Laboratory Science
FaIl 1997
Cristie Sanford
In May of 1993 my brother, Scott Siefken, began to suffer from strange rashes breaking out
on various parts of his body. At first, they would come and go, only to reappear again in
greater intensity. Equally mysterious were the large, painful sores developing in his
mouth. At first, the rashes were casually explained away by things such as a different
laundry soap, or an allergic reaction to some other common household product. Eventually,
the persistence and progression of the rashes and mouth sores, led Scott to seek medical
treatment. In the following year, the rashes only worsened, As test after test failed to
determine that anything at all was wrong with my brother. Finally, in late August of 1994,
Scott phoned my mother from the VA hospital in Des Moines, in very high spirits. He was at
long last given a diagnosis: Lupus. My mother's heart sank, as she was unable to relate to
him the grim meaning behind the name of his disease. He of course, thought he was on the
road to recovery, as he felt that surely the proper treatment could now be prescribed. By
this time the rash had turned into dollar sized blisters that would break open at the
slightest touch or contact with anything, leaving open, mattering, and very painful sores
which were now covering most of his body. As one of my younger sisters described it, it
was as if his blood were boiling to the surface of his skin.
Once a diagnosis was made, what ever was wrong with Scott seemed to completely consume
him. Within days he was rushed to the University of Iowa Hospital for emergency surgery to
have the entire epidermal layer of his skin removed. The doctors felt that it was the only
thing that might save his life. Even so, he was given only a five percent chance of
surviving. He did not beat the odds. Scott died on October fifth, 1994, seven weeks after
his surgery. The autopsy report listed the cause(s) of death as cancer of the lymph nodes,
kidney failure, and blood poisoning. Lupus was ruled out. Scott's doctor at the University
of Iowa Hospital Burn Unit told the family that he had never seen anything like this
before, and that he had no idea what he was dealing with.
During Scott's hospitalization, my mother rarely left his side. Within the past few years
she too has suffered with mysterious rashes, severe nausea, joint pain, muscle spasms,
chronic fatigue, and frequent headaches, and just as recently as last week, she has been
diagnosed with Lupus and Fibromyalgia, two diseases frequently diagnosed among Gulf War
veterans suffering from the controversial "Gulf War Illness." Scott was a Gulf
War Veteran.
Despite early efforts to squash any notion that chemical and biological agents were used
against allied forces in the Persian Gulf War, documentation providing strong evidence is
now surfacing that would prove to the contrary. Not only were they used, but documentation
reveals that chemical companies and biological laboratories in the United States, funded
by the United States Department of Defense manufactured them, and It was our own
government who sold them to Sadam Husein. (Ref. B, p.1) Also in question are the
inoculations the troops were given just prior to their deployment to the Gulf region.
While only a few troops were given a choice, the majority were ordered to receive the
inoculations. What were these inoculations for? Were they approved by the FDA?
Cries of conspiracy, cover-up, and even more bazaar, the idea that the entire Gulf War was
a staged "experiment" in chemical and biological warfare, are among much of the
conversation I've heard in recent years. These are things that anyone who loves this
country would find difficult to believe. But the truth is that while we as a people can
point a self-righteous finger at governments like China that trample on the idea of
fundamental human rights, our own government has a dark, dirty secret as well.
In the two decades following the close of World War II there was an extraordinary
expansion of human experimentation in medical research. Long after peace returned many
researchers continued to use wartime rules, but focusing their efforts on the cold war and
the war against disease. The utilitarian justifications that had flourished under
conditions of combat persisted, in disregard of principles of consent and voluntary
participation. (Ref. A, p.2252)
The driving force in research in the United States after World War II was the National
Institute of Health (NIH). Formed in 1930 as an offshoot of the research laboratory of the
US Public Health Service, the NIH assumed its prominence as the successor agency to the
Committee on Medical Research. In 1946, its appropriations totaled $700,000. By 1955, the
figure had climbed to $36 million, and by 1970, $1.5 billion, a sum that allowed It to
award 11,000 grants, about one-third requiring experiments on humans. In expending these
funds, the NIH administered an intramural research program at its own Clinical Center,
along with an extramural program that funded outside researchers. (Ibid.)
