Military Vaccine Program Suspected in
Deaths of Five Soldiers

by Rachel Ensign

The Pentagon's mandatory anthrax and smallpox vaccine program is once again suspected of causing serious health problems and deaths among GIs forced to take the shots. More than 100 cases of pneumonia, with 18 victims requiring a ventilator, have spurred public protest and calls for an investigation by the CDC.

The families of two of the victims, Army Specialist Zeferina Colunga of Bellville, TX and Specialist Joshua Neusche, 20, of Montreal, MO are demanding an independent investigation into their sons' unexpected deaths. In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, they asserted, "As families, we are concerned that we are not being told the truth" They asked that their children's complete medical histories be reviewed by an independent health agency. They were aided in writing their letters by the National Gulf War Resource Center coalition, of which Citizen Soldier is a founding member. They reported that both Colunga and Neusche were in excellent health before deploying to Iraq, with Neusche being a high school track star.

Stephanie Tosto, 22, the widow of a third victim, Sgt. Michael Tosto has also expressed her concerns to the media. "More and more, I think it was the shots," she told UPI. "Nobody can tell me anything. If it was the vaccines, then of course, they're lying." Mrs. Testo, mother of a 21-month-old son, recalled that just before her husband died in Kuwait his Army physician told her that he had bad pneumonia and was struggling to breathe.

A fourth victim may be Specialist Rachel Lacy, 22 years old of Lynwood, IL, who was vaccinated in March, 2003 but never deployed to Iraq. Moses Lacy, her father told UPI that he was suspicious that the Army was "covering up" the facts behind his daughter's untimely death. The civilian coroner who performed her autopsy concluded that the anthrax and smallpox vaccinations she'd received "might have caused" her death--which followed a pneumonia-like illness.

One of Lacy's treating physicians, infectious disease specialist Dr. Jeffrey Sartin, commented, "If she had been a civilian, the case would have almost certainly been reported as a vaccine adverse event."

A fifth suspicious case is that of Staff Sgt. Richard Eaton, Jr. 37, of Guilford, CT who was found dead in his bunk in Ramadi, Iraq in mid August. Official cause of death--pulmonary edema (water in the lungs). U.S. Representative Christopher Shays (R-CT) who's chaired a series of Congressional hearings into the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, has requested more information about Eaton's death from the Army

For its part, the Army denies that any of the pneumonia cases or fatalities are due to its vaccine program. Colonel John D. Grabenstein, deputy director of the Military Vaccine Agency told UPI: "In 200 years, no vaccine has ever been shown to cause pneumonia and there are many reasons to believe that they played no role." Yet, in 1999, other Pentagon medical experts offered testimony to the contrary to a House committee; "There have been reports of serious illness associated with vaccination...these reports involved hypersensitivity pneumonia."

USA Today editorialized on August 19th that the Pentagon's investigation of this issue "is repeating one mistake from the first Gulf War (by) limiting the involvement of federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the newspaper, "the CDC could provide the best probe into the pneumonia cases and head off suspicions that the Pentagon is putting troops' health at risk or is hiding information."

Citizen Soldier supports the call for an independent, no-holds-barred investigation of this epidemic of pneumonia cases and unexpected deaths.