Monday, November 11, 2002

What's worse than "Barbra Streisand's suggestion that Bush engineered Paul Wellstone's plane crash?"

Try Phyllis Schlafly's obscene suggestion that President Clinton sought to harm military personnel by requiring them to take the anthrax vaccine. Schlafly says that "Clinton saw in the anthrax vaccine a way to stick it to the military he 'loathed,' literally...." and accuses the President of issuing a "corrupt order [requiring soldiers] to be injected with the unsafe, untested and unnecessary vaccine."

How pathetic is Schlafly's effort to slander Clinton? Well, she says that "the government was fatally and corruptly wrong," but she doesn't cite a single fatality. The GAO report doesn't cite a single fatality or near fatality. (Which is not to say that many vaccines, including those for anthrax, don't cause fatalities in rare circumstances.) And those unnamed "adverse side effects" and "injuries" that 85 percent of recipients suffered? Headaches, chills, red bumps and insomnia. Almost every statement about the GAO report in Schlafly's column misrepresents the report. Read it for yourself (.pdf file).

I could elaborate. But, really, why bother? Someone who has trouble following Page Six wouldn't be able to keep up anyway.

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