The Clinical Center assured its subjects that it put their safety and well-being first.
"The welfare of the patient takes precedence over every other consideration" (
NIH, 1953). In 1954 a Clinical Research Committee was established to develop principles
and to deal with problems that might arise in research involving normal, healthy
volunteers. But, the relationship between researcher and subject was casual to a fault,
leaving it up to the researcher to decide what information, if any, was to be shared with
the subject. Generally the researchers did not indulge their subjects with very much
information, fearful that they would discourage their patients from participating. No
formal policies or procedures applied to researchers working in other institutions on
studies supported by NIH funds. (Ibid.)
The laxity of procedural protections pointed to the enormous intellectual and emotional
investment in research and to the conviction that the laboratory would yield answers to
the mysteries of disease. This faith was so great that the NIH would not establish
guidelines to govern the extramural research it supported. By 1985 the extramural program
was the single most Important source of research grants for universities and medical
schools, by the NIH's own estimate, supporting between 1500 and 2000 research projects
involving human research. Nevertheless, grant provisions included no stipulations about
the ethical conduct of human experimentation and the universities did not fill the gap.
(Ibid.)
One might have expected much greater attention to the ethics of human experimentation in
the wake of the trial of the German doctors at Nuremberg. Nazi experimental atrocities
included investigation of quicker and more effective means of sexual sterilization
(including clandestine dosing and unanesthetized male and female castration) and death (an
area of study Leo Alexander (1949) termed "thanatology," which included studies
of techniques for undetectable individual assassination - i.e., murder that mimics natural
death - as well as mass murder). Among the best known cases were the hypothermia
experiments, which investigated mechanisms of death by freezing and means of preventing
it. These studies, motivated by the loss of German pilots over the North Sea, included
immersing prisoners In freezing water and observing freezing's lethal physiological
pathways. Nazi experimentation also included deprivation of oxygen to learn the limits of
bodily endurance, or deliberate infection by lethal organisms in order to study the
effects of drugs and vaccines. The knowledge of these things should have sparked a
commitment in the United States to a more rigorous regulation of research. So too, the
American research efforts during the war might have raised questions of their own and
stimulated closer oversight. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. (Ref. A1 p.2253)
The Nuremberg Code of 1948 Itself might have served as a model for American guidelines on
research with human subjects. Its provisions certainly were relevant to the medical
research conducted in the United States. "The voluntary consent of the human subject
is absolutely essential," the code declared. "This means that the person
involved should have legal capacity to give consent. By this principle the mentally
disabled and children were not suitable subjects for research - a principle that American
researchers did not respect. Moreover, according to the Nuremberg code, the research
subject "should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice",
which rendered at least questionable the American practice of using prisoners as research
subjects. The Nuremberg Code also stated that human subjects "should have sufficient
knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to make an
understanding and enlightened decision", thus ruling out the practice of using the
mentally disabled as subjects. (Ibid.)
However, with few exceptions, neither the code nor these specific practices received
sustained analysis before the early 1970's. Only a handful of articles in medical or
popular journals addressed the relevance of Nuremberg for the ethics of human
experimentation in the United States. Perhaps this silence reflected an eagerness to
suppress the memory of the holocaust. More likely the events described at Nuremberg were
not perceived by most Americans as relevant to their own practices. From their
perspective, the code had nothing to do with science and everything to do with Nazis. The
guilty parties were seen less as doctors than as Hitlers henchmen. (Ibid.)
