PFPC Daily - February 11, 2005

At Fort Bragg, another violent suicide

UPI - Feb. 11, 2005

By Dan Olmsted

Washington, DC, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Another Special Forces
soldier who served in Afghanistan shot himself to death at Fort
Bragg last week after wounding his ex-wife and her boyfriend,
according to police and military officials. The soldier was in a unit
prescribed a controversial malaria drug that has been linked to
several other violent incidents ending in soldier suicides.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said a study that was begun a year ago
to see whether the drug, called Lariam, had led to suicides or
other problems is still in the preliminary stages. There has been no
change in the military's use of the drug, the Pentagon added.

Spc. Richard T. Corcoran, 34, shot himself Feb. 3 at his
ex-wife's home near the North Carolina base. He first shot her
boyfriend several times, then shot her in the arm. Both survived.

Corcoran served in Afghanistan from September 2002 to March
2003 with the Seventh Special Forces Group in an area where
soldiers were routinely prescribed Lariam, according to Major
Robert Gowan, a spokesman for the Army Special Operations
Command based at Fort Bragg. Gowan said he did not know
whether Corcoran actually had taken the drug. Corcoran was in
language training at Fort Bragg when he died and was "still
training to become a fully qualified Special Forces soldier," the
command said in a press release.

In the summer of 2002 three Special Forces soldiers who had
served in Afghanistan and took Lariam killed their wives, and
subsequently themselves, after returning to Fort Bragg. The Army
investigated, ruling out the drug as a common factor in those
deaths and instead blaming marital problems. An investigation by
United Press International found that all three had exhibited
behavior consistent with acknowledged side effects of the drug
and that there was no apparent history of violence in the
marriages.

UPI uncovered three more suicides by Special Forces soldiers
who took the drug.

Since 2003 the Food and Drug Administration has required that
anyone prescribed Lariam be given a medication guide that says,
"Lariam can rarely cause serious mental problems in some
patients. ... There have been reports that in some patients these
side effects continue after Lariam is stopped. Some patients
taking Lariam think about killing themselves. It is not known
whether Lariam was responsible for these suicides."

A spike in suicides by soldiers in Iraq in 2003 led to an Army
investigation. The Army largely stopped prescribing Lariam in
Iraq last year, citing a lack of malaria risk. The number of suicides
there subsequently fell by at least half -- from 24 in 2003 to nine
in 2004, with three deaths still under investigation.

Corcoran, the latest Fort Bragg suicide, was charged in 1989 in
an incident in Glen Ridge, N.J., in which several football players
were accused of raping a mentally retarded girl. The charges
against Corcoran were dropped the day before the trial, and he
won $200,000 in a federal civil-rights lawsuit claiming malicious
prosecution.

A veterans' advocate said the suicide needs to be investigated in
light of the earlier deaths involving Special Forces soldiers, the
military's most elite and highly trained.

"The indicator now is the psychological battery of tests he would
have gone through to be a Special Forces soldier," said Steve
Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource
Center and a former Army Ranger.

"I don't think anybody can immediately say if Lariam is
connected. However, you can't be in Special Forces and be a
crazy person."

Last February Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary
of defense for health affairs, told Congress he was ordering a
study of anti-malaria drugs to see if they were linked to serious
health problems in soldiers. The study was a response to
concerns that Lariam, widely prescribed to troops in the war on
terrorism, was triggering mental illness and suicides.

A year later, a "preliminary prescriptive study" is being conducted
that was recommended as a first step by the Armed Forces
Epidemiology Board.

"The preliminary study is nearly complete," Pentagon spokesman
Jim Turner said in a statement to UPI. "Once completed, it will be
briefed to the DoD (Department of Defense) Health Affairs
leadership, and then followed by the AFEB-recommended,
retrospective cohort study to be conducted by military and
civilian scientists, which may take 12-18 months, and then offered
for peer-reviewed publication."

Acceptance by a peer-reviewed medical journal, followed by
publication, typically takes months and is not guaranteed.

Turner said that study will "help determine if there is any
scientifically based cause-effect relationships between mefloquine
(Lariam) and medical conditions experienced by service
members."

In the meantime, Turner said, the department policy on malaria
prevention is unchanged.

"In the case of malaria protection and treatment, DoD healthcare
providers follow a policy of using FDA-approved drugs and
Centers for Disease Prevention and Control recommendations for
the use of mefloquine (Lariam), doxycycline and Malarone as
medications effective in preventing infection with
chloroquine-resistant Falciparum malaria; there is no change in
the Department's use of these drugs," Turner said.

UPI found that in widespread instances soldiers were not
receiving the mandatory written warning about Lariam side
effects, and prescriptions were not being recorded in their
medical records as required by law.

"It is probably a daunting task to figure out if Lariam is a factor
in
suicides and other issues that veterans are facing when the
Department of Defense did not follow the public law," said
Robinson of the Gulf War veterans group. "That could be the
reason why it might take some time."

He also criticized the study's retrospective approach going back a
number of years as "three-card monte" -- a swindling game in
which cards are hidden.

"It's a scientific trick to skew the data that we're really looking
for," Robinson said. "We're looking for what happened in Iraq
and Afghanistan."

SOURCE:
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050209-012851-3552r.htm