By J.S. Newton
Fayetteville (NC) Observer
November 17, 2000
Only one soldier in the 18th Airborne Corps has been punished
with prison and a bad-conduct dismissal for refusing an anthrax
vaccination, but others say they are prepared to end their
service over the issue.
‘‘I’d be thrown out just like him,’’ said one Fort Bragg sergeant. "They aren’t going to put that in me.
"I feel like I have a right that no one is going to put that vaccine into my body."
Spc. Andrew Kisala was convicted in a court-martial on Nov. 3 of refusing to take the vaccine.
He is serving a 30-day prison sentence at Camp Lejeune before he is given a bad-conduct discharge. Kisala is 22.
The Army insists that the vaccine, designed to protect soldiers in an anthrax attack, is safe.
‘‘There is no more reason to be any more nervous about this than tetanus or polio or chicken pox (vaccines),’’ said Col. John Gardner, a doctor and chief of preventive medicine at Womack Army Medical Center. ‘‘I’m standing in line waiting to get it.’’
But a number of soldiers and airmen said in interviews that they will take the shot only if refusing to do so means giving up their military careers. Others said they will refuse.
‘‘You’d have to court-martial me,’’ the Fort Bragg sergeant said. ‘‘I’d have to leave the Army. And I’ve been in the service for seven years. I just believe it is that unsafe.’’
The anthrax program was started in 1998. But because of shortages of the vaccine, the program is in a state of limbo. Only service members going overseas to high-threat areas such as Korea are eligible to get the shot right now.
Officials are unsure when the program of giving the shots to all 2.4 million service members will resume at full speed.
In August 1998, Fort Bragg officials estimated it would take four to six years to administer shots to the post’s 45,000 soldiers.
Fort Bragg officials said thousands had received shots since the program began -- possibly tens of thousands.
It was unclear how many soldiers had received administrative punishment for refusing the anthrax vaccine.
But controversy surrounding the shot continues at military installations despite the recently slowed pace of inoculations.
Pope Air Force Base has given four ‘‘Article 15’’ administrative punishments to airmen who refused the shots. The latest refusal was in March.
In each case, the Air Force gave general discharges to the troops following their refusals.
In the North Carolina National Guard, fewer than 200 military personnel have been inoculated for anthrax. Maj. Robert Jones said nobody in the Guard has refused the vaccine.
Jones is a spokesman for the North Carolina National Guard headquarters at Raleigh. He said that of the troops who have taken the shots, only one has had a reaction to the vaccine. He characterized the reaction as minor.
Many soldiers and airmen stationed at Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base say they are worried that there might be unknown long-term health risks associated with the shots.
But because they are in the military, they take the shots anyway, service members said.
‘‘If I had to have it, whether I wanted to or not, there is no choice,’’ said Pfc. Joe Johnson, a soldier in Fort Bragg’s 1st Corps Support Command. ‘‘If they made me, what could I do? Get out of the Army? That’s basically my only choice ... I just don’t understand why anthrax is mandatory."
Senior Airman Kristin Feola is less worried. If she has to take the shot, she said, she will.
She said the reason some people fear the shot is that they don’t have enough information about it or the information they have is misleading.
‘‘I really don’t have a fear of it,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s just something else the military makes you do. I don’t have a problem with it.’’
Pfc. Paul Yarin said that if he were asked to take the shot, he would. He attacks the logic of those who feel the shot would harm them.
‘‘The military has to rely on us in times of war,’’ he said. ‘‘If you are taking something that would make us sick, what good would we be to them?’’
Sgt. Jessica Perlstein has taken the vaccine.
‘‘I was crying when I took it,’’ she said. ‘‘I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, I hope in the future my kid isn’t born with one arm because I took the shot.’"
But Perlstein, who is assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group, said that when she entered the military she signed a contract and gave up some of her rights.
‘‘I think if you sign a contact, you are accepting you will do what the military says,’’ she said. ‘‘You’ve already signed a contract that Uncle Sam would be doing all your thinking.’’
She said each time she got one of her six shots, it left a lump for about six weeks.
Staff Sgt. Nicky Woolingham is in the Air Force and is stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base near Goldsboro.
She is also the sister of Kisala, the Fort Bragg soldier who sits in the military prison at Camp Le- jeune Marine Base for refusing to take the shot.
She has been reading about the vaccine and is lobbying against its forced use. She said she questions its safety.
Woolingham is encouraging service members to write their congressmen and to talk with their chain of command about their concerns with the vaccine.
She wants to ‘‘respectfully’’ bring attention to service members’ objections.
‘‘I’m not encouraging any kind of mutiny,’’ she said.
But she said court-martialing people like her brother isn’t the way to handle the issue. ‘‘This is a federal offense,’’ she said. ‘‘He was just doing what he thought was right.’’
Original story online at: http://206.107.108.244//cgi-bin/news/display.pl?month=10&index=n17thrax.htm&year=2000