Soldier Who Refused Anthrax Vaccination Completes Punishment

[AvesPKS]

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Soldier Who Refused Anthrax Vaccination Completes Punishment. The Los Angeles Times (7/21, Arax) reports, "His ship came home six weeks ago from the Persian Gulf, but Troy Goodwin could only watch as 200 of his fellow sailors were given a hero's welcome at this naval air base in the heart of California cotton country. He had waited eight months to see his family, but no sooner had he landed than he was carted off to a cinder-block barracks that serves as a brig. For the next 40 days, the airplane mechanic with the once-spotless record served his sentence, filling sandbags and pulling weeds under the 105-degree sun. He hadn't abused drugs or stolen property or gone AWOL. Instead, the Navy was punishing him for refusing to submit to an anthrax vaccination that he believed could damage his health and prevent him and his wife from conceiving a healthy baby." Last week, Goodwin "completed his time, took off the blue badge of shame that had been affixed to his uniform, and returned to his family and squadron a different soldier. After six years of proud service, he had been demoted and his pay had been docked. He now finds himself nagged by a thought that would have seemed inconceivable just a year ago: Maybe he made a mistake in believing that the military could be a career." Goodwin said, "The whole experience has left me feeling very degraded. I guess you could say I was a model soldier. Everything the military asked me to do, I did. But I wasn't going to subject my body to a vaccine that's not proven to work and could have serious side effects. Yes, I took an oath to obey orders, but I don't feel this order was a lawful one. I didn't sign up to blindly trust the military with my health." But his superiors say "Goodwin gave them little choice but to punish him. 'As far as the Navy is concerned, this is a pretty simple, straightforward matter,' said Dennis McGrath, public affairs officer at the Lemoore base. 'If you're going into a combat zone where anthrax may be used, you need to take the appropriate inoculations to preserve not only your health but the health of your fellow soldiers.'"

 

[lozina]

Can you post some of it? (not registered)

 

[Pennstate]

I can see the military's reasoning in this. It's a slippery slope if you let soldiers to selectively decide which vaccines to take and which not to.

For example if the military decides to innococate soldiers against smallpox, and some soldiers refuse. In an event of a smallpox attack, the uninnoculated soldiers will serve as carriers of the virus. It's like a SARS patient who refuses to be hospitalized.