42.grNews DeskThe Forgotten Lessons of The Military's Forced Anthrax Vaccination of its Pilots

Breaking News

The Forgotten Lessons of The Military’s Forced Anthrax Vaccination of its Pilots

Anthrax Vaccine Injuries

One of my missions on Substack has been to bring attention to the disastrous anthrax vaccination campaign (initiated during the Gulf War) that was inflicted upon the military and severely injured well over 100,000 members of the military, was investigated by Congress, and then became largely forgotten. I feel these events are important to discuss both because I feel we owe it to those victims and because it served as the Department of Defense’s (DoD) beta test for the COVID-19 vaccination program.

A Midwestern Doctor [amidwesterndoctor.substack.com]

If we want to prevent atrocities like the one we are witnessing unfolding in front of us right now, we have to learn where they came from. Each of these events is typically first conducted on a smaller and more vulnerable group of people that cannot advocate for themselves. Soldiers in the military represent one such group as they are viewed as an ideal cohort to conduct experiments on because they are all relatively healthy, and must to participate in the experiments since soldiers are required to follow orders (thereby ensuring compliance and silence). Previously other vulnerable groups were also frequently utilized (e.g., slaves, prisoners, and mentally handicapped patients) but activists of previous eras were able to outlaw this inhumane experimentation, so those nonetheless seeking to do it have increasingly needed to rely upon the military for test subjects.

Thanks for reading The Forgotten Side of Medicine! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and if you have, please also consider pledging to support my work.

If you review what happened with the anthrax vaccines (which I tried to cover in this article—although Meryl Nass who was one of the main doctors who advocated for the injured servicemen has since changed my perspective on a few of the arguments put forward there), you will notice a lot of eerie parallels between how the DoD handled each vaccine campaign. This is important both because there is a great deal we can learn about the current campaign from the past campaign and because something fundamentally needs to change in the way the military conducts these actions.

I cannot prove this, but from looking at everything I’ve pieced together, I believe the collective psychology within the military is something like the following:

•Most government officials do not have a good understanding of scientific topics.

•Because of this, officials will typically defer to the advice of scientific experts, especially regarding things that are very psychologically frightening (e.g., a “bioweapon”) or doing something that is in accordance with our longstanding cultural beliefs (e.g., vaccinations are the magical salvation science enlightened the world with).

•I also believe government officials like to defer the responsibility to “experts” because it removes their responsibility for making a bad decision. On this point, one I believe Ron DeSantis must be acknowledged for that fact, that unlike everyone else who deferred to “the experts” during COVID-19, he did the opposite, looked at the data himself, came up with the policy that made the most sense, and then only solicited the help of an expert to make sure he had not made any mistakes. DeSantis took a lot of heat for how he managed COVID-19, but his response in Florida ultimately provided the best results seen in America.

•Within the military, a group exists that is ideologically committed to developing countermeasures for dangerous bioweapons (e.g., look up the history of Fort Dietrich). I believe this is primarily because they are financially dependent upon these programs being well-funded for decades (which is easy to accomplish if a climate of fear exists around the bioweapon in question—the CDC uses a similar playbook). However, this commitment may also be due to lobbying from the private sector (which makes a lot of money off producing these countermeasures), or some people being ideologically fixated on continuing the programs.

•This group of “experts” has been able to convince the military’s leadership of the absolute necessity of their bioweapon countermeasures programs. Because of this lobbying, the military leadership has been willing to exert the full force of the military to push vaccinations through. This is important because many of the vaccines designed through this pipeline are unsafe, poorly (sometimes fraudulently) manufactured, and ineffective, to the point that even our relatively corrupt regulatory apparatus would not be willing to green-light them for civilian use.

When I observe how the government utilizes the tools available to it to solve a problem, I often find that when an effective and agreeable but complex and nuanced solution exists, the government will instead use a crude method with many shortcomings and make up for those shortcomings by putting the full force of the government behind that approach. This is why once widespread resistance in the military emerged towards the anthrax vaccine experiment, the Pentagon nonetheless doubled down on forcing it upon the military (as those “experts” had made the leadership believe this was a necessary sacrifice for national security). Likewise, I believe this is why the Pentagon went so far to gaslight those injured by the vaccines (along with hiding what they did from Congress).

