From: Angls4Hope@...
Subject: OT: Mystery surrounds secret 1991 vaccines....GRRRRRRrrrrrrr
Mystery surrounds secret 1991 vaccines
David Pallister
Monday December 16, 2002
The Guardian
Britain sent more than 53,000 troops to the Gulf war 12 years ago.
They faced
the threat of chemical and biological attacks and a series of medical
counter
measures were hurredly introduced. The range of vaccines was kept
secret,
even from the troops, to prevent the Iraqis learning how they were
protected..
But with the politcal furore over Gulf war syndrome, the Ministry of
Defence
published the full details - six years after the war - and admitted
there
were "significant deficiencies" in the programme.
Each individual was given up to 12 vaccines. First there were the
routine
ones to prevent disease: yellow fever, hepatitis B, typhoid, tetanus,
cholera
and polio. Some received jabs for meningitis and hepatitis A.
Then there were the anti-biological vaccines for anthrax and plague.
The
anthrax jab was given with one for pertussis (whooping cough) to make
it work
quicker, although this combination had never been tested on humans.
Warnings
about the risk from the Department of Health and the National
Institute for
Biological Standards and control were ingnored. After the war,
research at
Porton Down, the government's defence laboratory, concluded that the
use of
pertussis was ineffective.
For protection against a chemical attack everyone took a tablet
containing
the drug pyridostigmine bromide, which some scientists now believe
may have
been a contributory cause of neurological problems in veterans.
The troops were also exposed to potentially hazardous organophosphate
pesticides, one of which was unauthorised and other, unidentified,
ones were
bought locally.
When veterans first started complaining of ill health, the most
predominant
symptoms were similar to those for chronic fatigue. Others included:
headaches, memory loss, muscle pain, nausea, gastrointestinal
problems, loss
of concentration, vision and balance problems and depression. It has
been
established that veterans deployed to the Gulf are two to three times
more
likely to report symptoms than those not deployed.
Dozens of research experiments have been carried out since the late
1990s
with the UK spending m and the US $213m (m). No conclusive results
have been made but the early UK concentration on whether post-
traumatic
stress caused the illnesses has now largely been ruled out.