> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jacqualineroche.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # About This Series - URL: https://www.jacqualineroche.com/about-this-series/ - Published: 2026-02-09T09:48:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-27T02:02:38.000Z - Description: How this series uses evidence, who its primary sources are, what standing they hold, and where the record runs out. The methodology page for Unacknowledged Casualties. - Author: Jacqualine Roche - Tags: Institutional Failure, Australian Defence Force **SERIES METHODOLOGY — Unacknowledged Casualties** **EVIDENCE STANDARDS · SOURCE DISCLOSURE · CAUSATION FRAMEWORK** --- > I was an army wife. My former husband was deployed to East Timor, where he participated in the antimalarial drug trials this series documents. I lived with the consequences for years before I had the evidence or the framework to understand what had happened — to him, to me, and to our family. This series is the result of that understanding. Unacknowledged Casualties is a public-interest research series about the ADF quinoline drug trials and the families left behind. This article sets out what the series is based on, how it uses evidence, who the primary sources are and what their standing is, and how to weigh every claim made across it. It is the kind of transparency that public-interest research requires. If you are a journalist, a lawyer, a clinician, or a policymaker drawing on this series for professional purposes, this is the article to read carefully. ## What this series is Unacknowledged Casualties: The ADF Quinoline Drug Trials and the Families Left Behind is a public-interest research series based on a comprehensive report of the same title, prepared in 2026 for investigative, policy, and advocacy purposes. Between 1999 and 2002, the Australian Defence Force administered two antimalarial drugs — mefloquine and tafenoquine — to thousands of personnel deployed to East Timor and Bougainville. Some of those personnel were participants in formal clinical trials of a drug not yet approved for human use anywhere in the world. Many developed serious neuropsychiatric symptoms. Many received the wrong diagnosis, the wrong treatment, or no treatment at all. Their families lived with the consequences. Those families have never been formally recognised, counted, or supported. The report on which this series is based synthesises peer-reviewed scientific literature, regulatory agency documentation, Australian Senate inquiry submissions, coronial inquest records, veteran advocacy evidence, domestic violence research, neuropsychiatric literature, and neurotoxicology sources. It incorporates the findings of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, whose final report in September 2024 formally acknowledged the issue and called for a dedicated brain-injury program for affected veterans. ## What this series is not It is not a medical resource. Nothing here constitutes clinical advice or diagnosis. It is not a legal resource. Nothing here constitutes legal counsel. It does not assert that mefloquine or tafenoquine caused any specific act of harm in any individual case. It documents a plausible mechanism and a documented pattern. Individual causation requires individual assessment. It does not represent DVA, the Department of Defence, or any government agency. It is an independent public-interest publication. --- ## How evidence is used This series uses four categories of evidence, applied consistently throughout every article. These categories are not rhetorical devices. They reflect a genuine commitment to distinguishing between what the record establishes and what it does not — because overclaiming invites dismissal, and the families this series documents have waited long enough for the right account to be taken seriously. **Established fact** refers to findings confirmed by peer-reviewed science, regulatory agency determinations, or official parliamentary, coronial, or governmental records. These are the most robust claims in the series. The FDA black box warning on mefloquine and the Royal Commission's findings are examples. **Plausible mechanism** refers to a biological or clinical pathway consistent with the scientific literature — providing a credible explanation for an observed phenomenon, but not yet demonstrated by a direct study in the specific ADF veteran and family population. The proposed link between quinoline-induced limbic injury and elevated domestic violence risk is a plausible mechanism. It is a serious hypothesis warranting investigation, not a proven finding. **Documented case evidence** refers to cases or patterns recorded in advocacy submissions, parliamentary testimony, or media records. These are accurately represented as sourced from identified materials, but have not been independently verified by this series. **Area of uncertainty** refers to questions the current evidence does not resolve. The most significant area of uncertainty in this series is the absence of any direct study measuring domestic violence rates, child harm outcomes, or long-term health outcomes in the ADF quinoline cohort. That gap is identified consistently throughout as a research priority — not papered over, not minimised. --- ## The two primary Australian sources Two figures are central to the Australian evidence base drawn on throughout this series. Their standing — as both