kathi

Mystery deaths fuel vaccine anxieties
Pentagon accused of mislabeling adverse reactions, won't share autopsy
reports

Posted: September 16, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

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By Timothy W. Maier © 2003 News World Communications Inc.

Since Persian Gulf War II began about 6,000 soldiers have been shipped
home for recovery. Of these, 1,200 were wounded in combat.

Many of the others consider themselves part of an army of "walking dead"
– troops who appear to be so physically and mentally exhausted that the
military has no recourse but to discharge them.

Why they are ill has become a matter of intense debate inside the
Pentagon. Some claim a series of anthrax and smallpox vaccinations made
them so gravely ill that they have trouble breathing or sleeping and
have experienced a loss of memory. Others have been diagnosed with lupus
and heart problems.

At least six died shortly after rolling up their sleeves to receive the
anthrax and smallpox shots. But the Pentagon dismissed related claims
with such regularity and intimidation that many GIs tell Insight they no
longer report the illness. They are told to "**** it up" and move on.

"Don't blame the vaccinations" has been a Pentagon mantra since it began
inoculating nearly half a million troops almost two years ago and
pumping millions of dollars into BioPort Corp., the Lansing, Mich.-based
sole supplier of the anthrax vaccine.

But an alarming outbreak of more than 100 suspected pneumonia cases
among Gulf War II veterans serving in Iraq and southwestern Asia has
drawn the ire of Congress.

Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., held eight congressional hearings on the
safety of the vaccination while chairman of the House Government Reform
subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations, and issued a seething report that found serious safety and
regulatory problems with the vaccine. Now Shays is asking again, "Could
these vaccinations be hurting our troops?"

The Pentagon reluctantly admitted that two Army soldiers – Spc. Joshua
M. Neusche, 20, of Montreal, Mo., and Sgt. Michael L. Tosto, 24, of
Apex, N.C. - died from complications arising from pneumonia on July 12
and June 17, respectively. The Army is investigating their deaths.
Between 1998 and 2001, the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and
Preventive Medicine reported 17 soldiers died from complications of
pneumonia. The Pentagon has confirmed that this year at least 17 others
have been placed on respirators but insists the vaccinations have
nothing to do with the deaths or illness.

The two pneumonia-related deaths reported recently apparently are an
understatement. Family members of Army Spc. Zeferino E. Culunga, 20, of
Bellville, Texas, and Staff Sgt. Richard S. Eaton, 37, of Guilford,
Conn., claim their sons died in August after being diagnosed with
pneumonia. A third death involved Spc. Rachael Lacy of Lynwood, Ill.
According to her autopsy, "smallpox and anthrax vaccinations"
contributed to her death on April 4 after she first had been diagnosed
with pneumonia.

When the victims' families reached out to Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, he ordered a team of military investigators to Germany and
Iraq to review the recent pneumonia cases.

"We as a family are concerned that we are not being told the truth,"


get a second opinion on the cause of death. Culunga died of acute
leukemia. Lacy was never deployed, so she is not considered part of the
cluster of pneumonia cases.

"It is our right to receive truthful, honest and unfiltered answers just
as the military required truth, honesty and commitment from our son,"
says the Neusche-family letter to Rumsfeld.

But the Army is not investigating the deaths of Culunga or Lacy, and is
awaiting autopsy results for Eaton.

Besides those who died from pneumonia-like complications, families of
six others claim the vaccinations contributed to their sons' deaths –
including two who committed suicide because, say the complaints, the
vaccinations made them so seriously ill that it destroyed their will to
live.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged the nature
of these deaths, the Pentagon has not because military doctors have
refused to confirm that the vaccines contributed to the deaths of any of
these victims.

Despite mounting criticism, the Pentagon repeatedly claimed the
pneumonia cases had nothing to do with the anthrax or smallpox
vaccinations.

"In 200 years of vaccination, no vaccine has ever been shown to cause
pneumonia, and there are multiple reasons to believe that the vaccines
have no role," Col. John D. Grabenstein, deputy director for clinical
operations at the Military Vaccine Agency, told United Press
International.

