MEDIUM RARE
By Jim Rarey
November 19, 2001
ANTHRAX VACCINE – WHAT REPORTS? WHAT WAR?
On October 23rd of this year Nancy Kingsbury from the General
Accounting Office (GAO) testified on Anthrax Vaccine before the House
Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans' Affairs, and
International Relations Committee on Government Reform. Her testimony
has been released as report GAO-02-181T available on the GAO website
at www.goa.gov.
The report is a scathing indictment of the handling of the anthrax
vaccine issue by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the
Department of Defense (DOD), the Bioport company in Michigan and
before that the Michigan State laboratory.
On November 11th (Veterans' Day) a rally was held on the capitol
steps in Lansing, Michigan by a group comprising, for the most part,
veterans who were suffering from the effects of the vaccine or had
been forced to resign from the service for refusing to take the
vaccine.
In attendance at the rally was Michigan National Guard Public Affairs
Officer Major James McCrone. In an interview with a TV reporter, he
said he was there to see if "these people" had anything new to say.
When he said he had heard nothing new, he was asked by one of the
speakers at the rally if he had read the latest GAO report on the
vaccine. His response was, "What report?"
Ignorance is just one of the problems associated with the vaccine.
Sadly, there has been ten years of stonewalling, obfuscation and
outright lies from "experts" and PR flacks both in and outside of
government.
Here is a brief recap of information contained in earlier articles.
The vaccine was first licensed by the FDA for production by a
Michigan state owned laboratory in 1970 based on vaccine produced and
tested by Merck Sharp and Dohme (currently known as Merck and Co.,
Inc.) in 1962. Prior to 1970 vaccines were licensed by the National
Institute of Health (NIH).
The vaccine was certified as effective against cutaneous (skin
contact) anthrax and some studies with monkeys suggested some
effectiveness against inhaled anthrax (the most dangerous).
Despite changes made in both the composition (recipe) of the vaccine
and the method of production, no further testing has been done. The
altered vaccine was administered to over 500,000 service men and
women before and during the Gulf War. An unacceptable number have had
their lives (and lives of their families) ruined by reactions to the
vaccine
In 1998, Secretary of Defense William Cohen decided to vaccinate all
service members and the program started. Over 400 members have left
the service or been subject to discipline for refusing to take the
vaccine.
In 1998 the FDA suspended the license for the vaccine shortly after a
private company (Bioport) bought the facility and licensing rights
from the State of Michigan. The privatization was engineered by Fuad
El Hibri, a German citizen at the time and included several former
state employees of the lab, Fuad's wife and father and Admiral
William Crowe (a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The facilities and the licensing rights were obtained for a sale
price of $25 million, however a portion was financed with IOU's to
the state and promises of delivery of several other vaccines and
royalties on Bioport's sales. It was later admitted the licensing
rights alone were worth at least $35 million.
Bioport has not been able to pass FDA inspections to date and no
vaccine has been shipped since 1998. The DOD has virtually run out of
vaccine acquired between 1990 and 1998 and has had to suspend its
universal vaccination program.
In the mid-1980's, El Hibri had also engineered a private buyout of
Britain's secret lab involved in production of vaccines and
experimentation with chemical and biological weapons materials. The
ownership was split among three El Hibri controlled entities; Porton
Products, Porton Instruments and Porton International. The Porton
laboratory was the sole source of anthrax vaccine used on British
troops during the Gulf War.
Vaccinated British troops experienced much the same health problems,
as did American troops. It was later disclosed that
untested "adjuvants" had been added to the vaccines in both the U.K.
and U.S. Both vaccines included toxins generated by anthrax bacteria
which were expected to cause antibodies to be formed to fight the
infection. The adjuvants increased the toxicity to speed up the
body's reaction.
In the U.K. public health authorities warned that the adjuvants would
compound the already significant side effects of the vaccine. In. the
U.S. the DOD questioned the Michigan lab about the increased toxicity
and later (in October 1990) issued a report. However the FDA was not
apprised of the change until ten years later by the GOA.