If you consider what the anthrax vaccination campaign was seeking to accomplish, it’s very clear the wrong approach was chosen (a huge risk was taken on for a negligible benefit) and the fallout from the unethical conduct behind it (e.g., forced human experimentation) came at great cost to the military. Similarly, if you consider what has happened with the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, all the same holds true.

In summary, I believe one of the critical steps for moving forward from this dysfunctional paradigm is to allow the decisions of “experts” to be debated within the public sphere.

Anthrax Vaccine Injuries

I consider the anthrax vaccine to be one of, and possibly the most, injurious vaccine in history (e.g., consider the recent comments on this Twitter thread). As so many were grievously injured by them, I cannot possibly share all of those injuries here. I will however share a few stories I found particularly compelling:

Army Sergeant Scott Siefkin was 37-year-old in excellent health when he deployed for the Gulf War [received the anthrax vaccine] and suffered from an ailment that mystified his doctors for almost a year after his return. At first his body temperature would rise and fall without explanation. In spring of 1993 rashes appeared that were initially tiny bumps that resembled a heat rash. No cause could be found, and the rashes disappeared before returning, and by fall he had raw painful lesions inside his mouth that looked like cigarette burns, one on the side of his tongue and another on the side of his cheek.

Due to the ulcers in his mouth, he most lost the ability to eat and by winter had lost 40 pounds. When prednisone, a treatment for autoimmune conditions was tried, “his body swelled until it seemed like he would burst” and his family members had difficulty recognizing him.

He then developed sores on his feet which made it difficult to walk, and his raised red bumps had turned to blisters roughly the size of half dollars that would break open with the slightest degree of contact, or as his youngest sister said “it was as if his blood were boiling to the surface of his skin”.

He soon showed signs of infection and was admitted to the hospital where he was diagnosed with lupus and transferred to a burn unit where his diseased skin (99% of it) was removed from his body. While his skin healed, he was covered in a graft of pig skin. Unfortunately, as soon as his skin started to regrow, it was immediately lost.

Scott was kept alive on a feeding tube, morphine and antibiotics.

“Throughout the ordeal, Scott never lost his sense of humor, but even that became a burden to him. When he smiled, his lips would bleed. His parents, his wife, his sisters and his friends couldn’t kiss or hug him; they could not lay a finger on him for fear of causing him pain or giving him a fatal infection. The sight of him without skin was so hideous that the family would not let Scott’s children see him. His suffering was almost indescribable, yet when he expressed worry, it was always for his family, not himself.”

Seven weeks after the removal of his skin he died, with his cause of death listed as lymphoma, kidney failure and sepsis.

Two other stories came from Captain Rovert, an Air Force medic and one of the servicemen stationed at Dover Airforce Base who tried to blow the whistle on what he saw happening after anthrax vaccination:

I will forever have etched upon my memory the vision of a young enlisted woman screaming and crying as she was forcibly held down while the needle delivering the anthrax vaccine was pushed into her body. I will never forget the sad day when my dear friend, Technical Sergeant Clarence Glover, died after anthrax vaccination. My memory holds the stories of those whose skin literally burned off due to anthrax vaccine-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome and of the infants under my care who were born with severe birth defects after their pregnant mothers were vaccinated with the anthrax vaccine.

Our soldiers’ calls for help have not only been ignored, but their own government, the one they swore to serve and protect, has tried to discredit them. For many years, veterans of the first Gulf War and their families have begged for help and answers. Meanwhile, in a misguided effort to mislead Congress, the press, and the American people about the extent of the damage done to personnel during the conflict, the Pentagon launched Operation Bronze Anvil, a propaganda program designed to deflect any inquiries into the Gulf War Illness-anthrax vaccine connection and to harm the reputations of those who spoke out about the connection. This effort has branded honorable U.S. servicemen and women complaining of anthrax vaccine reactions as malingerers, liars, whiners, and malcontents.

