Dapsone2
UNDERSTANDING DAPSONE 2
By MATHEW DEARNALEY
Secret Australian military papers reveal hundreds of New Zealand soldiers serving in Vietnam were used as unwitting guinea-pigs in tests of
anti-malarial drugs.
New Zealand veterans have obtained documents from Australian Government archives disclosing that long-term effects were not known when they were
dosed with a combination of the drugs dapsone and paludrine.
They recall being ordered under threat of court martial to take dapsone, traditionally a leprosy drug with a risk of suppressing bone marrow production,
but say they were never told they were part of a trial.
They fear that the suppression of bone marrow production may have seriously reduced their immunity to infections, possibly compounding toxic effects
of defoliants such as Agent Orange.
The addition of dapsone to standard-issue paludrine was initially tested on Australian troops late in 1968, but extended to all ANZAC ground forces
after 26 days in a battle against a serious malaria outbreak.
Supervisors of the trial were ordered to give no publicity to it, and results were to be forwarded daily by confidential signals before being placed under
a 50-year secrecy embargo.
But the New Zealand Vietnam Veterans' Association received copies after the records were found by a dying Australian veteran, apparently mistakenly
filed in public archives containing Second World War papers.
Although the results show a dramatic and immediate fall in malaria, the association fears dapsone could have compounded exposure to
chemical defoliants to cause early cancer deaths.
The association has received legal advice that the documents form damning evidence for a class lawsuit against Australia.
Its research officer, retired major John Moller, said last night that this would be based on principles of the Helsinki Declaration requiring informed
consent for any biomedical research on humans.
A former Army nursing sister, Pam Terry, said she stopped taking dapsone after tending to soldiers with glandular fever-like symptoms and feeling
unwell herself.
An Australian Defence Force spokesman was unable to explain why the dapsone trial results were placed under embargo, but pointed to a scientific
study in 1992 which found no increase in cancer among dapsone users.
The New Zealand Minister of Defence, Max Bradford, has admitted in Parliament that dapsone was withdrawn from military use in 1971 because of a
suspected causal link with bone marrow suppression.
Answering a written question from Labour's defence spokesman, he said the likely cause was the degradation of one shipment of dapsone stranded in
high temperatures.
He said side-effects were balanced against malaria risks, and dapsone continued to be used after 1971 in widely prescribed anti-malarial drugs in New
Zealand.
Pharmaceutical catalogues list it as the main ingredient; in maloprim, which ceased production at the end of 1996.
Mr Moller said the side-effects could not have been weighed up as the head of the Australian task force in Vietnam, Major-General A. L. MacDonald,
admitted that these were not known.
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