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Editorial: A lesson’s dear price

On Aug. 7, at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, 19-year-old Airman Paige Renee Villers died of adenovirus, an illness so common in military basic training that it has received a special nickname — boot camp flu.

The death of this mother of a young son might have been prevented but for the lack of foresight on the part of the military.

From 1971 to 1996, the military had vaccines for two strains of the virus: adenoviruses 4 and 7. But a dispute with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the maker of the vaccines, over costs led Wyeth to end its involvement in the program in 1994.

Even then, the decision appeared to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

A Defense Department cost-effectiveness study in 1998 estimated year-round immunization would save the military $15.5 million per year.

But that was not the only cost.

In 1997, nearly 2,000 soldiers-in-training came down with the virus at Fort Jackson, S.C. Two years later, 1,300 Lackland recruits were infected.

When two Navy trainees died from the virus in July and September 2000, the military had seen enough. Money for the vaccine program was found the following year. But it’s a long process; it will be 2009 before the new vaccines become widely available.

Whether this would have helped Airman Villers is not entirely clear. She died of yet another strain — adenovirus 14 — for which there is no vaccine, although the vaccine for type 7, which is similar to type 14, might have helped.

Americans rightly reacted with anger when they learned that troops in Iraq were being sent into harm’s way without the body armor they should have had.

America’s military recruits are now being sent to basic military training without the body armor they should have.

Fortunately, it appears this costly lesson has been learned. Let’s hope it is not forgotten for a long, long time — on behalf of Paige Villers and for the sake of all our sons and daughters, the future of the Air Force.