Fwd: Why vaccine damage cannot be proven in military cases

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" luckypig "

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 11:57:34 -0400

Why vaccine damage cannot be proven in military

cases

 

Why vaccine damage cannot be proven in military cases

 

 

This is from tompaine.com and explains much:

 

 

Deserting Our Troops

 

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior editor for TomPaine.com.

 

The Army and Air Force failed to obey Congress' orders to create baseline

medical records for soldiers sent to overseas war zones, in this case Iraq,

Congress' General Accounting Office (GAO) concludes in a just-released report.

" The percentage of Army and Air Force service members missing one or both of

their pre- and post-deployment health assessments ranged from 38 to 98 percent

of our samples, " the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, found. " Moreover, when

health assessments were conducted, as many as 45 percent of them were not done

within the required time frames. "

These statistics confirm what veterans of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War and

members of Congress have been saying for months: the Pentagon has been ignoring

a law whose primary intention was avoiding a repeat of the military's mistakes

surrounding its handling of veteran illnesses that have become known as Gulf War

Syndrome.

After the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, tens of thousands of veterans became sick

with mysterious illnesses. But because the Pentagon did not have baseline

medical records for each soldier in that conflict, it was very slow to

acknowledge and act on its responsibility to provide health care for these

veterans.

So, in 1997, Congress passed a Public Law 105-85 requiring the military to

conduct detailed pre- and post-deployment medical records for every soldier sent

into a war zone. The GAO says the military " did not comply " with that

requirement in the Iraq War. It also found the Department of Defense (DOD) " did

not maintain a complete, centralized database of service members' medical

assessments and immunizations. "

The issue has been simmering in veteran's circles for some time, but with the

Pentagon announcing last week a new round of National Guard deployments to Iraq,

it raises the question anew: will the Pentagon fully implement the law?

" We've been calling for it. It's time for it to happen, " said Steven Robinson,

executive director of the National Gulf War Veterans Center. " We've had the

hearings on the hill. We've done the Kabuki dance. [undersecretary of Defense

for Health Affairs William] Winkenwerder says they don't need to do the

screening. The GAO says it's insufficient. Now what? "

Robinson said he and other veterans advocates will be speaking to members of the

House Armed Services Committee -- which requested the GAO report -- and Veterans

Affairs Committee this week to see what the next steps may be.

Veterans' advocates became aware last fall and winter that troops being sent to

Iraq were not being examined as required. Instead, the military gave soldiers a

short questionnaire to fill out. After congressional hearings and public

criticism from veterans last winter, the Pentagon said it would conduct

post-deployment exams and expand its questionnaire.

The GAO report was based on investigations at five military bases: Fort

Campbell; Fort Drum; Hurlburt Field and Travis Air Force Base. It recommended

that the Secretary of Defense and undersecretary responsible for military health

" establish an effective quality assurance program that will help ensure that the

military services comply with the force health protection and surveillance

requirements for all service members. "

In a Sept. 11 letter responding to the GAO report, Assistant Secretary of

Defense William Winkenwerder said his office " has already established a quality

assurance program for pre- and post-deployment health assessments. " Winkenwerder

said this program has been in place " since June 2003, " which would be several

months after Congress held hearings on the law and launched the GAO

investigation.

While it remains to be seen what impact the GAO report will have on military

health policies, many soldiers now in Iraq and their family members say the

Pentagon has all-but ignored the requirement for creating the baseline medical

records.

" My husband [an Army Reservist]'s physical was waived before he left, " wrote one

member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), an activist group of families with

relatives in the military in Iraq. Those contacted requested their names not be

used.

" Myself and my wife were given the anthrax and small pox vaccines and were not

given a choice in the matter, " wrote a soldier. " No screening was done before

these vaccines were given to see if there might be complications from a genetic

or health standpoint. No blood work was done on us besides a few general

questions from a colonel. "

" My son has returned home and as far as I know no one has made any mention of

medical testing, " wrote another member of MFSO. " They arrived back the first

week in August... [They] gave him a questionnaire to look over. There are three

sections, but he said [questions] in the last section, more current symptoms

didn't seem relative for now. "

These anecdotes corroborate the GAO's findings: that the pre- and

post-deployment medical exams were largely an after-thought, not a policy

priority.

Among the soldiers contacted, several said they were aware there could be health

consequences of their military services. What they and their family members most

frequently cited was exposure to byproducts of depleted uranium (DU) munitions.

DU is a slightly radioactive metal that's denser than lead and burns at very

high temperatures. It is used in bullets and artillery pieces. Upon impact, it

burns and vaporizes. Particles from the smoke are very tiny and can be breathed

in and become embedded in lung tissue.

" My daughter told me that as they rolled into Baghdad from Kuwait, right after

the end of the big bombing, in mid-April, there were Iraqi tanks on the sides of

the roads, that still had the dead Iraqi soldiers in them, " wrote another MFSO

member. " She asked why the tanks were not cleared off or the bodies taken out,

and she was told that no one wanted the duty because the tanks had been hit with

DU shells.

" She said they all assumed the dust in the road was full of DU dust, and she

said she felt she would now be at an increased risk of cancer, as did all of her

unit. She was manning the 50-caliber on top of the truck, and said she breathed

in the dust for many miles. "

Only one e-mail out of more than one dozen received from MFSO families said

their spouse or relative had received the pre- and post-deployment exams and

shots.

In conclusion, the GAO said the Pentagon was poised to repeat the mistakes of

the first Gulf War, where it did not promptly or adequately address the

illnesses among veterans that became known as Gulf War Syndrome.

" Failure to complete post-deployment health assessments may risk a delay in

obtaining appropriate medical follow-up attention for a health problem or

concern that may have arisen during or following the deployment, " the GAO said.

" Similarly, incomplete and inaccurate medical records and deployment databases

would likely hinder DOD's ability to investigate the causes of any future health

problems that may arise coincident with deployments. "

 

 

 

 

 

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