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Stars and Stripes: Anthrax Vaccine Victims’
Advocate: ‘I Don’t Want Them to Feel Alone’
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Redmond Handy
Anthrax Vaccine Victims’ Advocate: ‘I Don’t
Want Them to Feel Alone’
Mar 16, 2001
Dave Eberhart
Stars and Stripes Veterans Affairs Editor
Stars and Stripes First Person
“These people feel trapped into accepting treatment from the same system that injured them,” Redmond Handy tells me somberly in the lobby of the military medical center. Handy looks like a G-man in his trench coat and military haircut. The black nylon bag he carries bulges with files on what he calls his “people,” young servicemen and women who have had serious reactions to the controversial anthrax vaccine.
He lays out the ground rules: no pictures, no names, no branch of service, no identification of gender, and minimal particulars on medical conditions—as these, too, may reveal the patient’s identity. Even the location of the medical center where we stand must be cloaked.
Redmond Handy
It is little consolation when he assures me that his people
will go on the record after they are safely retired, with the
issues of perpetual care and disability retirement percentages
fixed.
Handy sets off briskly on his rounds with me following—no
camera, no notebook, no pen. “They are scattered around the
hospital,” my guide says. It is late evening and the hospital
is relatively deserted. “It’s better at night,”
he reveals conspiratorially.
After a lot of travel down long, buffed corridors, we come to the first ward. Handy leads me past the charge nurse’s desk.
Paralyzed, Depressed
“Don’t we have to check in or something?” I ask. “I don’t,” he replies, stopping before a closed door. After a couple of raps, an older gentlemen, the patient’s father, opens the door, smiles at Handy and gestures that we should enter. On the bed to the left, the patient lies uncovered on the patient’s side, eyes closed, facing the wall.
From my pre-visit briefing I know that the patient rapidly declined after the sixth anthrax shot. The patient is now paralyzed on one side of the body. It has affected speech and the patient has been depressed.
The bedside table has pictures of the patient’s new baby. More pictures of the newborn fill a cork bulletin board on the wall the patient faces. Handy knows the father, as well as the patient from previous visits. His bedside manner is reverent as he confers with the father. There is no good news about the patient’s condition.
The patient’s breathing is helped by a tube protruding
from an incision at the base of the neck.
The next patient we visit is much worse off—almost totally
paralyzed, with only some movement in one hand. As with the first
patient, this servicemember’s decline quickly followed vaccination.
With this victim, the symptoms began in earnest after only the
third shot. The patient’s breathing is helped by a tube protruding
from an incision at the base of the neck.
“We almost lost [the patient] last week,” Handy had
revealed in his pre-visit briefing. “What’s the prognosis?”
I had asked, afraid to learn the fate of this young person who
had been healthy and vigorous. “[The] mother told me last
visit that the doctor said that there is nothing more they can
do.”
The patient’s mother is on hand tonight. She never leaves, sleeping in a nearby room right in the hospital.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know why [the patient] is like this,” she says angrily, before quickly regaining her composure. She is by nature a gentlewoman but scared for the patient. Twenty-four hour care is needed into the foreseeable future, and that is going to require a real commitment from the government. The doctors don’t highlight the vaccine in the medical jargon that fills the patient’s charts and records, she says—not a good sign.
Watching ‘Survivor’
The patient pays little attention to the visitors, but watches “Survivor” on the television set affixed to the wall. The contestants are running, jumping and squealing. I wonder what the patient is thinking—
A telephone call reveals that patient number three is not presently on any ward of the hospital proper but resting at the nearby military guesthouse. Handy and I take a break in the hospital’s cafeteria, which features a late-evening snack menu.
Over the weekend the patient has been rehydrated with intravenous fluids, Handy tells me. It is the patient’s fifth trip to the medical center. As with the patient we had just left, this one’s suffering began shortly after the third shot in the vaccination regime. The condition, involving a paralysis of the internal organs, steadily worsened over the ensuing months.
On one of the nearly deserted cafeteria’s tables Handy spreads three sheets of photos, several pictures on each. The first sheet of pictures shows the patient in civilian attire, smiling for the camera—tanned, fit, happy.
