not corrected, the
company could lose its license. The state halted production in 1998 and began
renovations, then sold the plant to BioPort.
After terrorists hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, and
anthrax-laced letters killed five people and infected at least 13 others, demand
for a vaccine erupted. In January 2002, the FDA gave BioPort approval to
distribute its vaccine to the military.
The FDA and the Department of Defense and BioPort all say the
vaccine is safe. A vocal group of current and former military personnel, doctors
and members of Congress claims it is not. Three lawsuits challenging the vaccine
are now in federal court.
To the emergency
room
Brown knew nothing of the controversy on Friday, Feb. 27, when
he got the fourth in a series of six anthrax shots.He rarely got sick, not even
a cold. He didn't drink. He didn't smoke. He stood 5 feet 11 1/2 inches and
weighed 207 pounds, but so much was muscle, he looked lean.
The day after the fourth anthrax shot, Saturday morning, he
played basketball at the gym as usual but quickly tired. He went to the
emergency room that night, he said, and a military doctor diagnosed a
gastrointestinal infection.
By Sunday, he felt as if his body was filling up with fluid. The
muscles in his neck throbbed and bulged. He had trouble breathing. Back at the
emergency room that night, he said, a doctor again diagnosed gastrointestinal
infection.
Something else is happening, Brown remembers saying. I can't
breathe.
He said his wife, Ebony, insisted on X-rays. "When they looked
at the X-rays," Brown recalled, "the doctor got this look on his face. I knew
something was terribly wrong."
Brown said his heart was so enlarged, it had almost stopped
pumping. He now takes medication to keep it beating until a transplant becomes
available. He has dropped to 151 pounds, and walking only a few feet exhausts
him. Friday, he was medically retired from the Air Force.
Before he got sick, Brown sometimes worked two jobs to provide
for Ebony and their four children, ages 5 to 12. Now Ebony works and the
children help care for him, and that's been a tough transition.
"I wish we had done our homework before Lavester got in line
(for the vaccine)," Ebony said. "We trusted the military."
Mandatory shots
Until recently, anthrax had been considered primarily a
livestock disease. People can be infected in three ways -- through skin contact,
by eating infected meat or by breathing airborne spores -- but it's
rare.
The military became convinced that Iraq had developed biological
weapons, including anthrax, and might pack its Scud missiles with the deadly
bacteria. Nearly everyone who inhales anthrax dies if not treated.
In 1998, the Defense Department made vaccinations
mandatory.
Since then, about 1.2 million military personnel have received
the vaccine, six doses over 18 months, followed by yearly boosters. (Several
hundred thousand, a Pentagon spokesman said, got the vaccine during the 1991
Persian Gulf War.)
Out of 4.7 million doses given since 1998, the government says
it has received 3,817 reports of adverse reactions, from headache, fatigue and
fever to cancer, cardiac arrest and
