ELITE ARMY UNITS TO STOP TAKING ANTI-MALARIAL DRUG...

[Indi Guy]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The top doctor for Green Berets and other elite Army commandos has told troops to immediately stop taking mefloquine, an anti-malaria drug found to cause permanent brain damage in rare cases.

The ban among special operations forces is the latest development in a long-running controversy over mefloquine. The drug was developed by the Army in the 1970s and has been taken by millions of travelers and people in the military over the years. As alternatives were developed, it fell out of favor as the front-line defense against malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that international health officials say kills roughly 600,000 people a year.

The new prohibition among special operations forces follows a July 29 safety announcement by the Food and Drug Administration that it had strengthened warnings about neurologic side effects associated with the drug. The FDA added a boxed warning to the drug label, the most serious kind of warning, saying neurologic side effects like dizziness, loss of balance and ringing in the ears may become permanent.

The drug's other side effects include anxiety, depression and hallucinations — conditions that some military families over the years believe prompted psychotic behavior in their loved ones, including killings and suicides...


Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/elite-army-units-stop-taking-anti-malarial-drug

[bananas]

1. First-person account in NY Times last month

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101670596

ON Oct. 16, 2002, at 4 p.m., I walked out of
my apartment in Secunderabad, India, leaving the door
wide open, the lights on and my laptop humming. I don’t
remember doing this. I know I did it because the
building’s night watchman saw me leave. I woke up the
next day in a train station four miles away, with no idea
who I was or why I was in India. A policeman found me,
and I ended up strapped down, hallucinating in a mental
hospital for three days.

<snip>

I had been prescribed mefloquine hydrochloride, brand
name Lariam, to protect myself from malaria while I was
in India on a Fulbright fellowship.

<snip>

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration finally
acknowledged the severity of the neurological and
psychiatric side effects and required that mefloquine’s
label carry a “black box” warning of them. But this is too
little, too late.

There are countless horror stories about the drug’s
effects. One example: in 1999, an Ohio man, back from a
safari in Zimbabwe, went down to the basement for a
gallon of milk and instead put a shotgun to his head and
pulled the trigger. Another: in Somalia in 1993, a
Canadian soldier beat a Somali prisoner to death and
then attempted suicide. “Psycho Tuesday” was the name
his regiment had given to the day of the week they took
their Lariam.
<snip>

[Indi Guy]

7. ...And it's only the "elite" troops that are being taken off Mefloquine (hydrochloride) - Lariam

(from my OP) "The top doctor for Green Berets and other elite Army commandos has told troops to immediately stop taking mefloquine..."

Therefore the majority of our troops in malaria prone regions are still taking this drug.

[JustAnotherGen]

2. Good

Enough of using our soldiers as guinea pigs. And I don't believe for one minute the military didn't know about this in 1970.

Any Vietnam Vets willing to weigh in on their experience?

I'm the daughter of one - specifically a Green Beret. Now we know. Now we know.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Big Pharma is not so big on reporting side effects

and FDA does not require indiependent testing.
The FDA does say the guinea pigs...errrr......the consumer....can report side effects to FDA,
but the web site they have is almost impossible to navigate to even find a place to report.

captive populations like the military, psych. hospitals, etc. have little choice about what meds they are forced to take, sadly.

[JustAnotherGen]

14. I think they probably did though

But the military did what it always does. And kept quiet.

I'm sorry - my dad died two years ago and the Fed Gov went back and gave him 'full' disability back to 1978 - to my mom. They know they did wrong with that 'rainbow' of Agents (most folks are only knowledgeable on Orange) - and they lied about it for years.

Funny - my dad didn't sign off on me getting any of my innoculations when I was born at Rammstein AFB. My brother had his in Fort Knox, KY. He had ear infections, heart murmur, etc. etc. Crazy illnesses as a kid and now as a man that no one in my family had.

Me - nada. zip. zilch. And we saw a German pediatrician as kids - NOT an Army Doctor.

When a Green Beret - the Army's most 'trusted secret keepers' won't allow the military to treat his wife and kids - that says something. It says a lot.

Watch - there won't be a way to sue the companies if you were in the military - just like with the rainbow of agents.

[salimbag]

9. Not just the military

The US Peace Corps requires volunteers in malarial areas to take Lariam, if the local malaria is chloroquine-resistant. Parts of Africa and the Philippines .

[hedgehog]

10. Sounds like this is a good thing - this will increase

military interest in finding a vaccine/ treatment/cure for malaria!

[Indi Guy]

12. There are safer alternatives to Lariam...

...Malrone and Doxycycline.

These do not have neurological side effects (which is a good thing for people handling deadly weapons).

[hedgehog]

11. Sounds like this is a good thing - this will increase

military interest in finding a vaccine/ treatment/cure for malaria!

[Indi Guy]

18. "Enough of using our soldiers as guinea pigs"...

http://izquotes.com/quote/279379

You might as well add, "...and pawns at the mercy of pretty much any whim of government."

