received by email from Jim Rarey

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. [This was organized in part by Sue Waltman of Michigan Oppopsed to Mandatory Shots (MOMS) listed on our website under resources]

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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