Drug Dilemma

Vaccine Review After Massacre

Social Issues – The U.S. Military will now be conducting an emergency review of a controversial vaccine in the wake of the Afghanistan massacre that cost the lives of 17 Afghan civilians.

Orders have come from a Pentagon health official to review the malaria vaccine Mefloquine (or Lariam), which is reported to have rather potent psychiatric side-effects. These side-effects can include “psychotic behavior, paranoia and hallucinations,” so extreme, even, as to be implicated in a number of suicides and murders.

In 2009, the drug was “nearly dropped” from usage entirely by the army, though it was instead reserved for certain situations, and it has been employed in Afghanistan. Included in the 2009 order that changed its usage was the decree that it not be used by soldiers who have “traumatic brain injury,” an injury Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the shooter at the center of the Afghanistan massacre, was noted to have suffered.

The circumstances of the shooting, as bad as they are, become only more tragic if it happened despite efforts to prevent it. Hopefully, this examination will produce information that will better guide the U.S. Military in its care for its soldiers.

Read more at the Huffington Post.