Blackout: Military Personnel Banned From H1N1 Vaccine Websites

If you want to draw attention to a problem, try hiding it. That’s the strategy of several military bases when it comes to the H1N1 vaccine.

Shortly after the Pentagon announced that all Armed Services personnel would soon be facing a mandatory H1N1 vaccination program, I started receiving email from soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors because of a previous story I had written on the anthrax vaccine. Mandatory vaccine programs are a sensitive subject in the military, so it’s not a huge surprise that swift and visceral reactions to the program gained speed.

With a vaccine that was so new and little known about it, like many Americans, troops were heading to the web to find answers to their very legitimate questions — not only for themselves, but for their families who have the option of receiving the vaccine on base. What they found instead is that several websites and blogs with key information asking critical questions had been blocked from their viewing.'

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