[unhappycamper]

3. I suspect this has something to do with the drug itself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefloquine

~snip~

Adverse effects

Mefloquine is contraindicated in those with a previous history of seizures or a recent history of psychiatric disorders.[2] Severe side effects requiring hospitalization are rare.[3] Rates of side effects appear similar to other medications used for malaria prevention.[4]

Neurologic and psychiatric

Neuropsychiatric effects are reported with mefloquine use.[2] The FDA product guide states it can cause mental health problems, including anxiety, hallucinations, depression, unusual behavior, and suicidal ideations, among others.[8] Some have reported severe central nervous system events requiring hospitalization in about one in 10,000 people taking mefloquine for malaria prevention, with milder events (e.g., dizziness, headache, insomnia, and vivid dreams) in up to 25%.[9] When some measure of subjective severity is applied to the rating of adverse events, about 11-17% of travelers are incapacitated to some degree.[4]

In July 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a black box warning regarding neurologic and psychiatric side effects.[10]

Neurologic side effects of mefloquine can include dizziness, loss of balance, ringing in the ears, convulsions, and insomnia.[11] These effects can occur at any time during drug use, and can last for months to years after the drug is stopped or can be permanent.[12]

Psychiatric side effects can include anxiety, feelings of mistrust towards others (paranoia), seeing or hearing things that are not there (hallucinations), depression, suicidal ideas, restlessness, confusion, and behavior that is unusual.[11] These psychiatric problems may last for years after the patient stops taking the drug.[1]

[tabasco]

4. Well, fuck.

They had me on that shit for a year.

[JCMach1]

6. I know from insiders they hand this out like candy with little, or no follow-up

literally just passing out the boxes to the troops.

[roamer65]

8. The side effects are remarkably similar to fluoroquinlone antibiotics.

Makes me think the similarity is fluoride poisoning.

In addition to Mefloquine, people need to be very careful around the fluoroquinlone class of antibiotics.

The fluoroquinlones now have a black box warning as well.

[Link Speed]

13. And not one mention of the manufacturer

Mefloquine hydrochloride (Lariam, Mephaquin or Mefliam) is an orally administered medication used in the prevention and treatment of malaria. Mefloquine was developed in the 1970s at the United States Department of Defense's Walter Reed Army Institute of Research as a synthetic analogue of quinine. The brand name drug, Lariam, is manufactured by the Swiss company Hoffmann–La Roche. In August 2009, Roche stopped marketing Lariam in the United States. Generic mefloquine from other manufacturers is still widely available. Rare but serious neuropsychiatric problems have been associated with its use.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefloquine

[proverbialwisdom]

15. Journalist Dan Olmsted is the go-to person on this story.

GOOGLE: lariam site:ageofautism.com (145 results)

http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/04/drugs-death-and-the-manufacture-of-doubt.html

Posted by Age of Autism at April 26, 2009
Drugs, Death and the Manufacture of Doubt
By Dan Olmsted

I hope regular readers of this site will indulge a fairly extended incursion into a topic that, on the surface, is unrelated to autism but that connects at a deep level with our point and purpose. It concerns what I would call an analogous situation, and analogies sometimes have just as much power as direct argument and evidence.

This piece is triggered by two articles written last week on The Huffington Post by Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher magazine and nine books including “Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq.” Greg is one of the really smart guys orbiting the media universe, and was among the first to raise questions about the weak and wobbly performance of the press in covering the so-called “war on terror.”

My own experience with Greg comes from something he wrote in March 2004: “My vote for Iraq reporter of the year goes to a low-profile journalist who did not cover the war itself and has never even been to Baghdad. His name is Mark Benjamin, 33, and he serves as investigations editor for United Press International out of Washington, D.C. E&P has documented his work since last autumn, and now the heavy hitters - The New York Times and The Washington Post - are following his lead, taking a long look at the forgotten American victims of the war: the injured, the traumatized, and the suicides.”

At that point, Mark and I were colleagues at UPI -- I was his editor on those stories, although we were first and foremost co-conspirators in trying to bring attention to the woeful way the military was treating its soldiers and veterans. We had already been working together a couple of years at that point, starting in early 2002 with an investigative series on an anti-malaria drug called Lariam. The Army invented it as older malaria pills were losing effectiveness during the Vietnam era, and rushed it onto the market with inadequate testing under a licensing deal with Roche. It didn’t take long for the pharmaceutical version of “sin in haste, repent at leisure” effect to appear -- by the late 1980s, severe mental problems that included suicide and aggressive behavior were showing up in the military and also in the general traveling population, which was being prescribed Lariam as the new wonder drug.

<>

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

[proverbialwisdom]

16. More at democracynow.org site search for Lariam.

See: http://www.democracynow.org/search?utf8=✓&query=lariam&commit=Search

[MADem]

17. Good. I have long thought there was a connection between that drug and some of the craziness we've

seen emanating from some of the more directly operational military units.