A senior U.S. Army flight surgeon with specialized training in infectious diseases has filed an affidavit against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for active-duty military personnel, warning that problematic heart side effects may cause pilots to die in mid-flight.
Lt. Col. Theresa Long, the surgeon responsible for certifying the fitness of 4,000 flight-ready airmen at the 1st Aviation Brigade in Ft. Rucker, Alabama, said that she is concerned that the vaccines can cause inflamed heart muscles in young men in the age range of most flight-ready pilots, and that the Department of Defense has not followed its own protocols by requiring an MRI scan of each airman after vaccination.
“The majority of young new Army aviators are in their early twenties. We know there is a risk of myocarditis with each mRNA vaccination,” Dr. Long states in the affidavit.
Because the “vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna both have been linked to myocarditis, especially in young males between 16-24 years old,” she states “it is reasonable to conclude that these shots pose a serious risk to many humans due to direct adverse effect or allergic reaction.”
As such, she recommends against requiring vaccinations with either Comirnaty or BioNtech.
The colonel filed her affidavit under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act last week as part of a pending federal lawsuit that seeks a preliminary injunction against the shots.
Reached for comment, she referred questions to the two lead attorneys for the suit, David Wilson and Todd Callender.
Mr. Wilson told The Washington Times that the U.S. District Court for Colorado rejected the case, originally brought by two military staff sergeants in August, but invited the plaintiffs to bring additional evidence.
“Last week we filed the amended complaint and that’s when the affidavit came from Col. Long,” Mr. Wilson said.
He said the Biden administration had not responded to the suit.
Mr. Callender said the two attorneys decided to add Lt. Colonel Long, an aviation safety officer, to the case as a function of the preliminary injunction to “demonstrate an irreparable and immediate harm” to the judge.
“She’s under a bit of pressure, as you might expect, because her testimony has caught fire. We’re going to have flight crews die in the air, and that’s the worst thing that could happen in her mind as a flight safety officer,” the attorney said.
Mr. Callender described the colonel’s affidavit as “the equivalent of the FAA’s flight surgeon saying we should get all of our pilots to go through an MRI for their hearts, except in her case the pilots carry around real ammunition.”
“We’re not looking for damages,” he said. “All we’re asking is for the court to stop the shots until we figure out why we’re using investigational new drugs under emergency use.”
A certified copy of Lt. Col. Long’s affidavit is included in the civil lawsuit pending before the U.S. District Court for Colorado, filed by two enlisted service members on behalf of themselves and other military personnel on active duty.
It seeks “a declaratory judgment that the DoD cannot force them to take a COVID-19 vaccination under existing military regulations, federal regulations, federal law, and the U.S. Constitution.”
The suit by staff sergeants Daniel Robert of the Army and Holli Mulvihill of the Marine Corps names U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock as defendants.
Referring to Mr. Austin’s order that military doctors “should use only as much force as necessary to assist medical personnel with immunizations,” Dr. Long’s affidavit last week also expressed her concern that the mandate is unethical.
“The use of force to administer a medical treatment or therapy against the will of a mentally competent individual constitutes medical battery and universally violates medical ethics,” Dr. Long stated in the affidavit.
Based on her experience treating COVID-19 patients on base, she further asserted that the federal government’s civilian health guidelines should not be used to guide the treatment of healthy aviators in their early 20s tasked with national defense.
“Literature has demonstrated that natural immunity is durable, completed, and superior to vaccination immunity to SARs-CoV-2,” the colonel said.
The affidavit states that the board-certified Dr. Long holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas in Austin, a master’s in public health and a doctorate from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Medical School that she earned in 2008.
She served as a field surgeon for 10 years before completing her residency in aerospace and occupational medicine at the United States Army School of Aviation Medicine in Fort Rucker, where she was trained by the Combat Readiness Center as an aviation safety officer.
The colonel received her specialized military training in infectious diseases from Army, Navy and Air Force specialists.
Dr. Long’s affidavit follows several recent mid-level military officers who have publicly criticized the Biden vaccine mandate, including Navy Cmdr. J.H. Furman and Army Lt. Col. Paul Hague.
On Sept. 9, Lt. Col Hague’s wife posted his resignation letter on Twitter.
In the letter, he describes the vaccine mandate as “an ideologically Marxist takeover of the military and the United States government at their upper echelons.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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