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| "Major screw-up": Boot-camp virus runs rampant |
| 2004-10-16 |
| 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 |
| #3 Yeah, right after the switch from Hillarycare to obscene drug company profits. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-10-17 6:39:54 AM |
| #2 Hmm 1996 isn't that under Clinton? |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-10-17 6:37:02 AM |
| #1 Dr. Margaret Ryan, a commander at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego and an expert on the virus, calls the vaccine lapse "indefensible." Original vaccine manufacturer Wyeth Laboratories warned as early as 1984 that it would stop churning out pills costing $1 each unless defense officials allocated $5 million to repair a deteriorating production plant. Wyeth executives shuttered the facility in 1996. A military health budget later gave a reason: "suppression of program to pay higher priority items." The Pentagon's unwillingness to spend $5 million on health care is now costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars to remedy. 1996, eh? Let's see that's also about when the government started buying vaccines, at the lowest price possible, so that all children would be vaccinated and everybody was in a frenzy to sue drug companies over getting some life threatening disease from the DPT vaccination. And now everybody is in an uproar becasue an English company can't produce enough flu vaccine. At least the Amerikkkan drug companies aren't making obscene profits any more. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-10-17 6:33:10 AM |