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Thanks to Terry Walker for sending me this article

Gulf troops 'had too many anthrax jabs'

Observer 9 March 1997.

By PETER BEAUMONT

Defence Correspondent.

GULF WAR veterans will claim this week that servicemen 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 Nicholas

Soames was 'misled' into making erroneous statements to parliament over the

use of potentially 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 Program',

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 diarrhea- 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.'Almost 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.'