Book Review: In Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment That's Killing Our

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Fri, 10 Dec 2004 04:05:30 EST

Book Review

 

 

 

 

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In these times of panicked waiting lines for flu vaccine, here comes a

new

 

and even more frightening look at the U.S. military's ill-fated anthrax

 

vaccine program.

 

 

 

 

In Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment That's Killing Our

Soldiers

 

And Why GIs Are Only The First Victims (Basic Books, New York, Oct. 19,

 

2004), author Gary Matsumoto tells an amazing, six-year scientific

mystery

 

story, unraveled literally strand by strand and lab sample by lab

sample. It

 

is a real-life and death CSI show, and perhaps a tragic mistake of

 

gargantuan proportions, affecting thousands if not hundreds of

thousands of

 

U.S. fighting men and women.

 

 

 

 

In a crash effort to boost the effectiveness and lessen the required

doses

 

of existing anthrax vaccines, U.S. military researchers apparently

turned to

 

squalene, a naturally-occurring oil distantly related to cholesterol.

The

 

squalene was added to various " experimental " batches of the vaccine

 

administered to troops destined for the first Gulf War in 1991. But

when

 

injected, even in the minutest of amounts, squalene oil can cause the

body's

 

immune system to create its own specialized anti-bodies which then

 

indiscriminately attack all such other oils in the body. These

auto-immune

 

reactions have the exact same symptoms as those of the victims of the

 

so-called Gulf War Syndrome.

 

 

 

 

Proving that this additive, called an " adjuvant " (a word not often

heard

 

outside of microbiology), was causing these adverse reactions has been

an

 

uphill battle for a handful of dedicated civilian researchers. And it

is

 

their stories, along with those of some fearless victims, that become

the

 

focus of Matsumoto's book.

 

 

 

 

Matsumoto has done his research and it shows. He is very precise and

 

careful. His book is also well written, with the occasional clever turn

of

 

phrase, such as " Rube Goldberg immunology, " to help walk readers

through

 

some of the tougher technical data.

 

 

 

 

And Matsumoto writes with a sad heart and weeping pen. His father and

three

 

uncles all proudly served in the U.S. Army. As a former NBC foreign

 

correspondent he served in Iraq covering the first Gulf War. Matsumoto

is

 

also an award-winning magazine journalist, and has even been published

in

 

the very prestigious, scientist peer-reviewed journal, " Science. " He is

 

clearly not your run-of-the-mill author/journalist.

 

 

 

 

The book starts off with a very scary, up-close look at a secret

outbreak of

 

anthrax in the then dark out reaches of Soviet Russia in 1979, with

 

hemorrhaging patients coughing themselves literally to death. The

Soviet

 

Union had reinvented the bug wars. It was to remain a top-secret until

after

 

the end of the Cold War. But as U.S. intelligence began to pick up

hints at

 

the scale of the bio-warfare program, they were then faced with a

dramatic

 

choice - they would have to prepare and update U.S. defenses against

such a

 

weapon.

 

 

 

 

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army secretly tested anthrax

and

 

other bugs as weapons, and in response, the United States and the

British

 

did the same. Fortunately for all, they were never used. And in 1969,

 

President Nixon unilaterally put the U.S. military out of the

bio-warfare

 

business.

 

 

 

 

All that remained in the U.S. arsenal was the " weakest [possible]

vaccine "

 

for anthrax. U.S. military researchers would soon find themselves

secretly

 

following a long tradition of testing new drugs on uniformed military

 

personnel without their informed consent. Despite the precedent of the

 

Nuremburg trials, the United States had secretly hired Japanese bio-war

 

criminals and later the CIA conducted unwitting LSD experiments.

 

Unfortunately, because of the nature of war, U.S. military personnel

are

 

exempt from such disclosure requirements, and barred by a Supreme Court

 

precedent from ever suing.

