From the February 1999 Idaho Observer:

Open letter to the Department of Defense

Gulf War veterans were inoculated with cocktails of "experimental" vaccines which, the overwhelming mountains of evidence would suggest, have contributed to the epidemic of sicknesses that we call Gulf War Illness. On the heels of the president's announcement last month that a chemical and/or biological weapons attack in the U.S. is inevitable within the next two years, the Pentagon has ordered that all military personnel accept an "experimental" anthrax vaccine -- or else. Here we go again. When are we going to tell "our" government to stop treating us like lab rats?

The following open letter was provided by Debra Smith.

FROM: GRANDPARENTS, PARENTS, BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND CONCERNED FAMILY, FRIENDS AND YOUNG AMERICANS CONCERNED ABOUT THE INOCULATION OF MILITARY PERSONAL WITH THE ANTHRAX VACCINATION.

RE: ANTHRAX VACCINATIONS

The authors of this letter are concerned parents, children, and interested parties. Please note that many parents, children, and interested parties have contacted their elected officials throughout the United States about the forced anthrax vaccinations. So far, the response has been unsatisfactory.

We demand the following:

1. That you immediately stop the forced inoculation of the United States military men and women with the Anthrax vaccination until further outside, independent studies and testing can be performed. Researchers unaffiliated with the Pentagon must be permitted to conduct these studies on the vaccine. “The Pentagon should invite major civilian U.S. public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and major non-governmental organizations such as the American Public Health Association, to participate actively in the design, testing, implementation, and oversight of this plan. It would be tragic if these agencies were only brought in later, as was done with nuclear bomb-test fallout and Agent Orange to write a post-mortem analysis” (The Anthrax Dilemma, by Victor W. Sidel, MD, Meryl Nass, MD, Tod Ensign, JD, LLM).

2. That all military vaccinations, including those which are about to come in the next few years as part of the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program, be made voluntary.

3. THAT ALL PUNISHMENTS BE RESCINDED AND SERVICEMEMBERS REINSTATED IF THEY SO CHOOSE.

The Department of Defense, the Federal Drug and Food Administration, and medical authorities throughout the United States have admitted there is no data to support the long term safety of this vaccine. In terms of effectiveness, the animal data suggest the vaccine is likely to be ineffective in humans. An FDA report of the “only” plant in America that makes Anthrax vaccine says: “The manufacturing process for Anthrax vaccine is not validated.”

The report reveals that several batches of the vaccine actually failed the potency test. Some were so old they were expired -- but they were not tossed out! Many were improperly re-dated and medical corpsmen in the military are concerned about other batches that are about to be injected into our sons and daughters in military service. There is also empirical data suggesting that the vaccine may have been and may be a cause for what is termed Gulf War Syndrome. We are also demanding that as our elected representative you directly answer the following questions.

1. How can politicians pontificate about Human Rights to the world when they permit profit to be the motive for the violation of our sons and daughters human rights, the future human rights of their younger brothers and sisters and the human rights of good people around the world who have come and will come to serve in our country and way of life?

2. Has our government ever used private citizens as guinea pigs?

a. Were studies performed on 412 black individuals infected with syphilis, depriving them of a proven cure for the purpose of a 40-year study of the disease's effect_which, untreated, is nearly always death. (The Tuskeegee Experiments conducted by U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS)?

b. Has the United States Government conducted extensive radiation experiments over a number of years on individuals without their consent? They included, “235 babies in five states who were injected with radioactive iodine, 100 retarded Massachusetts children who had been fed radioactive cereal, 800 pregnant Tennessee women who had been exposed to radioactive substances and eight people injected with various isotopes of strontium at the University of California Hospital at San Francisco” (DOD activity exposed in the Albuquerque Tribune).

c. How many other atrocities are still hidden?

3. Did a chief medical officer for the DOD, Dr. Arthur Friedlander, MC Colonel and head of Bacteriology at Fort Detrick's USAMRIID, writing in a textbook published in 1994 [Brachman PS and Friedlander AM: Anthrax.

In Plotkin SA and Mortimer EA (eds): Vaccines, ed 2. Philadelphia, WB Saunders, 1994, pp.729-739], state: “Although the importance of the toxins in pathogenesis suggests that antiserum may have a role in treating serious infections, no product is available for human use. The current vaccine against anthrax is unsatisfactory for several reasons. The vaccine is composed of an undefined crude culture supernatant absorbed to aluminum hydroxide. There has been no quantification of the protective antigen content of the vaccine or of any of the other constituents, so the degree of purity is unknown. Standardization is determined by an animal potency test. The undefined nature of the vaccine and the presence of constituents that may be undesirable may account for the level of reactogenicity observed. The vaccine is also less than optimal in that six doses are required over 18 months, followed by annual boosters. There is also evidence in experimental animals that the vaccine may be less effective against some strains of anthrax.”

4. Did Dr. Meryl Nass confirm that this remained the case in Sept, 1998? (Yes, she did).

5. Did Kathryn Zoon, head of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of FDA, state in a letter to Patrick Eddington on April 28, 1998, that “data for clinical studies conducted on the long-term health effects of taking the Anthrax vaccine have not been submitted to the FDA?”

6. If the answers to questions 2 through 5 are “yes,” then why would a young person consider enlisting in the United States military in the face of this anthrax inoculation?

7. In the face of so much data, why are there so many Gulf War Veterans who did not go to the Gulf ill, and there families who are becoming ill, not being provided proper attention or so much as acknowledgment that the vaccine cocktails they received may be a cause?

8. Did President Eisenhower warn us about an unholy alliance that was developing between retired military personnel and private industry?

9. Does (2.5 million military men and women) x (6 shots) x $3.5 = over $50 million?

We do not want your apology after the damage is done. We are talking about our children.

Sean & Leslee Dudley

Mycoplasma Registry for Gulf War Illness & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
303 North 47th Street, J-10
San Diego, CA 92102-4801
Tel & Fax: (619) 266-1116
e-mail: mycoreg@juno.com