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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