In early 1990 the military (in both the U.K. and U.S.) pressured
their respective vaccine suppliers to greatly increase production in
anticipation of hostilities in the Middle East. This was some six
months before Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Both Britain and
the U.S. had sold equipment/ and/or anthrax vaccine to Iraq during
its war with Iran. It was feared that Iraq might use its anthrax
capability in the coming war.
That the military was so certain of a war with Iraq lends credence to
charges that the U.S. "suckered" Saddam Huessein into the invasion.
Eight days before the invasion, according to a tape and transcript
obtained by British journalists a month later, the American
ambassador to Iraq, April Gilspie, met with Saddam Hussein and told
him, " We have no opinion on your Arab – Arab conflicts, such as your
dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me
to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's that
the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."
A few days later, Gilspie said in a televised interview, "we have no
treaty or other agreement that requires us to come to the aid of
Kuwait.
Congress demanded access to diplomatic communications between the
State Department and Ambassador Gilspie but was successfully
stonewalled by Baker's State Department.
During negotiations between 1996 and 1998 between the State of
Michigan and El Hibri and his partners, a concern was expressed about
El Hibri's sale (from his British lab) of anthrax vaccine to Saudi
Arabia after they had been turned down by the Pentagon. It was feared
he might also have sold anthrax and/or the vaccine to Iraq. A British
scientist had disclosed Iraq had made a specific request for
the "Ames" strain of anthrax, although he said the request was
denied.
American scientists have determined that the current anthrax attacks
by mail are using the same strain (Ames) that was furnished to the
British lab at Porton Down years ago by the U.S.
Rather than contact American intelligence, Michigan authorities asked
the American Embassy in Germany about El Hibri. The embassy gave him
a clean bill of health saying, "he's one of the good guys." What the
embassy didn't tell them, or didn't know, was that two scientists in
El Hibri's privatized lab were involved in South Africa as
consultants to the infamous chemical and biological weapons program
in that country.
The head of South Africa's CBW program was Wouter Basson. Basson was
charged with multiple counts of murder and fraud in trial that lasted
almost a year. During the course of the trial (in which Basson earned
the nickname Africa's Dr. Mengele) a number of witnesses detailed the
weapons the program had developed for mass murder as well as
assassination of individuals with such things as anthrax laced
cigarettes.
One of Basson's lieutenants, Dr. Andre Immelman testified about the
Porton Down involvement in the murder of the Reverend Frank Chikane,
with an exotic toxin called Paraoxon. He discovered that, without his
knowledge, one of his subordinates (Schalk van Rensburg) had hired
two consultants from Porton Down on the project. He confronted van
Rensburg and accused him of wanting to blow their cover. Van Rensburg
responded that Porten Down had been privatised and the consultants
were from the private sector.
The October GAO report was not the only one that provided evidence
that the anthrax vaccine is the culprit in veterans' health woes.
In April of this year the GAO submitted a report (GAO 01-13) that had
been requested by subcommittee chairman Christopher Shays. He had
asked the GAO to find out why French Gulf War veterans were reporting
far fewer health problems than their British and American
counterparts.
Amid a welter of charts and statistics, the obvious answer was found.
British and American troops were inoculated with the anthrax vaccine,
the French were not.
There was one other difference between the British and American
programs. The British program required "informed consent" from
soldiers before the vaccine was administered. The American program
was, and still is mandatory.
The GAO surveyed a large group of American national guard and reserve
forces who had taken the vaccine to determine how many experienced a
reaction from the shots. They found that 85% had some kind of
reaction and in 23.8% it was systemic (affecting the body's systems).
The numbers still being advertised by Bioport and the FDA are 30%
experiencing mild reactions, 4% having moderate reactions. They say
only .2% or two out of a thousand suffer systemic problems! What they
do not admit is their numbers are based on testing done more than
thirty years ago on a different vaccine.
Last week, Bioport revealed that negotiations are being held with DOD
to release some of the two million doses embargoed by the FDA to the
public. One of the demands of the veterans assembled in Lansing was
that those lots be destroyed before they cause further harm.
Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.
The author is a free lance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a
former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs
administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S.
Constitution.
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