A joint investigation by the Washington Times and ABC News reveals that the government has been testing drugs known to cause psychosis and suicidal tendencies on hundreds of veterans with post traumatic stress disorder.
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“After I started taking Chantix in early October ’07, I regressed terribly, terribly,” Elliott said. “My irritability skyrocketed. … I was paranoid.”
Elliott is one of tens of thousands of veterans who have returned home with PTSD. Vulnerable and struggling to recreate normalcy in their lives, these veterans come back with the assumption that the government will provide for their security and care. Instead, he found himself turned into a guinea pig by that very same government.
“I avoided sleep at all cost,” Elliott said during an interview, “because my nightmares became unbearable.”
The Food and Drug Administration and Pfizer, the manufacturer of Chantix, issued three warnings between Nov. 20, 2007 and Feb. 1, 2008 that Chantix creates suicidal thoughts, erratic behavior and mood changes in patients taking the drug. In spite of these alarming cautionary public statements, the VA knowingly continued administering the drug to veterans of the U.S. wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan without any warning.
Elliott says he “snapped” on Feb. 5 and walked out of his house with a loaded gun. In his mind, he was back in combat in Iraq. His wife called the police and told them her husband was armed and “unstable,” and that he had PTSD.
When the police arrived Elliott was standing in the middle of the street with his loaded gun in his waistband. According to the police report, he said: “Are you going to shoot me? Shoot me.” He was tasered by the police and arrested.
It was only on Feb. 29—three weeks after Elliott’s arrest—that the VA sent out a letter to veterans in the Chantix study warning that the drug may cause “anxiety, nervousness, tension, depression, thoughts of suicide, and attempted and completed suicide.”
As of July 5, in spite of Elliott’s suicidal tendencies and emotional instability after taking Chantix, the VA continued carrying out their clinical study and administering this drug on veterans.
The obvious dangers of the drug have already led to its ban by another federal agency, the Federal Aviation Administration. On May 21, the FAA banned airline pilots and air traffic control personnel from taking Chantix, citing the adverse side effects.
The U.S. government has a long history of using soldiers, the poor, and the working class to test the effects of chemicals, biological weapons and drugs on humans.
Between 1932 and 1972, the government conducted the Tuskegee Experiment in Tuskegee, Ala., where 399 poor African-American males, most of them illiterate, were left untreated for syphilis so that the disease could be studied. By 1947, penicillin was already commonly used to treat syphilis, yet the government continued its study of untreated patients until 1972.
The government additionally used soldiers to test mustard gas during WWII, radiation during the 1950s, LSD in the 1960s, Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and organophosphate pesticides and multiple vaccine injections given to soldiers in the first Gulf War.
“It’s not right to do this to young soldiers, any military personnel or to anyone, to any human being,” said Elliott. “They should not be used as guinea pigs and most of all soldiers who have done their duty, done what was asked of them in combat zones.” “You’re just a lab rat for $30 a month,” Elliott concluded.
The U.S. government is willing to put the lives of its citizens and the lives of working-class men and women at risk for the sake of military and corporate interests. Workers, in the lab as in the battlefield, are treated as disposable commodities valued only for their ability to secure power and wealth for a few.
