Military Vaccine Flattens GI, 17

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/01/eveningnews/main603284.shtml

<snip>

Tyran Duncan was just 17 - Number "45" at Monterey High in Tennessee - when he signed up for the Army.

"I was excited," says Duncan. "I mean it's always been my lifelong dream to go into the military and, you know, be a soldier."

At boot camp, he eagerly lined up for vaccinations, including flu and anthrax.

"They gave us, I'd say, seven shots … at one time," he says.

First he got a rash, then flu symptoms.

"It got to where I couldn't walk at all," he says. "I couldn't even hold my glass up with both hands to take a drink out of it.

"Basically they accused me of faking it."

[DarkPhenyx]

1. and people wonder why...

...I dodge needles like they were bullets.

[oldcoot]

2. They accused him of "faking it?"

I wonder how many other soldiers this is happening to and I wonder if they are receiving the same treatment (being accused of "faking it"). I also wonder how many veterans are going to come back years after the war with problems related to vaccines and other little things they were exposed to in Iraq. Will they be told that any problems they are suffering from are "all in their head?" Where is the "support the troops" crowd when you need them?

[tkulesa]

3. We've had discussions here

hundreds of posts long were anyone who dares to say vaccines aren't 100% save are ridiculed and demonized. I'm amazed I don't see any of those people here attacking this article.

Vaccines, like many corporate products and most drugs, have been rushed onto the market with insufficient testing and far too few safety assurances. They have been given unwarranted institutional support when it just doesn't seem to be warranted.

I am not anti-vaccine, but I just don't think that we should be mandating vaccines that have been half-ass tested, or tested only by the corporations who profit from the vaccines.

A lot of these vaccines should be for limited use, or removed for more testing. And I sure as hell think that the makers should be liable for the long term health consequences pushing harmful vaccines.

[treepig]

6. i've seen those threads, too

but i recall the content to be quite different than you describe; for example, i don't recall a single poster claiming that any vaccine is 100% safe.

what i do recall are claims of vaccines causing more incidents of disease than they prevent, or other outlandish (and quite impossible) outcomes, like vaccines being the cause of CJD (this thread, below) or pretty much any disease imaginable.

[Nlighten1]

8. Those vaccines are dangerous...my twin brother...

was taking the anthrax vaccine and it made him very very sick. Unexplained lesions on his body, in his mouth and various other ailments befell him.

[short bus president]

10. some of these vaccines are not "on the market"

precisely because of their questionable safety records. There is a legitimate argument that the anthrax vaccine, for instance, may be a worthwhile safety risk for the military because of the risk of exposure, but there is a calculus of risk/benefit employed. Unfortunately, in the case of investigational drugs and biologics, the military singlehandedly makes the risk/benefit determination. The committees that typically oversee research on human subjects (IRBs) do not review research that the military labels "classified," so all bets are off as far as standard practices of research ethics being employed by the military investigators.

[TeeYiYi]

4. I remember another story . . .

. . . where a soldier from Texas was accused of faking it. Turned out he had Creutzfeldt Jakob disease from the vaccines he had been given as a soldier.

I think he eventually died. I'll have to see if I can find that story.

TYY

[TeeYiYi]

5. Here's the story . . .

. . . the original was in a Texas newapaper but this is the same story.

http://www.rense.com/general47/dying.htm

BTW, it looks like they're attributing his CJD to eating meat but I read somewhere else where they're finding that you can get CJD from vaccines. :shrug:

TYY

[MurrayDelph]

7. I know several people who received "mystery meat" injections

Three people at my office were Marines in Desert Storm. All of them received mystery meat injections. In the case of my manager, he developed Crohn's soon thereafter.

And I have another friend who died last month from fibromyalgia (basically, his body just gave out from being tired of hurting). He was 44.

I have one friend who developed some sort of severe allergy while in
Kuwait last year, and has been sent home.

I have already told his kid-half-brother that if he even thinks of enlisting, I will save the government the trouble and cripple him myself.

[mainer]

9. Let's not attack all vaccines, though!

It's all a matter of the risk-benefit ratio. If you don't vaccinate kids against whooping cough, e.g., sure you'll avoid the rare) complications from the vaccines ... but you end up losing a lot more lives to the disease itself. There was an anti-vaccine movement in Scandinavia some years back, and parents just stopped letting their kids be vaccinated. Whooping cough (and infant deaths) subsequently spiked. It's like people refusing to use their seatbelts because they just might "get trapped in a burning car."

However, anthrax vaccinations sound unnecessary. What's the risk of being exposed to the disease anthrax in the military? So far, not a single soldier has gotten infected that I'm aware of. So the risk outweighs the benefit. Ditto for smallpox vaccinations. As health professionals, we were offered the chance to get that vaccine. We said no thanks.