Pentagon Advisers Review Troop Vaccine Safety

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Defense Department advisory board is reviewing the military’s practice of giving soldiers multiple, simultaneous vaccinations to protect them from certain biological agents and natural diseases.

Ellen Embrey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for force health protection and readiness, last October requested the review by the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB), which is composed of top civilian experts from around the country. The board is expected to present its findings at a regular meeting next month.

The request was made while a subcommittee of the board and another panel were investigating a possible relationship between military-administered vaccines and the illnesses or deaths of four personnel.

Both panels in November concluded that vaccination might have triggered the April 2003 death of 22-year-old Army Reservist Specialist Rachel Lacy (see GSN, Nov. 19, 2003). In March last year, she received five vaccinations — against anthrax, hepatitis B, measles-mumps-rubella, smallpox and typhoid fever — at the time she was mobilized for service in Afghanistan. 

The panels said they could not conclude whether a particular vaccination was a trigger in Lacy’s death, as the vaccines were administered simultaneously. In their publicly released findings, they did not address whether Lacy’s illness may have been triggered by complications from receiving the vaccinations concurrently.

“To take it to the ‘Epi’ Board means there is somebody who is very concerned about it,” said AFEB member John Glen Morris, a University of Maryland Medical School professor and chairman of the school’s Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine.

Military officials called Lacy’s case rare, citing a long-standing military practice of giving multiple, simultaneous vaccinations, noting that other soldiers in her unit had received the same vaccinations, and saying that there have been no other cases like Lacy’s. According to the Pentagon, more than 900,000 personnel have received the anthrax vaccine and 500,000 have been inoculated against smallpox.

Some independent experts have questioned whether U.S. military vaccinations were responsible for other serious illnesses among U.S. forces.

The military has not changed any of its vaccination policies, including that of giving multiple, concurrent vaccinations, as a result of the panel’s determination in the Lacy case.

“At this point, we know of no objective evidence sufficient to warrant a change in the immunization practices common in both military and civilian clinics,” the Pentagon said in a Nov. 19 statement.

As evidence of safety, officials point to a review of scientific evidence released by the U.S. Institute of Medicine in February 2002 that concluded that concurrent administration of common vaccines was safe for children.

There have in recent years, however, been numerous investigations in the United Kingdom into the safety of concurrent immunizations given to military personnel. For at least five years, the Defense Ministry has been investigating possible health effects from concurrent vaccinations and tablets given for protection against biological and chemical warfare and natural diseases during the 1991 Gulf War.

A senior British defense official last October disclosed that British health authorities as late as 1999 advised against administering the anthrax vaccine with others, and the British Medicines Control Agency earlier found no evidence for safe use of the anthrax vaccine in combination with others. In 1998, the Defense Ministry temporarily halted the concurrent administration of the anthrax vaccine (see GSN, Oct. 20, 2003).

Other findings, however, have concluded there was no evidence suggesting anthrax vaccines should be administered alone.

Preliminary conclusions from research on marmosets, a small primate, presented by a Defense Ministry laboratory last year, found no acute short-term health consequences resulted from administration of pyridostigmine bromide, a nerve agent pretreatment drug, and 10 vaccines, including those for anthrax, pertussis and plague.

The issue is now under review by the U.S. AFEB because “there’s not a cut-and-dried answer,” Morris said.

The U.S. military currently is facing a high-profile lawsuit by six anonymous personnel who oppose the mandatory anthrax vaccinations and are charging that the vaccine is unsafe and should only be considered as “investigational” for protection against inhalation anthrax (see GSN, Jan. 8).

Col. John Grabenstein of the U.S. Army Surgeon General’s office said last month that no single vaccine has been singled out as a particular concern for multiple vaccinations in the U.S. research.

“Anthrax vaccine, which is an FDA-licensed vaccine, will receive the same scrutiny as all other vaccines. There is no scientific basis for doing otherwise,” he said.

He said the Pentagon also is planning to conduct its own study of concurrent immunization safety using military databases of inpatient and outpatient visits.

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