Gulf War Syndrome: Forced Anthrax Vaccine Should be Stopped

Not too long ago, in 1990 through 1991 the Persian Gulf War was going on in Iraq. Many nations were involved but something behind the actual war was going on with American soldiers. Scientists in the United States gave American Army leaders the anthrax vaccine to distribute to all of their soldiers. The reason for giving out this vaccine was so the soldiers would not inhale anthrax spores from infected areas or animals nearby. The chance of that happening was very low, so later soldiers concluded that they were being used as the "hamsters" to this new vaccine that has never been used on humans. This vaccine was first made for veterinarians so they would not get the disease from all of the animals that they treated that had it. It was meant to protect the veterinarians from the "cutaneous" form of anthrax, which means the form that you get by touching an opened wound and the bacteria getting inside of you from the animal's infection. This means that the vaccine has never been proven to work with the air bound type of the anthrax disease. The vaccine was approved by the FDA, but it was approved for use on veterinarians only to defend the skin to skin contact with the disease. The soldiers knew very little about this vaccine nor many others that were thrown at them like candy and they were

forced to take all of them. If the soldiers refused to take them they would be sent home or to prison. Years later when the war was over, veterans from the Gulf War started noticing problems with their health. Examples such as fatigue, chronic pain in joints, tingling in their feet, arms and hands, extreme memory loss, and many children were born with birth defects. I actually know a Gulf War Veteran that came home after getting a full round of the anthrax vaccine, he came home and had a child with his wife and their child is extremely mentally and physically disabled. There are no proven facts that it is because of the anthrax vaccine, but that is what they are thinking it is from because it is happening with many other American Veterans of the Gulf War. Having this vaccine around hasn't seemed to do any soldier good because there has been no signs of any anthrax disease during war and then most of them get horrible side effects. I think that the government and army should at least give soldiers an option as to taking this vaccine and all other vaccines. Having this vaccine mandatory puts the soldiers under a lot of pressure and especially after learning that the vaccine was not even produced to stop the air bound anthrax disease, it seems pointless to take it and then having the risk of copious amounts of side effects, and some even fatal just does not sound right to me. It is surprising to me that the anthrax vaccine is still a mandatory distribution today along with many other illegal vaccines.


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