The second sheet is a montage of shots of the patient in working and dress military uniform, looking like a recruiting poster. Three rows of ribbons on a dress uniform denote service in hostile zones. The beaming servicemember stares at me from the sheet, a person clearly proud to wear the country’s uniform.
The pictures on the third sheet were all taken after the vaccine had taken its toll. The patient is tall, impossibly thin, a gray alien compared to the vigorous individual I’ve seen on the first two sheets.
Unpopular Diagnosis
I am told that the patient has lost more than 40 pounds from an already delicate frame. Most nourishment keeping the patient alive enters the emaciated body via a feeding tube. Regular foods don’t digest, are regurgitated or are lost in bouts of debilitating diarrhea.
The patient typically scored 290 out of 300 on the physical fitness test, Handy tells me. But then came the first three anthrax shots.
The specialist the patient saw there is unhesitating in his
conclusion that the servicemember’s illness was triggered
by a severe reaction to a vaccine.
Mystified and alarmed doctors at the servicemember’s base sent the dangerously ill patient to a top-notch civilian hospital known for tackling the tough cases. The specialist the patient saw there is unhesitating in his conclusion that the servicemember’s illness was triggered by a severe reaction to “a vaccine.”
I read the volatile words on a copy of the medical form. I am not allowed to make copies.
The diagnosis was not popular with the command, I am told by
Handy. “The drug protocol [the patient] was given by the
civilian specialist was canceled,” he reveals.
After another phone call to the guesthouse, we are told that the
patient is too tired for visitors at this late hour.
I am enormously relieved, as I am afraid and somehow ashamed to face the patient with the stick legs and protruding collarbones.
Instead I talk to the patient on the phone. Incredibly, the brave patient’s thoughts and concerns are not self-centered. The patient wants to talk about the others the patient has met—those with less visible injuries and undiagnosed conditions in a special coping program the patient must attend regularly.
‘They Have to Fight...’
“They have to fight harder for recognition,” the patient says. The patient describes other military members, young people in their 20s and 30s suffering with conditions a much older person might have: daily muscle/joint pain, fatigue, night sweats, disorienting memory loss. Some of these people are afraid to drive cars, I am told.
Handy has helped the patient tell the patient’s history to certain members of Congress. He says that the initial treatment by the military was “barbaric.” The patient has been promised an inspector general’s investigation.
Near the end of our conversation, I am asked to report that the patient’s condition is “chronic and long-term—up to two years so far.”
I’d like to be treated fairly. We all do, the patient
says before signing off.
“I’d like to be treated fairly. We all do,” the patient says before signing off.
Redmond H. Handy testified before the House Government Reform subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations in March 1999 and the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee in September 1999 about the impact of the Defense Department’s Anthrax Vaccination Inoculation Program (AVIP) on military readiness and recruitment.
A self-taught researcher, he has studied AVIP for three years
in consultation with bio-warfare and medical experts and been
interviewed or quoted by People Magazine, CNN, the Jim Lehrer
News Hour, USA Today, the Associated Press, Insight Magazine and
numerous local network affiliates. He also has written or contributed
to articles in a number of newspapers.
Handy has cosponsored a Reserve Officer’s Association resolution
recommending that the current remaining vaccine stockpile not
be used.
‘Shield of Dreams’
He currently testifies before medical boards and at the trials of service members refusing the anthrax vaccine because of concern about their health. He will be on hand at the scheduled court-martial in May of Capt. John Buck, the first Air Force doctor to refuse the vaccine.
Handy was a full colonel before he retired in May 1999 in protest of the AVIP. Handy calls it the Pentagon’s “shield of dreams,” and cites studies showing anthrax is not the threat the DoD advertises.
Handy’s “people” are not alone.
A copy of this story was delivered to the commanding officer of the military hospital. Another copy was sent to the Pentagon. As of this writing, there has been comment only from the military hospital’s PAO who pointed out that the rough draft had mistakenly identified Capt. John Buck as an Army doctor rather than an Air Force doctor. It should also be noted that the patients interviewed were very positive about the quality of care at the hospital.
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Last revised: March 2004