 

 

 

 

During the 1980s, U.S. intelligence began reporting that Iraq had

developed

 

a lethal, " dusty " form of anthrax mixed with silica for use against

Iran. It

 

was a scary new threat, and the U.S. bio-weaponeers immediately began

 

planning an antidote. The secret U.S. program became a crash program

when

 

the Soviet fear factor again raised its ugly head, this time in the

form of

 

a Russian bio-weapons defector, in 1989. Not only did the Soviets pose

a

 

previously unknown bio-threat, but they were also known to share deadly

 

military technologies with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

 

 

 

 

It would be hard to blame U.S. military researchers then, as Matsumoto

 

accurately points out, for preparing for a possible new nightmare

threat. If

 

the Iraqis or Soviets had employed anthrax and U.S. troops been caught

 

unprotected, there would have been hell to pay. Just ask the flu

vaccine

 

manufacturers of today.

 

 

 

 

In secret, the military researchers began to labor away with adjuvants,

 

rushing to increase the potency of the weak, but licensed vaccine,

before

 

U.S. troops faced a deadly Iraqi anthrax attack. However, these efforts

 

would be labeled as " unique research opportunities, " according to a

recently

 

declassified U.S. document uncovered by Matsumoto.

 

 

 

 

But when Persian Gulf War vets later began to return home and complain

of a

 

whole myriad of debilitating auto-immune symptoms, the potentially

heroic

 

medical efforts to " boost " the vaccine with squalene were quietly

hushed up.

 

 

 

 

The symptoms included rashes, malaise, fatigue, muscle pain, joint

pain,

 

weakness and sweating, neurological problems, pneumonia, and Lupus. And

in

 

some cases even blindness and death.

 

 

 

 

What was most glaring, in hindsight, was that only vaccinated U.S.,

British,

 

Australian and Canadian troops had acquired these various maladies. And

some

 

U.S. troops had not even actually been sent to the Gulf, but had been

 

vaccinated in preparation. Further, no local Arab troops or even press

 

members, unvaccinated all, ever came down with any of these autoimmune

 

maladies.

 

 

 

 

While a media controversy revved up for several years over the

newly-named

 

Gulf War Syndrome, in 1997 the government floated a red-herring theory

in

 

the form of a CIA " simulation " of a possible gas plume from the

detonation

 

of Iraq's captured Sarin nerve gas stockpiles. All of the sudden, the

simple

 

solution-seeking media lost all interest, even though the " simulation "

had

 

totally failed the basic logic test.

 

 

 

 

Problem was, most of the affected troops were no longer in theater when

the

 

detonation occurred on March 10th, 1991. Further, again, none of the

 

indigenous troops suffered any such consequences. And nerve gas

exposure is

 

instant, with much different symptoms.

 

 

 

 

Complicated medical research, however, is not the usual purview of the

 

American media. An " adjuvant crossover, " with one wrong injected

squalene

 

molecule affecting the entire human immune system, was apparently

beyond the

 

comprehension of the average journalist, not to mention most medical

 

professionals. What Matsumoto has managed to dig up is not comforting.

 

Military researchers had ignored animal studies clearly showing the

 

autoimmune pathologies of injected squalene as an adjuvant. These

animal

 

studies showed precisely the same symptoms as those experienced by the

Gulf

 

vets.

 

 

 

 

During his investigation, Matsumoto soon crossed paths with medical

 

researchers Pam Asa and Bob Garry, who, working through Tulane Medical

 

Center at Tulane University, had actually been the first to measure the

 

actual anti-bodies caused by injected squalene. They began to test

veterans

 

for these antibodies.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Garry dug out an old batch of some 300 blood serum samples from

veterans

 

sent to him in 1993 by the Veterans Administration. Out of 86 who had

served

 

in the Gulf War, 95 percent of the sick ones tested positive for the

 

squalene anti-bodies. The number of healthy Gulf vets with the

anti-bodies

 

was zero.

 

 

 

 

Enter Patient X, who met with Asa in Memphis. He was suffering from

 

" auto-immune peripheral neuropathy, " consistent with the Gulf War

Syndrome.

 

But Patient X had never been in the military nor stationed in Iraq or

Saudi

 

Arabia. His only exposure had been in a confidential experimental

herpes

 

vaccine study. Further, he was a medical doctor. And he knew exactly

what

 

the injection was that he had received- " MF59 . squalene and water. "

 

 

 

 

Some British anthrax vaccine samples (a sister to the U.S. program)

were

 

later found dumped overboard and washed ashore, apparently from a troop

ship

 

heading for the Gulf - which, when tested by Granada Television, also

 

contained the squalene adjuvant. And Matsumoto even discovered a patent

held

 

by the Army for the potential new vaccine with squalene in one of its

 

several formulations

 

 

 

 

" It might even be the single most dangerous oil to come out of a

hypodermic

 

needle, " Matsumoto writes.

