by Tom Eldred
Delaware State News
April 15, 2000
DOVER (DE) - Former Air Force Maj. Sonnie G. Bates left the military and gave up his commission because he refused to take a series of six controversial anthrax vaccinations.
He was afraid he'd get sick.
Capt. Darrin Daniel didn't leave the Air Force. He followed orders. He received two inoculations. He got sick.
The Department of Defense insists the vaccine is safe.
Top Pentagon officials say the program is essential to protect 2.4 million American military personnel from exposure to anthrax, which could be used as a deadly biological warfare agent.
"I want the truth to get out,'' said Capt. Daniel, an Air Force Reserves technician and C-5 instructor pilot at Dover Air Force Base.
"About 10 days after I received the second shot, I started having vertigo and bedspins. I woke up (on a mission) in Catania, Italy, and I was the most violently ill I've ever been in my life.
"Sonnie (Bates) never got a shot, so he can't explain what an adverse reaction feels like. I can.''
Capt. Daniel, 34, lives in Camden with his wife and two children. He said he became so sick on the Italy trip that blood vessels in his eyes began to burst. He was violently nauseous, heard a constant ringing in his ears and had the dry heaves.
"I thought I was going to die that day,'' he said.
But it would be months before he started collecting information from other Air Force personnel about similar problems. All had taken the anthrax shots.
"I was scared to death at first,'' he said. "I never told anybody. When you start having bed-spins, and you're not drunk, you really start wondering what's going on. I hadn't heard anything from anybody else. I had no idea what it was. At that point I was physically just sick. My mother, who lives in Missouri, was con-cerned about how rundown and sick I looked.''
Capt. Daniel said he learned later both shots he'd received were identified as having come from "Lot 30'' of the military's supply of anthrax vaccine. "Lot 30 is thought to be one of the lots that was contaminated, or had something wrong with it,'' he said.
Nevertheless, he was scheduled to get his third inoculation at the end of March 1999.
"When I went to get my third shot, they told me they'd pulled Lot 30 off the base because it had expired,'' he said.
He said he asked what effect a delay in receiving the full sequence of six vaccinations might have.
"They said, 'Don't worry. It's good for two years.' But I didn't go back. I didn't want another shot.''
Then Capt. Daniel switched from the 709th to the 326th Airlift Squadron at Dover.
He said it was there that he began to hear complaints from other pilots.
"One guy was in a terrible condition because of anthrax vaccine,'' he said. "He'd had many of the same symptoms as me, only worse. He'd also had his third shot. His problems just ballooned after the third shot. I was thinking about what would have happened to me if I'd had my third.''
He filled out a voluntary Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) form and was sent for an examination at Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland.
According to Capt. Daniel, a doctor at the hospital at first said there was an "excellent chance'' his condition was not related to the anthrax vaccinations.
"I was so mad, I could have killed him,'' Capt. Daniel said. "What kind of logic is that? Since they couldn't prove it was the anthrax shots, therefore it wasn't?''
But after four visits, the doctor changed the prognosis to "not sure.''
Capt. Daniel was given a one-year waiver from the shots.
After a few months, all the symptoms disappeared.
Then last week he was informed he would either have to continue the inoculation program or appear in front of a medical evaluation board.
"I don't know exactly what that is, but it doesn't sound good,'' he said. "I'm playing Russian roulette now. I have until September to make a decision.
"I can't quit the reserves because I still owe three years, so I'm not in a position to 'vote by walking,' as reservists like to say. I know they'd activate me in a minute. I'm in a real pickle right now.''
Maj. Frank Smolinsky, chief spokesman for the 436th Airlift Wing at Dover, has repeatedly insisted there has been no noticeable health problem at the base that can be linked to the vaccination program.
"Here at Dover, we have a normal, healthy population,'' he said. "There has been no increase of illnesses since the beginning of the anthrax program here.''
In Maryland, meanwhile, another Air Force pilot says he wants out because of the "illegal punitive treatment'' he claims he's been subjected to for refusing the shots.
Capt. Cliff Volpe, assigned to the 457th Airlift Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base, said he submitted a letter of resignation to the Secretary of the Air Force on Monday.
"In short," he said in a statement, "I am resigning my commission and requesting an honorable discharge due to prolonged and illegal punitive treatment I have suffered at the hands of the Air Force for my refusal to take the anthrax vaccine."
Tom Eldred can be reached at 741-8212 or teldred@newszap.com