Iowa GI’s painful death builds the question: Did the government and military lie?

By STEVE WEINBERG
SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER
November 21, 2004
fter U.S. Army Sgt. Scott Siefken returned from the 1990 Gulf War waged by the first President George Bush administration, his ailments puzzled his Iowa physicians.

Siefken served with the National Guard 1133rd Transportation Company based in Mason City. His body temperature fluctuated inexplicably, rashes appeared all over his body, lesions formed in his mouth so that he could not chew food, and he lost 40 pounds.

Veterans Administration doctors in Des Moines sent him to Iowa City, where specialists peeled away his skin, which seemed to be burning off his body. Nobody could touch him, not even his wife, because infections might result. Two years after returning, Siefken died at age 37.

Military authorities refused to release immunization records. But it seems quite likely that Siefken received a vaccine from the Army intended to prevent anthrax poisoning.
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