A very interesting and worthwhile read from a retired 25 year Army Reserve JAG, Blue Star Mother, civilian civil rights lawyer, and longtime MRFF supporter: “Military COVID vaccine ‘religious’ refusniks:”

In the 1990s, some Reserve and National Guard Officers, including some JAGs like me, and government and private physicians researching anthrax, formed a working group to oppose DoD’s first anthrax vaccine. We stood on science, fact, law, not “religion” and fetus fetishes with the goal of positive impact for individual Servicemembers and their families, and the military mission. A comparison of our motive and tactics with the baseless “religious infringement” and “constitutional” claims of some current COVID military refusniks reveals how insidious, cynical, politicized, and dangerous to our national security their tactics are.

Unlike COVID’s dramatic entry to world stage, anthrax emerged as a DoD focus during Gulf I for no apparent reason except anthrax and MidEast terrorists exist in arid soil. Anthrax is not a contagious bacteria or virus like small pox and COVID, it is spores spread by direct contact, most commonly through the skin of workers who handle hides and wool of animals living in spore-infected soil, and possibly by eating their meat. Anthrax has been used as a bioweapon; in WWII the British dropped infected cow carcasses to starving Germans. The sole documented lethal modern anthrax attack was in the U.S. Northeast, at one point attributed to a researcher in a U.S. Army laboratory mailing a stable powdered anthrax through the U.S. Postal Service. To be effective against our military, it would have to infect many people at once, which requires aerosol delivery. To make such a delivery system from wild anthrax that would not also contaminate those who used it would require sophisticated engineering (the Russians famously failed at it a 1978 68 fatality lab spill). So far, no such system is known to exist, and no anthrax attack occurred in the ensuing 20 years fighting terrorists on MidEast soil.

Anthrax has harmed our military through DoD’s vaccine. First, DoD committed to en masse vaccination without any clear threat and before it had a vaccine, much less safe and effective against a hypothetical method for an anthrax attack. To date DoD does not have a vaccine proven efficacious against inhaled anthrax. No willing reputable manufacturer would invest in research and development because the civilian market is the tiny number of people who work with animal hides/wool. DoD found an almost defunct manufacturer in MI who said it had such an anthrax vaccine in stock. It had something manufactured by a predecessor in the 1970s with a 1950s formula – a 40 year old formula predating modern trials and federal review, without proper storage for 20 years. The company was not a researcher. They cranked up the old stuff with adjuvants and gave it to us with no transparency on the risk.

Second, the rollout was years of confusion on dose and boosters. It started with 4-6 jabs the first year then every six months forever with dire warnings of health issues and having to start over if any were missed or late, impossible to administer in the transient military. Predictably, young healthy people were injured and losses to the military. Especially for the Active Duty and junior ranks without private care before Obamacare, reporting of adverse reactions was spotty. People could not get it on time because of duty locations and had to start over, ending up double dosed. Others left the military before completing, with the vaccine unavailable privately. It especially affected the country’s large Reserve where troop strength is transient but more vital to national security than most Americans know. Contrast with COVID vaccines, among the most monitored ever in part because they employ new technology still in active competitive research. Global vaccine companies are sharing efficacy and safety data with all levels of government, private physicians, researchers and the public. Private physicians are watching efficacy and adverse reactions in their patients who include most of the military (Reservists who do not get military healthcare). The adjustments in doses and boosters is warranted given our massive diverse population, the new technology and urgency of this virus – while the nation was still at war against MidEast terrorists when it began. The overall success of the COVID vaccines is despite unprecedented interference by political operatives and grifters driving panic, insane lies and conspiracy theories.

Thirty years later, despite no documented aerosolized anthrax attack, hundreds of thousands of adherents to the “religion” pastiche have taken the troubled anthrax vaccine against a farfetched threat of an Arabic terrorist anthrax attack, without “fetus” objections. They raise “religion” against only this vaccine that has scientifically unassailable high efficacy against rampant human-to-human spread, long-term debilitation, mass death, and crippling our health care systems, offering cult talk, conspiracy theories and grifts. They ignore the facts that most vaccines and even over-the-counter medicines were developed with human fetal tissue and DNA, and that the COVID vaccine was not developed only with aborted fetuses and does not put fetus parts (and microchips) into arms.

If ever there were a basis for conspiracy theories, it is the lurid and terrifying real and related facts of the only anthrax attack on Americans and connections to our anthrax objectors group. But we still stood on science and law. Those anthrax attacks occurred in 2001, shortly after 9/11, by mailed envelopes containing powdered anthrax. It killed a random elderly woman in Connecticut. I and the two most publicized anthrax vaccine refusers in our objectors group, two Connecticut National Guard pilots, lived and served in Connecticut. The federal government attributed the attacks to an Army anthrax research doctor who was a member of our group. Another anthrax research doctor in the group was close with him and claimed the government started a fire on her property to threaten her work. The Army anthrax researcher killed himself when he learned he was to be charged. It shocked our group who certainly did not foresee such a distinguished member accused. The media had covered the problems with the DoD anthrax vaccinations supposedly needed for a terrorist attack. All roads pointed to DoD, until DOJ said they were wrong about the anthrax coming from Army. Today, anything similar with COVID  would generate mass media and mob conspiracy theories and lies, sadly, apparently even in the military.

Staying the course with science and law, two years later a JAG in our group (in his private practice) with the now renowned national security attorney Mark Zaid succeeded in getting a ruling against DoD from the esteemed U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan that Servicemembers have right to informed consent for vaccines – disclosure of risks and right to refuse. That temporarily stopped the DoD anthrax vaccine and forced DoD to address some issues. By then the old shelf vaccine was gone. Contrast with COVID vaccine cases spewing conspiracies and religious exemptions which no court has upheld. There have only been limits to some regulatory powers over workplaces, and the Supreme Court upheld mandatory vaccinations of health care workers.

In sum, we will not hear science and law from military COVID refusniks because there is none upon which they can prevail. When you don’t have the law on your side, argue the facts. If no facts, argue your personal “religious beliefs” about science and the Constitution. DoD cannot bend to fabrications, mob rule, and unbecoming conduct wrapped in “religious” cloth. The best way DoD can stand for good order, discipline, cohesion, and morale is to ensure the discharges proceed only on provable facts and law.