Global Security Newswire

A group of former Israel Defense Force soldiers have filed a $4.8 million lawsuit against the nation's Defense Ministry over injuries allegedly caused by experimental anthrax vaccine testing, Ynetnews reported Monday (see GSN, Jan. 14).

The court proceedings were filed by 64 former military personnel who were involved in testing the effectiveness of an anthrax vaccine in the early 1990s. The drug was developed to counter the threat of a biological attack on Israel, however the lawsuit claims the government had a sufficient amount of treatments at the time of the experiments.

"An accelerated effort to produce large quantities of the vaccine was under way a year prior to the experiment, and by the time the experiments were launched, Israel had enough vaccines to cover the civilian concerns," an Israel Medial Association report stated.

"No scientific justification was found for the experiment, scientific background was lacking, the experiment's design and execution did not suit its goals, and no result would have justified those goals. Also, conventional guidelines were not followed, risks and possible side effects were not thoroughly investigated, and a follow-up mechanism to keep track of participating soldiers was not set up," it added.

Plaintiffs are seeking $80,000 in damages per person and to learn the materials that were used in the vaccine.

"We now know that the physical harm caused to the soldiers was also passed down to their children," Dorit Tahan, a plaintiff, said (Vered Luvitch, Ynetnews, March 28).