Observer 9 March 1997.

By PETER BEAUMONT
Defence Correspondent.

In from the UK....
"anthrax vaccinations against accepted medical advice"

GULF WAR veterans will claim this week that servcemen were given multiple anthrax vaccinations against accepted medical advice. The injections included a serum that US military authorities deemed too dangerous for American personnel. At a meeting with Defence Minister Earl Howe and the Countess of Mar this week, the veterans will say some servicemen were given up to five doses of anthrax treatment designed to be spread over nine months- in barely three weeks. Their claims are supported by documents disclosed to two veterans, Ray Bristow and Shaun Rusling, by senior officers at the MoD and passed to Shadow Defence Secretary David Clark.

Among the officers is the former Surgeon General, Vice Admiral Tony Revell, one of those implicated in allegations that defence minister NicholasSoames was 'misled' into making erroneous statements to parliament over the use of potertially dangerous OPs for hygiene control on British troops. The number of anthrax vaccinations Mr Bristow received was only disclosed in January. He had earlier been told by military officials that no records had been kept, and then, in a letter from Brigadier McDermott of the Army Medical Directorate, that the content of some vaccinations was a military secret. But in a letter to Mr Bristow and Mr Rusling on 17 January, Vice Admiral Revell admitted this was incorrect. The disclosure is the third concession by the MoD in less than two weeks that it had given wrong information to veterans or had 'misled' MPs A fortnight ago MoD officials launched an investigation into how Mr Soames had apparently been so badly briefed by officials that for almost three years he misled Parliament over the use of organophosphates. Earl Howe had to apologise last week over his statements that dead animals found in the Gulf-and sent to Britain for testing- had been found by an Edinburgh laboratory to have died of natural causes, a claim denied by the scientists who said they had never seen the carcasses According to an MoD memorandum on the 'UK Vaccination Programme', the anthrax vaccine produced by the Public Health Laboratory and the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research was intended to be given in four shots- at 3, 7 and 32 weeks'. Instead, some soldiers were given three vaccinations in three weeks plus two extra anthrax shots included in biological warfare vaccines. Many soldiers say they suffered high fever after the jabs. Robert Lake from Winnersh, Berkshire, had to be given the kiss of life when he collapsed after an anthrax injection. He later developed a food allergy, fatigue, headaches, chest pains, vomiting, stomach pains, eye problems, poor memory, and diarrhoea- which Dr John

Mansfield, president of the British Society for Allergy and Environmental Medicine, believed was caused by the injection. Dr Clark told the Observer.'Alomost every day further evidence emerges of the complete negligence at the heart of the Government over the handling of the cases of our Gulf war veterans. These people have been misled at almost every turn.

'Information has had to be dragged out of Ministers and senior officers.It is no longer enough to have an apology almost every other day. It lacks any credibility and smacks of a cover-up. It is time for Soames and the Government to come clean.'


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