NEWS: U.S. Soldier Accused of Cowardice is Acquitted, page 1

Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany had a panic attack after seeing the bloody corpse of an Iraqi on his second day in Iraq. A Navy Doctor said Pogany's system may have been thrown our of balance from taking an anti-malaria medicine known as Lariam.

www.cnn.com
Hallucinations and panic attacks are among the possible side effects listed by Lariam's manufacturer, Roche Pharmaceuticals.

"The command reviewed all of the information, as well as Staff Sgt. Pogany's medical condition, and decided the best course of action was to drop the charges," said a spokeswoman for the Army Special Forces Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"I think they owe me an apology," [Pogany] said from Colorado Springs, Colorado. "They made my life hell for nine months."

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As someone who has panic disorder, this really frustrates me. It is not something that you can control for the most part. I'm lucky where mine is acute enough that I can control it without drugs, but there are times when I have lost control and had a full-fledged attack. It's not about cowardice, it's about an imbalance in blood gasses and brain chemicals. The fact that a case was brought against this soldier is absolutely ludicrous.

[edit on 16-7-2004 by Zion Mainframe]