 

 

 

 

Matsumoto has found many nice historical asides, explaining how disease

and

 

war have long been intertwined in U.S. history. In 1775, in a desperate

ploy

 

to stave off a smallpox epidemic which threatened the collapse of the

 

Continental Army with desertions, Gen. George Washington ordered that

 

healthy troops be " variolated " by having smallpox pus placed into cuts

on

 

their arms. It worked, and the rest is history.

 

 

 

 

The present day vaccine story is not so pretty a tale, however, with

 

descriptions of the occasional horrible death, including one vet who

died in

 

excruciating pain as the skin on his entire body withered away. The

book is

 

littered with stories of proud U.S. soldiers dealing with amazing pain,

 

medical confusion and bureaucratic betrayal.

 

 

 

 

" Perhaps it was the importance of their apparent breakthrough [with

 

squalene] that blinded these scientists to do what they had done, "

Matsumoto

 

can only sadly surmise.

 

 

 

 

" By 1997, hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent testing the

 

efficacy of vaccines formulated with squalene adjuvants, " Matsumoto

reports.

 

Scientists were also frantically looking to squalene to help stem the

tides

 

of AIDs and cancer. Adverse news about squalene could potentially

threaten

 

" billions of dollars worth of HIV research. "

 

 

 

 

Matsumoto presents a long record of seeming deception by medical and

 

military officials at all levels. It apparently continues to this very

day,

 

judging by the coming avalanche of press statements emanating from the

 

Pentagon in response to the book's publication.

 

 

 

 

After Matsumoto wrote a preliminary article about the squalene adjuvant

for

 

" Vanity Fair " magazine back in 1999, the Air Force quickly struck back.

 

 

 

 

" Let me say this as succinctly as I can, " Air Force Surgeon General

Charles

 

H. Roadman II told assembled airmen and pilots at Dover Air Force Base

in

 

Delaware who had received the vaccine. " There is not, there never has

been,

 

squalene as an adjuvant in the anthrax immunization. And that's a

fact. "

 

 

 

 

The director of the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program, Major Guy

 

Strawder, went so far as to call Matsumoto's article " reckless,

 

irresponsible and wrong. "

 

 

 

 

Yet, Matsumoto subsequently found, " contrary to General Roadman's

strenuous

 

protests, that various batches of the new anthrax vaccine [administered

at

 

Dover and elsewhere] had contained squalene since 1987. " And when the

 

supposedly independent Food and Drug Administration finally found that

the

 

vaccine contained some amounts of squalene, they too withheld that

 

information from the public for another year and half.

 

 

 

 

When Matsumoto requested under the Freedom of Information Act any U.S.

 

contracts for adjuvants containing squalene, he was informed that two

 

contracts " and fifteen purchase orders " had, " unfortunately, all . been

 

destroyed. "

 

 

 

 

Although the book can get bogged down occasionally (but necessarily),

in

 

some rather technical issues, Matsumoto does not overplay his hand,

perhaps

 

even erring too closely on the side of caution.

 

 

 

 

And it even has a shocking surprise ending: Matsumoto reports that

 

scientists have only discovered this past summer that the latest

possible

 

victims of adjuvant-induced squalene antibodies are the recently

returned

 

Iraq War II veterans-a few even suffering some of the same auto-immune

 

symptoms as their earlier comrades.

 

 

 

 

While the plot twists and turns throughout this excellent book, by far

the

 

most ominous twist is that these vaccines are currently stockpiled for

use

 

by U.S. civilians in case of further terrorist anthrax attacks on the

 

general population.

 

 

 

 

This book is the very definition of " a seminal work " - one that cries

out

 

for further studies.

 

 

 

 

Guest Contributor Scott Malone is a multiple Emmy and Peabody

award-winning

 

investigative journalist who is currently the editor of NavySEALs.com

and

 

its counter-terrorism newsletter, BlackNET Intelligence. Send Feedback

 

responses to dwfeedback.