Much of the growth in military ethics education and training stems from the flagrant illegal orders and unethical medical conduct brought out during the Nuremberg trials.  "Just following orders" would not exonerate a soldier or an officer for complying with direct or tangentially illegal or unethical orders.  It was the crimes of Dr. Josef Mengele that galvanized the war crimes tribunal to lay down ten standards with which future physicians must conform when carrying out experiments on human subjects.

The principle of voluntary informed consent is to protect the right of the individual to control his own body, be he a prisoner or a front-line soldier.

Immunizations required for military service are governed by military regulations.  For decades, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved immunizations are required for military service — boot camp, officer candidate schools, service academies.  FDA-approved immunizations or prophylaxes are required when deployment is to a biologically hazardous region (against malaria, parasitic infested waters, etc.) or when conditions of imminent threat exist, such as when an enemy is reported to have deployed anthrax in a combat zone.  You can check all of them out here. 

The president declared: "It is the policy of my administration to halt the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19] ... by relying on the best available data and science-based public health measures."

Specifically:

As of the date of this order, one of the COVID-19 vaccines, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, also known as Comirnaty, has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and two others, the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine and the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine, have been authorized by the FDA for emergency use.

Sec. 2 of the executive order mandated coronavirus vaccination for federal employees, negating voluntary informed consent, without explaining the difference between the terms "FDA-approved" and "Emergency Use Authorization." 

"FDA approval" from the Food and Drug Administration is an independent, scientifically reviewed approval for medical products, drugs, and vaccines.  Approval is based on substantial clinical data and evidence; the product is deemed safe, effective, and able to be produced within federal quality standards.  Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is a mechanism used by the FDA to facilitate making products available quickly during a public health emergency, when there is no other adequate and approved medical product available.

Did the secretary of defense inform his service members of the difference between FDA approval and EUA?  Were service members informed that the FDA suddenly proscribed coronavirus therapeutics, curatives, and prophylaxes before any EUA "vaccines" were released?

The secretary of defense memo stated, "Mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance." 

The president and DOD knew that only FDA-approved vaccines, therapeutics, curatives, and prophylaxes can be prescribed to service members.  They knew that this was the law, but that did not stop them from coercing the men and women of DOD with unproven, untested, and unnecessary EUA "vaccines" when there was an FDA-approved vaccine. 

In a clear abuse of power, the president also tried to usurp the Constitution and went around the law, declaring that an emergency existed when it did not, and issued bogus OSHA mandates.  The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the obvious illegal and unethical presidential directive and OSHA workarounds.

The DOD mandate, like the OSHA mandate, was an illegal order — and worse, to sell an experimental product against their consent, SECDEF Austin "quibbled" with the facts and deceived his service members and, under penalty of loss of job, implied that the EUA gene therapy test inoculation was the biological equivalent of the FDA-approved Comirnaty vaccine. 

There are no documents to attest that the EUA concoctions are the biological equivalent of the FDA-approved vaccine.  In fact, the pharmaceutical companies have been unwilling to reveal the contents of their mRNA EUA "vaccines."

The SECDEF pulled a despicable bait-and-switch on all service members and civilian employees.  Read carefully how the SECDEF memo quibbled: "Service members voluntarily immunized with a COVID-19 vaccine under FDA Emergency Use Authorization or World Health Organization Emergency Use Listing in accordance with applicable dose requirements prior to, or after, the establishment of this policy are considered fully vaccinated."  

The implication is the EUA vaccines are the same as the FDA-approved vaccines.  If they voluntarily get injected with some COVID-19 EUA vaccine or something not FDA-approved, the DOD will not punish service members for defying the President's executive order. 

It shouldn't take hours in a lawyer's office to get an approved immunization.

Voluntary informed consent required troops to be aware of the legal difference between FDA approval and EUA.  DOD took advantage of this discrepancy.  This is the responsibility of the secretary of defense.  If the White House mandated an FDA-approved vaccine, where is it?  Like all FDA-approved medicines necessary for military service, the troops would take that, but not the Wuhan wet market sewer water science experiment the FDA called an EUA vaccine. 

General Austin should have learned that telling half-truths to gain personal advantage prompted the Air Force Academy to equate quibbling with lying.  Quibbling is the unfair and plain evasion of the truth through ambiguous terms.  It is the creation of a false impression in the mind of the listener or reader by cleverly wording what is said or written, omitting relevant facts, or telling a partial truth with the intent to deceive or mislead.  

The White House and DOD documents were cleverly worded, they omitted relevant facts (there is no FDA-approved vaccine in the U.S.), and they told a partial truth ("vaccines" are available under an EUA).  Their intention was to deceive or mislead (FDA-approved vaccines are equivalent to EUA vaccines).

Service members were not given a choice (wait until the FDA-approved vaccines became available in the U.S.).  The president and SECDEF broke the standard of voluntary informed consent.  They lied; they didn't have the FDA-approved vaccines, and instead of telling the troops what an EUA "vaccine" is, they coerced service members to take an experimental treatment with erroneous or misleading information with which to make an informed decision. 

The implication was clear: since the FDA inexplicably prohibited coronavirus therapeutics, curatives, and prophylaxes during the pandemic, service members were forced to take the experimental EUA vaccines with which there was no information or data sheet.  The White House and the SECDEF were aware but maliciously violated the service members' voluntary informed consent for political purposes. 

Noteworthy, coronavirus is not listed or defined in the U.S. Army Field Manual 3-11.9.  How could something "so lethal" as a coronavirus, like SARS or MERS or COVID-19, not be a biological agent?  Monkeypox is listed, as is anthrax.  But not coronavirus.

Also, a fact that hardly received any news coverage: "Navy officer used COVID vaccine facts to beat discharge for resisting Biden mandate."

Secretary of defense Austin, the service secretaries, and the service chiefs should be impeached for their illegal orders and unethical conduct, misrepresenting unapproved EUA vaccines as the biological equivalent of an FDA-approved vaccine and coercing the troops to get the jab.  They violated the whole concept of voluntary informed consent for political purposes.  At Nuremberg in 1946, this would have been a war crime.

Mark is a retired Marine Corps officer.

Image via Pixabay.