A medical Army officer who discovered a sudden increase in noninfectious disease, which coincided with reports of side effects tied to COVID vaccines, claims he faces involuntary separation after being convicted for disobeying COVID protocols, while the Army has dismissed his findings as a data glitch.
First Lt. Mark Bashaw, a preventive medicine officer at the Army, noticed some “alarming signals” within the defense epidemiological database back in January.
The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, DMED, tracks the disease and injuries of 1.3 million active service members. During the pandemic, Bashaw said it showed a significant increase in reports of cancers, myocarditis and pericarditis. It also showed increases of the same scale in other diseases and health problems, such as male infertility, tumors, a lung disease caused by blood clots and HIV.
Some of these illnesses are listed in FDA documentation as potential adverse reactions to COVID vaccines, Bashaw told the Epoch Times’ “Crossroads” show in an interview on Aug 1.
After seeing some increases as high as 50 and 100 percent in some of the cases of these illnesses, Bashaw stepped forward as a whistleblower in an effort to raise concerns about his findings.
Bashaw’s whistleblower declaration was submitted to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) who is a major factor in the sharing of information from early investigations of COVID vaccines and treatments with Congress. Johnson called the increase of these disorders observed in the DMED as “very troubling.”
Notably, the number of cancer cases among active service members in 2021 was almost triple the average number per year from 2016 to 2020, Bashaw said in his declaration.
Bashaw’s responsibilities as a preventive medicine officer with a specialty in entomology include “participating in fact-finding inquiries and investigations to determine potential public health risk to DoD [Department of Defense] personnel from diseases caused by insects and other non-battle related injuries.”
This information was brought out in a “COVID-19: Second Opinion” roundtable organized by Johnson. A week later, Bashaw said the data in DMED changed. The spikes in diseases and injuries “seemed to have disappeared and been realigned with previous years.”
After the reported glitch was fixed, however, the data from 2021 remained the same. The data from the previous years, however, was increased, making the 2021 data look normal and in line with the running average.
In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, a spokesperson for the health agency of the Department of Defense, Peter Graves, said that the DMED data “was incorrect for the years 2016-2020,” so they took the system offline to correct the data corruption, which he claimed did not impact data from 2021.
Johnson sent three letters to the DoD requesting that they explain the sudden increase in medical diagnoses and the changes in the DMED data.
“The concern is that these increases may be related to the COVID-19 vaccines that our servicemen and women have been mandated to take,” Johnson said in one of his letters.
The senator also sent a letter to the DMED managers asking for clarification of all data integrity issues uncovered in the database.
Although Johnson received some responses from the tech company, there still has not been a “solid, rational explanation” as to why a glitch occurred in the database and what it was, Bashaw said.
In the time since, Bashaw has been court-martialed for reportedly disobeying the mandated COVID protocol. While he challenged the accusation, arguing that the order disregarded the individual’s right to informed consent guaranteed by U.S. law, the court convicted him.
While the judge did not hand down any punishment, recommending that the commanding general drop the conviction, the general upheld it.
After the conviction, the Army initiated Bashaw’s involuntary separation from service after 17 years of honorable service. His expected promotion to captain was also withheld, the officer said. Bashaw filed a rebuttal in response, in hopes that he might be able to stop the separation. The case is ongoing.
While Bashaw filed a whistleblower complaint at the DoD, they determined that the move to involuntarily separate him from the service was not made out of retaliation and closed the case. He said that he then filed another complaint which exercises his right guaranteed by the code of military justice to challenge such decisions.
Bashaw has been continuing to fight in spite of this, petitioning the Judge Advocate General of the Army, asking the general to review what he has brought forth in official documentation.
Bashaw argued that this is concrete evidence, and it is well founded on the law to protect service members and individuals in general. “I wouldn’t be risking 17 years of my service [and] the health and welfare of my family on some flimsy argument,” he said.
Bashaw is concerned with the integrity of the data that the leadership is basing their strategic decisions upon. If data is being manipulated in some way or if there is a data glitch, then these senior-level leaders make decisions “based on something that might not be the case,” he explained. It is especially “a serious sign of concern” if a private contractor manages the medical information of service members and has glitches with it.
“And so it’s super important to have solid data and trustworthy sources.”
Bashaw’s decision to bring his concerns to his leaders’ awareness was made in order to honor the oath he took to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to glorify God.
“I will absolutely do everything in my power to warn my brothers and sisters in uniform. And that’s my job as a medical officer, to communicate risks and potential harms,” Bashaw said. “That’s my duty.”
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