Tag: Mefloquine

Re-visiting Mefloquine Use at Guantanamo: A Guest Post by Dr. Remington Nevin

On By AdministratorIn Army, Military Policy, PTSD, TBI, Mental IllnessLeave a comment

Box Lariam (mefloquine) antimalarial tabletsRe-visiting Mefloquine Use at Guantanamo: A Guest Post by Dr. Remington Nevin

Did the CIA direct the U.S. military to administer a powerful antimalarial drug to Guantanamo detainees, not for its antimalarial properties, but for its intoxicating and behavioral side effects as an aid to interrogation? This is the seemingly impenetrable question that I have been exploring for the past few years, ever since Seton Hall Law professor Mark Denbeaux and investigative reporters Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye asked me to review medical files from Guantanamo inmates obtained from the Department of Defense (DoD) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

These FOIA records revealed what on casual inspection seems a benign, even benevolent medical practice: according to standard operating procedures, every detainee arriving at Guantanamo immediately received a curative dose of 1,250mg of the antimalarial drug mefloquine.

Read more: http://transparentpolicy.org/2013/11/re-visiting-mefloquine-use-guantanamo-guest-post-dr-remington-nevin-2/

Mefloquine: The Military’s Suicide Pill

On By AdministratorIn Armed Forces, Felony Crime, Military Policy, SuicideLeave a comment

Box Lariam (mefloquine) antimalarial tabletsMefloquine: The Military’s Suicide Pill

In late July, 2013, the FDA issued a powerful “black box” safety warning for a drug which has been taken by hundreds of thousands of troops to prevent malaria. The drug is called mefloquine, and it was previously sold in the U.S. by F. Hoffman-La Roche under the trade name Lariam. Since being developed by the U.S. military over four decades ago, mefloquine has been widely used by troops on deployments in Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.

We now recognize, decades too late, that mefloquine is neurotoxic and can cause lasting injury to the brainstem and emotional centers in the limbic system. As a result of its toxic effects, the drug is quickly becoming the “Agent Orange” of this generation, linked to a growing list of lasting neurological and psychiatric problems including suicide.

The public had its first glimpse of the mefloquine suicide problem over a decade ago in 2002, when a cluster of murder-suicides occurred among Ft. Bragg soldiers returning home from deployment. All three soldiers had been taking mefloquine, yet an official Army investigation later concluded mefloquine was “unlikely to be the cause of this clustering.”

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-remington-nevin/mefloquine-the-militarys-_b_3989034.html