More info for Farenheit 9/11 discussions. The
film is incredible and I agree with an elderly White man who stood up at the end
of the showing I was at and said: "This film should be required viewing for ALL
Americans."
Media scholars should have special interest also in
the film as well as why none of the media I've been monitoring carried the UPI
story below.
drug causing
permanent brain damage to
soldiers
============================================
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040526-105156-8460r
Drug causing GIs permanent brain damage
By Mark Benjamin and Dan Olmsted
United Press
International
WASHINGTON, (UPI) -- Six U.S. soldiers have been diagnosed
by the military
with permanent brain damage from an anti-malaria drug used
in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and health officials must reassess its safety, a
U.S. senator said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a letter to
Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy Thompson, said the drug, called
mefloquine, has "serious risks"
that have not been adequately tracked by the
Pentagon, the Peace Corps and
other government agencies that distribute
it.
"I ask that you work with the Food and Drug Administration to
reassess the
safety of mefloquine," Feinstein wrote Thompson in a letter
dated May 24.
Feinstein told Thompson she is concerned that "six
service members have been
diagnosed with permanent brainstem and vestibular
damage from being given
this drug despite the fact that alternative drugs
might have been chosen to
prevent infection."
The FDA last year
warned that the drug, also called Lariam, is linked to
reports of suicide,
though a connection has not been established. It also said
some psychiatric
and neurological side effects have been reported to last long
after taking
it. The Pentagon this year announced a new safety study of the
drug, which
has been used by some 20 million people worldwide, and the Department
of
Veterans Affairs said it will look at possible long-term effects on
veterans.
According to people familiar with the situation, the
six service members
were diagnosed in recent weeks by doctors at Naval
Medical Center San Diego. Its
Spatial Orientation Lab, a Department of
Defense facility, specializes in
balance disorders.
One service
member who received a diagnosis is former Navy Reserve Cmdr.
William
Manofsky, who became severely ill after taking mefloquine in Iraq and
Kuwait
while deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Another soldier with a
mefloquine diagnosis is a Green Beret who served in
Afghanistan.
UPI reviewed a copy of Manofsky's medical report from
the San Diego lab,
which includes the notation, "Lariam induced," with the
word Lariam underlined.
Earlier this month, Manofsky filed suit
against Lariam's manufacturer, Swiss
drug giant Hoffmann-La Roche, for
alleged failure to warn of the drug's risks
and marketing a product it knows
is unsafe.
Asked for comment about the suit, Roche spokesman
Terence Hurley told UPI:
"We don't comment on pending litigation. Roche
believes that the labeling that
accompanies Lariam, and which has been
approved by the FDA, is adequate.
Information about the use of Lariam and
neuropsychiatric events has appeared in the
product's label since it was
approved by the FDA in 1989.
"Roche takes issues of safety very
seriously and works with regulatory
authorities on an ongoing basis to
ensure recommendations on product use take into
account current scientific
and medical evidence."
Manofsky said he became mentally and
physically ill after taking the drug,
at one point taking his gun apart
because he was afraid he was going to kill
himself. A year after he stopped
taking the drug, he still suffers from severe
balance problems, trembling
and memory loss.
The diagnoses appear to put the Pentagon, and
particularly the Army, in an
unusual position: Military health officials
continue to insist the drug is safe
and to prescribe it widely. Army Surgeon
General James Peake told a House
subcommittee in February that "we don't
think it is as big a problem as has been
made out."
Peake also
dismissed any association between the drug and a string of
murder-suicides
at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the summer of 2002 by U.S. soldiers who took
Lariam
while assigned to units in Afghanistan.
"There was absolutely no
statistical correlation between Lariam use and
those suicides," Peake
said.
But the Army announced it will study possible Lariam side
effects, including
suicide, as a result of the controversy. The study could
take up to two
years, according to William Winkerwerder Jr., assistant
secretary of defense for
health affairs.
In March another
Special Forces soldier committed suicide after taking
Lariam in Iraq and
returning home to Monument, Colo. William Howell's wife believes
Lariam
triggered his bizarre behavior, in which he stuck a gun in her face
and
threatened to kill her before shooting himself. She accused the Army of not
looking into whether the drug had played a role -- the same charge made by
friends of the soldiers involved in the Fort Bragg
incidents.
Howell's death in Colorado brought the number of
suicides among Special
Forces soldiers during the war on terrorism to five.
At least four of the five
took Lariam on deployments just prior to
committing suicide, according to the
Army.
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