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"Major screw-up": Boot-camp virus runs rampant
More than three decades ago, the Pentagon created two pills to ward off a lethal virus infecting boot-camp recruits. But defense officials abandoned the program in 1996 as too expensive. Now recruits are dying, thousands are falling ill, and the military is desperately racing to bring back a vaccine it once owned. A top Pentagon official called it "a major screw-up," hobbling U.S. efforts to rapidly deploy troops abroad. The respiratory virus now infects up to 2,500 service members monthly — a staggering 1 in 10 recruits — in the nation's eight basic-training centers, an analysis of military health-care records shows...Posted by: Anonymoose 2004-10-16 |
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