How researchers exercised discretion was the subject of a groundbreaking article by Henry
Beecher, professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, published in June 1966 in the
New England Journal of Medicine. His analysis, "Ethics in Medical Research,"
contained brief descriptions of twenty two examples of investigators who risked "the
health or the life of their subjects," without informing them of the dangers or
obtaining their permission. In one case, researchers purposefully withheld penicillin from
servicemen with streptococcal infections in order to study alternative means for
preventing complications. The men were totally unaware that they were part of an
experiment, let alone at risk for contracting rheumatic fever, which twenty five of them
did. Beecher's conclusion was that unethical or questionably ethical procedures "are
not uncommon" among researchers. Although he did not provide footnotes for the
examples or name the researchers, he did note that "the troubling practices"
came from "leading medical schools, university hospitals, private hospitals,
governmental military departments, government institutes (the National Institutes of
Health), Veterans Administration Hospitals, and industry" (Beecher 1966). (Ibid.)
Two of the cases that Beecher cited were especially important in provoking public
indignation over the conduct of human research. One case involved researchers who fed live
hepatitis virus to the residents of Willowbrook, a New York State institution for the
retarded, in order to study the etiology of the disease and attempt to create a protective
vaccine against it. The other case Involved physicians injecting live cancer cells into
twenty two elderly and senile hospitalized patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease
hospital without telling them that the cells were cancerous, in order to study the body's
immunological responses. (Ibid.)
Another case that caused fierce public reaction in the early 1970's was the Tuskegee
research of the US Public Health Service. Its researchers had been visiting Macon County,
Alabama since the 1930's to examine, but not treat a group of African Americans who were
suffering from secondary syphilis. The objective was to study the natural progression of
untreated syphilis. Four hundred subject-victims were studied, along with two hundred
uninfected control subjects. The study, whose first published scientific paper appeared In
1938, continued until a news paper account of it appeared in 1972. Its subject-victims
were either uninformed or misinformed about the purpose of the study, as well as its
associated interventions. Whatever rationalizations the PHS had for not treating these
individuals in the 1930's when treatment was of questionable efficacy and very complicated
to administer, it could hardly defend instructing draft boards not to enlist the subjects
for fear that they might receive treatment while in the army. Worse yet, it could not
justify its unwillingness to give treatment, even long after the discovery of penicillin.
(Ref. A, ps. 2254, 58)
During the 1950's and 1960's not only individual researchers but government agencies as
well conducted research that often ignored the question of consent of the subjects,
putting many of them at serious risk. Many of these studies involved the testing of
radiation on humans. Part of the motivation was to better understand human physiology;
even more important, however was the goal of bolstering the national defense by learning
about the possible impact of radiation on our fighting forces. Accordingly, inmates at the
Oregon State Prison were subjects in experiments to examine the effects on sperm
production by exposing their testicles to X rays. Although the prisoners were told some of
the risks, they were not informed that the radiation might cause cancer. So, too,
terminally ill patients at the Cincinnati General Hospital underwent whole body radiation,
in research supported. by the US Department of Defense, not so much to measure its effects
against cancer, but to learn about the dangers radiation posed to military personnel.
During this period, the Central Intelligence Agency also conducted research on unknowing
subjects with mind altering hallucinogens and psychiatric techniques in an effort to
improve interrogation and brainwashing methods. It was not until the 1980's that parts of
this record became public, and not until 1994 that the full dimensions of these research
projects were known. (Ref. A, p.2254) No treatment or follow up was ever offered to these
subjects, and some were so affected, they ended up committing suicide. (Ref C, p.24)
Much unethical research comes to light only after many years after it is conducted, as is
true of unethical military research conducted by the United States during and immediately
following World War II. At that time, over 60,000 US servicemen were involuntarily
enrolled in studies involving exposure to chemical warfare agents (mustard gas and
lewisite); at least 4000 of them were exposed to high concentrations in field experiments
and test chambers. (Ref A, p.2258)
Information about experiments on human radiation response supported by the US government
beginning in 1945 came to public attention in 1993. In one study, conducted from 1945 to
1947, eighteen patients considered to be terminally ill were injected with high doses of
plutonium to determine how long it was retained in the human body. Military secrecy
surrounding atomic energy precluded informed consent. Rather than telling subject-victims
they would receive an injection of radioactive plutonium, the researchers told subjects
they would receive a "product." Experiments on intellectually handicapped
teenagers in a Massachusetts institution involved feeding the subjects very small amounts
of radioactive iron and calcium to study the body's absorption of these materials. While
the radiation exposure in these studies was low and unlikely to cause harm, the
subject-victims were all incompetent, and their parents who consented on their behalf,
were simply asked by the institution to agree to "nutritional experiments." In
reaction to news accounts of these and other studies, orders were issued in 1993 to
declassify documents relating to unethical exposure of US service personnel and citizens
to radiation from atomic weapons testing after World War II; in 1994 President Bill
Clinton appointed a panel to guide federal investigation into the radiation studies. (Ref.
