http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/06/a-decade-after-murder-suicides-d-day-for-the-agent-orange-of-our-generation.html
A Decade after Murder-Suicides, D-Day for “the Agent Orange of our Generation”
By Dan Olmsted
Dan Olmsted is Editor of AgeOfAutism.com. His reporting, with Mark Benjamin, on Lariam’s harmful impact on U.S. troops was named Best Wire Service Reporting of 2004 by the National Mental Health Association.
Posted by Age of Autism at June 11, 2012 at 5:45 AM
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Last Wednesday, an Army epidemiologist named Remington Nevin took a seat in the witness chair before the Defense subcommittee of the powerful U. S. Senate Committee on Appropriations. Wearing a business suit and a sober expression and looking lonely at a table more often occupied by military brass in full regalia, he began reading from a prepared statement (
http://www.rescuepost.com/files/nevin-sacd-testimony-2012.pdf ).
Watch testimony beginning at 130:52 mark (
http://www.appropriations.senate.gov/webcasts.cfm?method=webcasts.view&id=e5d8379f-152e-4f14-a1d3-eba03aacc7bf ):
“I am here today to testify on an important issue which I fear may become the ‘Agent Orange’ of our generation: a toxic legacy that affects our troops, and our veterans,” Nevin said, emphasizing he was speaking for himself, not the Army. “This is a critical issue that is in desperate need of research funding."
"I am referring to the harmful effects of the antimalarial drug mefloquine, also known as Lariam, which was first developed over 40 years ago by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research."
“Mefloquine causes a severe intoxication syndrome, characterized by vivid nightmares, profound anxiety, aggression, delusional paranoia, dissociative psychosis, and severe memory loss. Experience has shown that this syndrome, even if rare, can have tragic consequences, both on the battlefield, and on the home front.”
The decade between the Nieves deaths and Nevin’s testimony has been marked by a rising wave of PTSD, suicides, and violent behavior by both active-duty troops and veterans. March brought the worst American atrocity in the war on terror, when a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, Sgt. Robert Bales, allegedly went on a rampage, killing 16 villagers including children and a pregnant woman, setting some on fire, and single-handedly upending already shaky U.S.-Afghan relations.
In the search for explanations, these tragedies have been linked to combat stress, multiple deployments, financial problems, marital discord, pre-existing personality disorders, alcohol, steroids, and traumatic brain injury (TBI), most commonly from improvised explosive devices planted along roads. But it is becoming increasingly clear that an unknown but consequential percentage of these problems have been triggered by a toxin to which hundreds of thousands of troops have by now been exposed (hence Nevin's Agent Orange analogy). In this case, the toxin is mefloquine, or Lariam, a prescription drug acknowledged to cause serious, long-lasting, sometimes fatal problems in a significant percentage of those who take it, problems the drug company now admits can last “long after” they stop.
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