WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Washington on Monday ordered the Pentagon to stop administering an anthrax vaccine to U.S. service members without their consent, ruling that defense officials cannot require troops to "serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs."
In blocking mandatory anthrax inoculations until a full trial can be held on the matter, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan agreed with the contention by six unnamed Defense Department plaintiffs that the anthrax vaccine is an experimental drug "being used for an unapproved purpose" — namely, for exposure to airborne anthrax as well as exposure through the skin.
As such, he ruled, it cannot under federal law be administered to service members on a mandatory basis.
Sullivan said he was not persuaded by arguments from Pentagon attorneys that administering the vaccine on a voluntary basis would interfere with military operations in Iraq and elsewhere.
But if they believe that is the case, the judge said, federal law gives them the option of obtaining a presidential waiver of service members’ right to informed consent. Such a waiver, Sullivan wrote, "would be an expeditious end to this controversy."
Sullivan’s ruling comes with more than 800,000 U.S. troops having received the vaccine since 1998. Many of them received the vaccine — a series of six injections — last year, before deploying to fight the war in Iraq.
Hundreds of other service members have refused to take the vaccine out of concerns about its safety. Many of them have been court-martialed and forced out of the military. As recently as this month, an Ohio National Guard soldier was court-martialed for twice refusing the take the vaccine and was sentenced to 40 days in jail.
A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment on Sullivan’s ruling and would not say whether those who had been disciplined could now seek to have their cases reconsidered.
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