Kirsten Kelly
Holly Papas
ENG 101
05 May 2017
[Title]: [Subtitle]
Nothing should go into your body with out consent. When you’re in the military, some things are mandatory, with or with out consent. Joining the Army was scary and exciting at the same time. Every experience was new, including what my friends and I called “the hall of shots.”
One of the requirements for military service is ensuring that you are up to date on all of your vaccines. During basic training, they had all of us new recruits form a huge line and walk into an auditorium filled with tables set up as stations. Each station had different immunizations and when we got to the station we handed them our paper, they gave us the immunization, then they signed the paper saying they gave the shot, and we moved on to the next station until we received all our shots. Most of us joked about the Army injecting us with crazy things and we wouldn’t even know it, others really took that to heart and still believe they’ve been injected with something other than what they were told. Me personally, I don’t know if I believe they would inject us with something completely different than what they were told, but I do believe the military would cut costs by trying new drugs using service members as kind of focus group. Since most medications need government approval the government can use humans they consider government property (by law) as their own little guinea pigs.
Between 1922 through 1975 it is estimated that 70,000 soldiers were used in chemical experiments. These soldiers signed up on a volunteer basis with bribes of guaranteed weekend passes when not being experimented on, and not having to perform cleaning duties. They were not told what they were being injected with and some of these injections came with up to 40 hours worth of hallucinations. Most of the soldiers that have been experimented on have since passed away however, they have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army to find out exactly what they were injected with. Recently, NPR and the Military Times reported the veterans won in court however, the Army has filed for a rehearing.
Army Private Tim Josephs remembered about his experience in 1968 with the Army’s experimentations. He was shipped to Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland with false promises of 3 day weekends to his home. PVT Josephs was under the impression that he was going to text out new equipment however, when he saw it was nothing more than a hospital he raised his concerns to an officer. “He said, ‘You volunteered for this. You’re going to do it. If you don’t, you’re going to jail. You’re going to Vietnam either way — before or after.'” (CNN)
It’s not only the secret testing that shows that service members are guinea pigs, it’s also a problem that the military would rather save a dollar than ensure the well being of human beings fighting for their country. As the Military Times reported a common malaria drug the military mandates to service members who go to areas where malaria is common, mimics symptoms of PTSD. The drug called Mefloquine was prescribed 50,000 times in 2003. The drug was developed in the 1970’s by the U.S. Army and was found to be potent and toxic back then. The doctor who researched it back then, Dr. Remington Nevin, said “any distribution of the drug is too much.” Having known this already, the military still injected service members with the drug, 50,000 times in one year. It wasn’t until 2015 that the FDA put a black box warning on the drug that it stopped being used as much, now only if the person can’t tolerate any other treatment. (Adding more)
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