Aviation Safety

Ensuring airline safety is one of the things the American government excels in and it is something we rarely think about because we have gotten so used to it being done correctly we don’t notice how much work goes into ensuring it. In the last few years, however, a variety of somewhat unprecedented safety concerns have emerged in the airline industry. I believe many of these are reflective of the current dysfunction within the Department of Transportation (e.g., consider the disaster last year that stranded thousands during a winter storm, the massive backlog in California’s ports, and the recent catastrophic train derailment in Ohio).

Note: For those wishing to know more about the train derailment, this recent segment from a conservative news outlet, and this recent segment from a liberal news outlet (provided you remove their partisan talking points) provide an excellent summary of what is occurring there. Sadly, it will probably be a while before we fully understand the environmental and health consequences of this event. Additionally, the World War I reference Tucker Carlson made was due to a byproduct of burning polyvinyl chloride (one of the chemicals being transported by the train that was disposed of with a “controlled burn”). This byproduct, phosgene, was previously used as a chemical weapon during World War I and is now heavily regulated by the international chemical weapons treaty.

Recently there have been a few high-profile incidents of near misses in the aviation industry (along with a few unusual fatal crashes). Some of these are likely due to mechanical errors or general corruption superseding foundational safety regulations.

The recent story of Boeing’s 737 MAX, where a deadly autopilot function was placed into the planes without the pilot’s or FAA’s knowledge so that a plane Boeing needed to sell could make it to market, is one example. As Malcolm Kendrick astutely noted what happened with the 737 MAX mirrors many of the issues we now observe within the medical industry. Similarly, there is a good chance the train derailment we witnessed in Ohio could have been prevented with improved breaking technologies, but despite this numerous presidential administrations from both political parties have simply come up with numerous excuses to avoid requiring the railroad industry to utilize them.

Mechanical errors however are not the only major issue. There have also been numerous incidents suggesting the COVID-19 vaccines are severely threatening airline safety, and numerous public figures including Steve Kirsch and Tucker Carlson are beginning to bring public attention to this issue. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not surprisingly adopted a similar tactic to the military (possibly in deference to the DoD), and despite numerous calls to address the issue, has simply stated the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and do not require additional investigation within the context of airline safety.

Two days ago, however, the FAA issued a very rare call to action:

Officially* this event is for discussing recent near misses that were unrelated to pilot impairment (although I could see why many of them in fact were). I suspect the broader issue motivating this sudden conference is the now widespread concerns about the effects of the vaccines on pilots. Although the conference next month has not yet been scheduled, I hope that when it occurs, enough concerned members of the public and aviation industry can attend it that the FAA is forced to at least acknowledge the elephant in the room: the effects of COVID vaccination on our pilots.

*There was one major event not discussed in the above article that is covered here.
Pilots who Received the Anthrax Vaccination

Watching what has unfolded within the airline industry (and the military) from the COVID-19 vaccines (as many pilots have lost the ability to fly and some have had near misses which could have been catastrophic) has given me déjà vu of what happened to the military pilots who received the anthrax vaccination. Many of them permanently lost the ability to fly and were almost completely neglected by the government.

Because of the importance of this story, I reached out to Dr. Malone and asked if he would share an article on it which he kindly agreed to do. In the second part of this article (which comprises the majority of this series), the effects of the anthrax vaccine on our pilots are discussed. I will also focus on the many parallels between the near misses those vaccines caused back then and the ones we have witnessed recently, in the hope that that understanding them will be of help with trying to convince the FAA to seriously address ensuring the safety of our pilots.

PACIFIC OCEAN (April 20, 2013) Operations Specialist Seaman Danielle Krieger, from New Market, Md., receives an Anthrax vaccination in the hangar bay of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68). Nimitz is on a deployment to the western Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Vanessa Y. David/Released)

 

SHARE
MORE NEWS DESK