Could Grabenstein be wrong? During congressional hearings on the
vaccination program in 1999, Pentagon officials acknowledged there had
been three reports of serious illness coincidentally associated with the
vaccination involving hypersensitivity pneumonia. A study last year in
Pharmacoepidemiolgy and Drug Safety said the vaccine was the cause of
pneumonia in two soldiers.

But Grabenstein dismisses such evidence. In fact, in his recent study of
vaccination patients published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, or JAMA, he insists there have been no deaths related to
the smallpox shot. He ignores the Lacy case because she was never
deployed overseas.

"Totally bogus," says Meryl Nass, a civilian doctor who has treated
soldiers who became ill after receiving the vaccinations. "I e-mailed
JAMA a copy of the death certificate for Lacy. I asked him why he didn't
report it. He said, 'We don't accept diagnoses from outside the
military.' The Mayo Clinic [in Rochester, Minn.] did the autopsy. They
don't believe the Mayo Clinic!"

In fact, Lacy's death is not even listed in the military's Noteworthy
Adverse Events report – an omission that critics suggest smells of
cover-up.

"My concern regarding the Lacy case is that it was parsed to death in an
effort to keep it out of the official reports," says Jeffrey Sartin, a
former U.S. Air Force doctor who now works in the Infectious Disease
Department at the Gunderson Clinic in La Crosse, Wis. "If it could not
be proven with 100 percent certainty that vaccines caused her illness,
it was not going to be reported as such."

While Sartin says it should have been reported, Nass wonders if
Grabenstein may have a serious conflict of interest that has prevented
him from reporting such incidents. She notes Grabenstein sits on a
number of pharmaceutical boards and is well known for advocating
legislation that would allow pharmacists to administer vaccinations.

Some civilian doctors charge that the Pentagon mislabeled these cases in
an effort to avoid making adverse-reaction reports that the military
keeps to monitor vaccination programs.

Indeed, Lacy may not be the only death overlooked. The death of NBC
correspondent David Bloom, who died of a blood clot after receiving
vaccination shots, as well as the death of a 55-year-old Missouri
National Guardsman who had a heart attack under similar cir***stances,
also were disregarded.

"I am not sure they had pneumonia," Nass says. "They are trying to
obscure it. They have something else in the lungs and they're not
telling us what it is. The Pentagon knows something, but they are not
sharing it. And if it isn't pneumonia, what is it?"

What is known is that about one-half of these military patients with
pneumonia also had elevated eosinophils in their blood. Eosinophils are
responsible for allergic reactions and also help defend against
parasites, says Sartin, who worked with a team of doctors that treated
Lacy.

"Elevated eosinophils were seen in the blood count of Rachael Lacy
before she died, and both her autopsy and the heart biopsy of a
servicemember who had myopericarditis showed eosinophilic infiltration
of heart tissue," reports Sartin. "This suggests to me the possibility
of an immune-mediated reaction to something such as a vaccine."

Another possibility, he says, could be Churg-Strauss syndrome, an
autoimmune disease in which "you get asthma, pulmonary infiltrates [in
other words, the chest X-ray can look like pneumonia] and eosinophilia."
Sartin reports this can lead to vasculitis, which is what killed Bioport
employee Richard Dunn. A coroner claimed the anthrax vaccine contributed
to Dunn's death.

"If we could get the test results on these patients, and in particular
the autopsy results on Neusche and Tosto, we might be able to draw some
conclusions about what caused their illnesses and whether it was
vaccine-related," he believes.

Pointing to the sharing of information on the SARS outbreak and how that
helped civilian doctors diagnose and treat the disease, Sartin argues
that the same could be done with data about the sick soldiers. However,
for now, the military would rather keep those records under wraps, which
puzzles Sartin.

"All of us close to the [Lacy] case, including her family members,
wonder why a perfectly healthy young woman, in the top 10 percent of her
PT [physical-training] testing, would get sick right after her
vaccinations without any other explanation and the authorities would not
consider that the vaccine probably, or at least possibly, caused her
illness and death."

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Timothy W. Maier is a writer for Insight.

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