Fwd: • Father of dead soldier claims Army coverup •

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Fri, 8 Aug 2003 20:20:26 EDT

• Father of dead soldier claims Arm

y coverup •

 

 

SOURCE:

http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20030807-043512-3755r

 

 

Father of dead soldier claims Army coverup

By Mark Benjamin

Investigations Editor

Published 8/7/2003 6:13 PM

 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The father of a soldier who died of pneumonia

this spring said Thursday the Army has excluded her death from its investigation

of deadly pneumonia because it wants to cover up vaccine side effects.

" The government is covering this up and it is a dog-gone shame, " said

Moses Lacy, whose daughter, Army Spc. Rachael Lacy, died April 4 at the Mayo

Clinic in Rochester, Minn., after getting pneumonia.

Lacy said his daughter " was a healthy young woman " but got ill within

days of getting anthrax and smallpox vaccinations on March 2 in preparation for

deployment to the Persian Gulf. She was too ill to ever be deployed.

The Army said 100 soldiers have gotten pneumonia in Iraq and southwestern

Asia, two of those have died and another 13 have had to be put on respirators.

" The common denominator is smallpox and anthrax vaccinations, " Moses Lacy

said in a telephone interview from his home in Lynwood, Ill. " These young

people have given their lives to the military and they are getting a raw deal.

The Department of Defense is closing their eyes. "

The Army did not mention vaccines on Tuesday when it held a press

conference on the pneumonia investigation. Officials said the pneumonia does not

appear to be contagious, and are close to ruling out biological or chemical

warfare, SARS and Legionnaire's disease.

Col. Robert DeFraites of the Army Surgeon General's office said at the

press conference that the Pentagon launched the investigation because of the

severity of the pneumonia. " Are we seeing more cases in general than we might

expect? Despite the harsh environment, the answer is no ... But again, we are

still concerned about these severe ones. "

DeFraites told UPI on Wednesday that the Pentagon would look into whether

vaccines, among other factors, might have triggered the pneumonia cases.

" Among all of the possible causes or contributing factors, we are looking at the

immunizations that the soldiers received as well, " DeFraites said. " It is

premature to say that there is any relationship at all. "

The Army said it is excluding Lacy's death from its investigation because

Lacy never made it to Iraq or southwestern Asia where it says the cases are

clustered. " She was never deployed to Iraq, " Army Surgeon General spokeswoman

Virginia Stephanakis told UPI Thursday. She said the military is participating

in an investigation of Lacy's death separate from the pneumonia investigation.

" It is a whole different issue. "

Moses Lacy disagreed.

" She should be on that list (of deaths to investigate) because my

daughter's first symptoms were pneumonia, " Lacy said. " It happened immediately "

after

the vaccines, Moses said. " You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure

it out. If I were a medical official it would be the first thing I would look

into. "

Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource

Center, told UPI, " We should include in this study any illnesses or deaths that

appear to be pneumonia-related that occurred in theater or out of theater. "

Dr. Eric Pfeifer, the Minnesota coroner who performed Lacy's autopsy,

told the Army Times that the smallpox and anthrax vaccines " may have "

contributed

to Lacy's death. " It's just very suspicious in my mind...that she's healthy,

gets the vaccinations and then dies a couple weeks later. " He listed

" post-vaccine " problems on the death certificate.

Other members of the armed forces not in the Pentagon investigation say

the anthrax vaccine has made them very sick with pneumonia-like symptoms.

Michael Girard, a Senior Airman at Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa Beach, Fla.,

got

his second anthrax shot on March 4. He developed flu-like symptoms - runny

nose and a " heavy chest " - starting March 6 and by March 12 developed a rash on

his left arm where he had gotten the shot.

" Then basically it started attacking my body, section by section, " Girard

said. He said he has since suffered bouts of vomiting up blood, pain in his

feet that made them turn blue, chest pain, constipation, pain in his legs,

headaches, stomach aches and extremely high blood pressure. In one weekend he

went

to the emergency room four times. He says he suffers from insomnia and

fatigue.

At one point, he developed a horrible cough. " They did do a chest X-ray

because they thought it might be pneumonia. A nurse told me that it was, but a

doctor came in and said that it was not. "

Girard said Air Force doctors first suspected the anthrax vaccine caused

his problems, but since have backed away from that diagnosis. " Everything that

has been associated with this ever since I got sick has been like a coverup, "

Girard said. He said he " was perfectly 100 percent healthy " before getting

the vaccine. " I was in the gym for an hour to two hours per day. I was running.

I was energetic. "

He said he was not scheduled to deploy anywhere.

In its pneumonia investigation, the Army is looking into the July 12

death of Army Spc. Joshua M. Neusche, 20, of Montreal, Mo. The Pentagon has

described his death as " other causes. " The Army is also looking at the June 17

death

of Army Sgt. Michael L. Tosto, 24, of Apex, N.C. His death is listed as

" illness. "

Stephanakis said she was unfamiliar with the June 26 death in Kuwait of

another soldier, Army Spc. Cory A. Hubbell, 20, of Urbana, Ill. His death is

listed by the Pentagon under " breathing difficulties. " Hubbell's mother, Connie

Bickers, of Urbana, Ill., told the Champaign News-Gazette that the Army had

not told her how her apparently healthy son died. " I wish I had answers, but I

don't know if I'm ever going to get them, " Bickers told the paper.

On Thursday, the Pentagon announced the death of Sgt. David L. Loyd, 44,

of Jackson, Tenn. The announcement said Lloyd died on Aug. 5 when he " was on a

mission when he experienced severe chest pains. The soldier was sent to the

Kuwait hospital where he was pronounced dead. "

A co-author of a government-sponsored study of possible side effects from

the anthrax vaccine told UPI that the Army should look at whether that

vaccine is behind the cluster of pneumonia cases. That study last year found the

vaccine was the " possible or probable " cause of pneumonia in two soldiers.

" As physicians, I would think they would be looking at all possible

causes. I would think vaccines would be part of that, " said Dr. John L. Sever of

George Washington University Medical School, who was one of six authors of the

study.

Last year's anthrax vaccine study, printed in the May 2002 issue of

Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, found that the vaccine was the " possible

or

probable " cause of pneumonia among two soldiers, according to Sever. The U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services convened the group, called the Anthrax

Vaccine Expert Committee, which studied 602 reports of possible reactions to

the vaccine among nearly 400,000 troops who received it, Sever said.

In addition to identifying pneumonia and flu-like symptoms among troops

who received the vaccine, the group also looked at four other cases of

potentially serious reactions, including severe back pain and two soldiers who

had

sudden difficulty breathing in a possible allergic reaction to the vaccine.

Sever described the two cases of pneumonia as " wheezing and difficulty

breathing going into a pneumonia-like picture. "

To conduct the study, the Anthrax Vaccine Expert Committee examined

reports from the U.S. military to the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention;

they are anecdotal reports and do not necessarily show a cause-and-effect

relationship.

Moses Lacy said he believes the real story is about vaccine side effects.

" Unless somebody breaks this story wide open, we are going to have a lot more

deaths. I am afraid we are going to lose a lot because of this vaccine. "

 

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