A, p.2258, 59)
Several themes emerge from the known examples of unethical research. Such studies are
likely to be done involving disenfranchised or disadvantaged populations as test subjects.
In the absence of public outcry, unethical research may continue for many years despite
the fact that readers of the scientific literature in many cases have had access to all
the facts they need to expose unethical practice. The larger and more egregious studies
are especially likely to have been motivated by national security concerns and funded by
the military. (Ref. A, p.2259)
House Bill 15090 documents an Appropriation Hearing in 1970 by the Departrnent of Defense
to procure ten million dollars for the research and development of a synthetic biological
agent. The document states that they believed that within a period of five to ten years it
would be possible to produce a "synthetic biological agent that does not naturally
exist, and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired." Basically it is
saying that this synthetic biological agent will attack and destroy the immune system. In
1975 was the first AIDS related death. (Ref. E, ps. 3,4) What are the chances that the
above mentioned synthetic biological agent and the HIV virus are one and the same? Would
the population of a remote area of Africa and or the homosexual population be considered
to be expendable subject-victims, therefore making them among the first to be unknowingly
used to further the research?
Approximately 50,000 to 100,000 US soldiers returned from Operation Desert Storm with
unusual illnesses characterized by a variety of chronic signs and symptoms. Ph.D.
Microbiology Scientists, Garth and Nancy Nicolson, working out of The Institute for
Molecular Medicine in Irvine California had earlier experience with a disease that caused
similar complex signs and symptoms. They proposed that the Persian Gulf War Illness might
be caused by a severe mycoplasmal infection and that it should be treatable with
appropriate antibiotics. A pilot study was conducted of Desert Storm Veterans and their
families for the presence of unusual mycoplasmal infections. This study showed that 55/73
GWI patients, including symptomatic family members, responded to an antibiotic
(doxycycline) that is effective against a variety of mycoplasmas, and these soldiers and
their family members who were sick with the same symptoms eventually recovered from their
illness. (Ref. D, p.1)
The mycoplasmas found in a sizable fraction of the Gulf War Illness patients are unlikely
to be naturally occurring and could be biological weapons. This notion was based on the
observation that the mycoplasmas found in clinical blood samples from Desert Storm
veterans contain unusual DNA sequences that they probably did not obtain in the wild. For
example, there were detected mycoplasma DNA sequences from Mycoplasma fermentans
(incognitus strain) and modified Mycoplasma genitallium as well as the HIV-1 envelope gene
in veterans and their family members with GWI. Mycoplasmas possessing the HIV-1 envelope
gene could allegedly have been engineered to make them more invasive and pathogenic and
more difficult to find. The HIV-1 envelope gene encodes a surface glycoprotein that is
involved in virus attachment and entry into cells through receptors on the cell surface.
This could result in opportunistic cell attachment and penetration of many types of cells
and most tissues. (Ibid.)
