The Missing Link: FDA Memo, anthrax vaccine
Project on Government Oversight
by Nick Schwellenbach
Yesterday POGO learned that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pulled down a link to a FDA memo on adverse effects from the military's anthrax vaccine. The memo is still there, it's just very hard to find now.
Marguerite Armistead, president of Protecting Our Guardians, a group of National Guard spouses critical of the anthrax vaccine, discovered the change. Originally this page contained a link to the memo. According to Armistead, after a lengthy piece by David Goldstein in the Kansas City Star (registration req'd) referenced the memo which lists 16 reported deaths after injection of the vaccine from 1990 to 2004 (note: this doesn't necessarily mean the deaths were caused by the vaccine), the page which had the link to the memo was taken down. The article appeared on July 25, 2005. Prior to the article, only 11 reported deaths were publicly known to have
occurred after injection of the vaccine.
POGO was able to find an archived version of the page which was found via Google's cache feature. Also, the Office of the Secretary of Defense's (OSD) anthrax vaccine website contains a link to the same report on that website. Just in case, POGO has in turn also saved the cached page and the FDA memo.
Since May, half of the military and civilian personnel at the Department of Defense offered the vaccine have refused it under the current voluntary program, Global Security Newswire reported this summer.
This memo which was taken off the FDA site, can be found here: http://www.anthrax.osd.mil/media/pdf/adverseEventMemo.pdf
It is also downloaded should it be removed from DoD's site. Note the 16 deaths, and the adverse events which follow. This begins on page 6, ends on page 10.
