quinalones again

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Mefloquine, the military's own zombie potion (13:15)

 

Check this video out...scary! 

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I think this was the video you meant to post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGrQUls0oRs

 

All of the quinalones have problems associated with them, but I don't know of a better way to prevent malaria when you're looking at populations of war-stressed people deployed places where it's a prevalent disease. My solution to this problem is "well, don't go to war for questionable reasons" but that's beside the point.

 

I think it's quite a stretch to imagine that the psychotic side effects of these drugs are a desireable outcome; if the military wanted to give people drugs that would make them zombies (or, alternately, psychotic killing machines), there are a whole lot of better choices. These are anti-malaria drugs with an unfortunate host of side effects, and I don't doubt that if there were equally effective antimalarial agents without the propensity for making people go bonkers, they would use those instead.

 

It's not just the military; in fact the peace corps uses these drugs for people being deployed to similar places. I have a friend who did 2 years in Tanzania with the peace corps, and he said the anti-malarial drugs were "trippy and unpleasant, after a few days you barely know what's going on". However, he found this preferable to almost certainly getting malaria without the drugs. If someone can find an effective anti-malarial without any psychiatric side effects, they will make an absolute fortune, so I imagine this has been researched to a deep level already.

 

To try to look at this from the point of view of the army:

Mefloquine was invented at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in the 1970s shortly after the end of the Vietnam war where 1% of US combat troops contracted malaria every day.

 

Even if 1 out of every 200 people who takes the drug has such a serious adverse reaction that they have to be removed from combat, that's still cutting the loss of troop presence in half in a single day. People who get malaria become unable to walk five miles carrying twenty pounds of weapons and ammunition, which is sadly a job requirement in that situation.

 

As with the previous thread, I question what purpose this thread has here. This is supposed to be a forum for "benzodiazepine discussions which are not specifically taper related", is there a benzo connection here that I'm missing? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just think that going too far down this road is going to be a turnoff for anyone who doesn't have an irrational distrust of all pharmaceuticals. The military has clearly done all kinds of unethical experiments with psychoactive drugs, from MKULTRA on forward, and there are a lot of places that can be discussed. At the very least this should go in the "off topic" forum over here: http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?board=64.0

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I didn't watch the video but I do know there are several different things you can take as an antimalarial. Doxycycline is the most mild and should be the first option given. I've taken it as an antimalarial for a year and had few side effects. I'm also VERY sensitive to drugs. I've also taken both larium and chloroquine and won't be taking either of those again. There are definitely milder options for malaria though and they should always be the first line of defense.

 

I'm also not a conspiracy theorist but I do believe many decisions are driven by money. That being said I believe doxycycline is probably the cheapest option so I can't imagine the motivation for giving anything else. Again, I didn't watch the video so I don't really know what it's about.

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That's fine if you're going out of the country for a few weeks, but taking antibiotics really long term (such as for an entire 18 month deployment to Afghanistan) has serious problems associated with it as well. Also, I think doxy needs to be taken every day; less frequent dosing is probably desirable for people in combat situations.

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You're right. Doxy does need to be taken daily. I would definitely take this over most malaria drugs and as I said I took it for 12 months with no problems. Most doctors choose to go this route. It's a popular option with peace corp as well. Teenagers take it for months as well for skin problems. It's definitely the most mild anti malarial option for any length of time and you'll find few, if any, doctors who would say otherwise.

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Interesting; I didn't know it could be used long term like that.

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Spengler I just posted it for the people who had meltdowns while taking quinalone antibiotics AND benzos.  I had my major panic/agoraphobia while doing so and I have read of others who also experienced this.  I think this combo is very dangerous. 

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Oh, gotcha. That's definitely a bad idea, yes, quinalones have an unpredictable effect on GABA function, I don't doubt they can do all sorts of nasty stuff in w/d.