One could be suffering severely from this type of mycoplasmal infection, and less
sensitive tests, such as antibody tests could be negative. Since the mycoplasma that has
been detected is present deep inside the cell, the usual antibody tests for extracellular
mycoplasmas may be relatively useless. The most sensitive type of DNA test, the polymerase
chain reaction (PCR) technique, could also prove negative in an infected individual,
because DNA chains of the invading mycoplasma may be tightly complexed with nucleoproteins
and might not be accessible for the PCR reaction. Gulf War Illness appears to be a
collection of illnesses produced as a result of multiple chemical and biological exposures
from endogenous and exogenous sources such as Chemical/BiologIcal Weapons. (Ref. D, p.2)
The effects of these exposures were exacerbated by the harmful and synergistic side
effects of unproven (untested) pyridostigmine bromide (PB) pills (nerve agent
pre-treatment pills) forcibly administered to our troops, botulinum toxiod vaccines (also
untested and experimental) forcibly administered to our troops, anthrax vaccines, and
several other experimental vaccines, all forcibly administered to our troops like so many
laboratory guinea pigs. (Ref. C, p.3)
Virtually all of the US and allied troops were forced (on threat of court martial, or
Article 15, if they refused) to take a series of experimental vaccines and pills which had
not been approved by the FDA and which made many of our troops instantly and violently
ill. (Ref. C, p. 18)
Of all responding personnel who had taken the anti-botulism medicine, 88 percent were told
not to turn it down and 35 percent suffered side effects. None of the women given botulism
toxoid were told of pregnancy risks. (Ibid.)
The 1/8/91 issue of the New York Times which carried an article entitled: "Our Guinea
Pigs in the Gulf" wrote: "The Defense Department, on obtaining permission to
give experimental drugs to American troops in the Persian Gulf, is about to violate the
Nuremberg Codes, one of tne primary moral documents to emerge from World War II. "At
Its request, the Pentagon has been given a special Food and Drug Administration waiver it
sought, to require the troops to take experimental drugs and vaccines during combat, or if
there is a threat of combat. "Since Nuremberg no government has officially attempted
to justify research on competent adults without their informed consent-that is not until
our government said exceptions would be permitted so that specific unapproved drugs and
vaccines could be administered to the troops without their consent.
"The Pentagons rationale for radically altering the standard procedure in military
life was that It was "not feasible" to get informed consent from combat
troops." (Ref. C, p. 19)
Estimates of the numbers of vets who are sick are just that-estimates. Over 160,000 sick
Gulf War veterans have reported to the Gulf War registry (kept by the Department of
Defense-which still maintains that the disease does not exist). This does not include
wives, children or other family members, friends or associates (secondary infectees) who
are sick, disabled, dying or dead. (Ref. C, p.3)
The Nicolsons have concentrated on the chronic illness associated with Desert Storm,
especially those involving immediate family members who also have become ill. The fact
that these Gulf War Illness patients with their family members who have become sick with
similar chronic signs and symptoms indicates that these diseases are similar and are
contagious. (Ref D, p.3)
They also studied personnel working in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) who
have an array of signs and symptoms that are, as assessed by environmental physicians,
identical to Gulf War Illness. These individuals were tested (like Desert Storm veterans)
using Nucleoprotein Gene Tracking. Preliminary results parallel observations in Desert
Storm veterans and suggest that these illnesses were present in the United States before
the Gulf War. The Nicolsons strongly suspect that TDCJ prisoners were illegally used in
Biological Weapons testing. Thus the modified mycoplasmas detected in Gulf War veterans
may have their origin in the US. "It is interesting," say the Nicolsons,
"that before Desert Storm some Texas biotechnology companies were developing vaccines
(apparently under US Army contracts) and testing them in TDCJ prisons," (Ibid.)
