ANTHRAX Press Conference To Feature Host Of 'Non-Musical' Speakers

In a move that combines political activism with a long-awaited musical reunion, the heavy metal band ANTHRAX will hold a press conference on Friday, April 1, at 2 p.m. Eastern at the Sirius broadcast center in New York City.

The press conference will be broadcast live over Hard Attack/27, Sirius' extreme heavy metal channel. A telephone line will be set up for off-site journalists to call in with questions for the band. Non-musical speakers at the press conference include Randi Airola, Executive Director of the Military Vaccine Education Center; Barbara Loe Fisher, President of the National Vaccine Information Center; Vera Hassner Sharav, President of the Alliance for Human Research Protection; and Eileen Danneman, Director of the National Coalition of Organized Women.

ANTHRAX (the band) has sold over 10,000,000 records worldwide, and has been planning its upcoming tour in Europe and the United States, an event for which most fans have waited years. But this is no ordinary band, interested only in its own music and own affairs. This is a group which carries convictions and has the courage of those convictions. In taking a public — and publicized — stand against the military's unsafe, unproven anthrax vaccine, the ANTHRAX band makes it possible, for the first time, to reach huge numbers of the general public so that they may truly understand not just the incredible damage inflicted on members of the armed services who were forced to take this experimental drug, but the danger it now poses to the civilian population under the auspices of the BioShield Act.

"We always thought it was only when civilians were forced to take this vaccine that people would finally relate to it and understand," said Kathy Hubbell, president of the Military Vaccine Education Center. "But because of this band, and their incredible reach and popularity, we know that we'll finally get the full message out there. Our troops have been used as medical guinea pigs, something Congress recognized clear back in 1994. With the help of the ANTHRAX band, perhaps people will finally become outraged; perhaps it will finally be clear that every single person in this country is in danger of having this vaccine — this highly reactive, dangerous, untested drug — forced upon him or her."

The vaccine label estimates a systemic (versus localized) reaction rate of up to 35%; the Government Accountability Office issued a report estimating the systemic reaction rate could be as high as 85%. Systemic reactions have included severe bone and joint pain, skin lesions and infections, continual migraine headaches, vertigo (dizziness) and disorientation; tumors and cysts; blackouts and seizures; hemorrhaging and hormone problems; chronic fatigue; fibromyalgia; heart problems; and illnesses such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, and Guillain-Barre Syndrome (temporary paralysis); and death.