Why was I vaccinated?

I've wondered this many times over the past 12 years. I mostly read on here, don't post a lot. I finally reached 20 posts, and decided to put this out here to see what kind of feedback I get.

Okay, in late 1998 I was in the US Army. I was stationed at 3rd brigade 2nd Infantry division in Fort Lewis, WA. One morning, out of nowhere, we were informed that we were going to be required to take the anthrax vaccination series. It was made clear to us that this would be mandatory, and any and everyone who refused would be subject to UCMJ disciplinary action, up to and including an article 32 court martial.

At this time, we (Army) were still involved with Bosnia, but other than that, little was happening in terms of threats of war aside from the norm. The anthrax series takes 18 months to complete. From what we were told by those administering the shots, they were ineffective against a biological weapon form of anthrax, as those are synthetic, and the shots were designed to prevent the natural bacteria form of anthrax contracted through cattle.

After you complete the 18 months series of initial vaccines, you get an annual booster. You all can do the math on that from late 98. Roughly 3 years before the anthrax scare that we later learned was all produced in Maryland and sent from a scientist working there.

Anyway, anyone have any legitimate reason why they think we were vaccinated from something at a time when there should have been no reasonable cause for additional concern regarding it?

reply to post by FreeSafety

This sounds like medical testing to me. If what you state is correct and this vaccination provided no protection against synthetic Anthrax then they are clearly not vaccinating you against weaponized Anthrax.

Given that the risk of catching naturally occuring Antrax is so miniscule (there were no reported cases between 1993-2000 in the US). It seems to me that they were either doing something in the area that significantly increased your risk of catching Antrax or they were testing the vaccine on you for some reason or another.

The worrying part to me is that you had no right to refuse this treatment. This should be a fundamental human right.

reply to post by FreeSafety


If you remember there was a hell of a big Anthrax scare going on in 98-99 with people supposedly sending it through the mail to government buildings etc, what type of Anthrax it was I have no clue.

Could it have been something to do with that?
Isn't Anthrax, just Anthrax no matter what form it's in?

Hees a link

thanks for the replies.

shaken- I promise what I'm saying is true. Whether or not the vaccine actually protected us against weapons grade synthetic anthrax or not, I don't know, I only know what I was told. I remember when we went for our first shot, I said something to the nurse like "what are these for anyway? Is there something we need to know?" jokingly, and she kind of laughed and said "I really don't know, they won't protect you from synthetic anthrax anyway. They're only effective against the natural bacteria strain". After our shots, several others commented on their nurses saying similar things.

dave- I didn't remember that anthrax scare in 98-99, so thanks for that link, but it was around late September or October when we began the shot series. It surely would have taken a good amount of time to procure the amount of vaccine they needed, get them shipped out, et cetera. The AVIP bill (anthrax vaccine immunization program) was signed in 1997 by Pres. Clinton.

The timing of it just seems really odd to me, especially looking back.