If detected early, the diseases associated with invasive mycoplasmal infections are
treatable with multiple cycles of antibiotics, but the confusing panorama of signs and
symptoms, and current political policies are making it difficult for Gulf War veterans and
their families to get medical treatment. (Ibid.) It is estimated that up to 15,000 Gulf
War veterans have died since they've returned to the United 5tates. Up to 200,000 are ill,
and at least 70 percent have given it to at least one family member. Even more alarming is
the 67% birth defect rate among children born of Gulf War veterans. (Ref. C, p. 3)
Life (11/95) featured a special report entitled: "The Tiny Victims of Desert
Storm" which described in heartrending detail (with numerous photos) how the children
of our veterans are being born with horrendous disfiguring birth defects. The article was
subtitled: "When our soldiers risked their lives in the Gulf, they never imagined
that their children might suffer the consequences-or that their country would turn its
back on them. (Ref. C, p.6)
In the months and years following Desert Storm, thousands of babies have been born to vets
with horrible deformities (missing limbs, one eye, missing ears, incomplete or missing
organs-reminiscent of the Thalidomide babies of the 1950's - but in far greater numbers.
(Thalidomide was another experimental drug, administered to pregnant mothers, that went
awry). (Ibid.)
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense is working overtime to cover up the crisis with Gulf
War babies, denying it exists, denying benefits or medical assistance to veterans with
birth defected children, and even going so far as to censor the Life article cited above
off the internet. (Ibid.)
Is it then possible that our own government would stand by with full knowledge that our
brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and
friends were indeed exposed to harmful chemical and biological agents, only to do nothing?
It is a matter of record that our troops were forced to take experimental drugs and
vaccines without their knowledge or consent. It is a matter of record that such blatant
disregard of Human Rights (the right to be fully Informed, and the right to say
"no" ) has been going on in this country for years. And it is a matter of record
that even though treatment for the majority of Gulf War illnesses exists, they are being
told there is nothing physically wrong with them, and therefore, they are being denied
treatment. To continue to deny treatment, when treatment exists, to tens of thousands of
Persian Gulf War veterans and their family members who are also becoming ill is
unconscionable. Or is Operation Desert Storm an ongoing human experiment that will take
years to study the pathology of a genetically engineered, highly infectious biological
agent? How many more need to die in the name of science and national security?
Note: Reports from the Middle East, especially those Gulf countries in
or near the war zone indicate that up to 25 percent of the civilian populations are
infected with Gulf War Illness. Dr. Garth Nicolson says, "Approximately 20-25 percent
of the inhabitants of the Persian Gulf area are afflicted with the disease. According to
an Iraqi emissary, 250,000 have died of the GWI, and another million are sick."
Persian Gulf countries would include Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Baharain, Oman, and
the UAE. No figures are available for Syria.(Ref. C, p 21)
Bibliography
Ref. A: "Human Research in the war against Disease," Encyclopedia of Bioethics,
volume IV, 1995, PS. 2252-54,58,59.
Ref. B: http://www.calpte.com/PGW/tuite/chembio.html U.S Chemical and BioIogical Exports
to Iraq and Their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf war.
Committee Staff Report No.3:
"Chemical warfare Agent Identification, Chemical Inquiries, and other Findings."
U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
James J. Tuite, III, Principal Investigator. p.1
Ref. C: "Special Report: Germ Warfare Against America - The desert Storm
Plague and Cover-up." The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor. August 1996, PS.
3,6,8,18,19,21.
Ref. D: "Summary of Persian Gulf War Illness Pilot Study on Mycoplasmal
Infections in Veterans and Family Members." Garth L Nicolson, Ph.D. and
Nancy L. Nicolson, Ph.D. Ps. 1,2,3.
Ref. E: "Gulf War Syndrome, Biological Warfare Conducted on U.S. Military
Members, and Corporate Bio-Genocide Levied on the Planetary Population."
A lecture by Captain Joyce Riley, USAF, in Houston, Texas on Jan 15, 1996.
Transcript by Leading Edge Research Group. p.3.
Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Dr.'s Garth and Nancy Nicolson for giving freely their
time and expertise to the Gulf War Veterans and their family members who are desperate to
know what's wrong with them.
And thank you Captain Joyce Riley for your untiring efforts to inform veterans and the
public at large all you have uncovered in your exhaustive research in the past four years.
(also freely given) I stand before you and salute you. And to your wonderful husband Dave
Ridell may you ever continue to be the wind in her sails.