evidence sources and advocates — is disclosed here in full. This disclosure is not made to discredit their work. It is made because readers are entitled to weigh evidence with complete information about who produced it and why. **Major Stuart McCarthy** prepared Senate Submission 94, lodged in his own name. It is the primary source for much of the Australian-specific institutional and factual detail in this series — the dosing figures, the coronial omissions, the DVA incentive structure, the details of the tafenoquine trial cohort, and the documented pattern of official responses. Major McCarthy is himself an affected ADF veteran, is president of the Australian Quinoline Veterans and Families Association, and has been a sustained public advocate for quinoline veterans and their families for many years. His submission is detailed, internally consistent, and supported by cross-references to publicly available documentation. Readers should be aware of his standing as both a witness and an advocate when weighing his evidence. Where his specific figures are relied upon for formal or legal purposes, verification against primary AMI and DVA records is recommended. **Professor Jane Quinn** of Charles Sturt University is a neurotoxicologist whose peer-reviewed work on quinoline toxicity — including a 2015 paper in the Journal of Parasitology Research — is cited in the independent scientific literature. She gave evidence to the 2018 Senate inquiry and is quoted in the Royal Commission's 2024 final report. Two further facts about her standing are relevant and are disclosed here because she has stated both publicly. She is the scientific adviser to the Australian Quinoline Veterans and Families Association, of which Major McCarthy is president; the two principal Australian sources drawn on in this series are therefore institutionally connected, not independent. And she was married to Major Cameron Quinn, a British Army officer who died by suicide in 2006 after taking mefloquine for military service — a fact she has placed on the record in evidence to parliamentary inquiries in both the United Kingdom and Australia. Her scientific expertise, her advocacy role, and her personal history are all relevant to weighing her evidence, and all three are disclosed so that readers can do so with complete information. The underlying neurotoxicology drawn on by both McCarthy and Quinn is independently established in the international peer-reviewed literature, including work by Nevin, Ritchie, and others not connected to the ADF advocacy context. Readers are encouraged to consult that international literature directly where the scientific foundation of a claim matters to them. --- ## Where the record runs against this series One adjudication in the Australian record runs directly against the account given here, and is stated rather than omitted. In 2015, then Major Stuart McCarthy lodged a submission with the Inspector-General of the ADF alleging unethical, unlawful and negligent use of mefloquine in the trials conducted between 2000 and 2002, non-compliance with the National Guidelines, compulsion to participate as a condition of deployment, and a failure to inform participants of the foreseeable likelihood of permanent brain injury. The IGADF investigated and found that the trials were conducted ethically and lawfully, in accordance with NHMRC and TGA guidelines, that participants consented voluntarily, and that they were adequately informed of the side effects known at the time. The 2018 Senate committee reproduced those findings and declined to reopen them. This series does not accept that adjudication, and readers are entitled to know why. The IGADF is independent of the ordinary chain of command but is not independent of Defence; the complaint alleged that Defence had conducted unethical trials, and Defence investigated itself. Veterans gave evidence to the Senate inquiry that they were told they would not deploy if they declined to participate. The committee's own recommendation that consent processes be strengthened is difficult to reconcile with a finding that the existing processes were adequate. And the question of what participants could have been told about neurological risk in 2000 is itself contested — the FDA did not add its boxed warning until 2013. On causation, a similar caution applies. Medical experts giving evidence to the inquiry disagreed with one another on whether the veterans' neurological symptoms were caused by the quinoline drugs. The committee accepted that the symptoms were genuine but made no findings on their cause, stating that it was not constituted of medical professionals or health experts. The causation argument in this series therefore rests not on the Australian inquiry but on the international regulatory and peer-reviewed record — the FDA boxed warning, the EMA finding of persistent neuropsychiatric and vestibular effects, the WRAIR neurotoxicity findings, and the forensic psychiatric literature. Readers should weigh the Australian expert disagreement alongside that record rather than in place of it. --- ## How this series frames causation This series does not claim that quinoline toxicity is the sole cause of domestic violence in affected ADF families, nor that it is necessarily the primary cause. The most defensible reading of the evidence is that the harm experienced by spouses and children is overdetermined — that quinoline-induced neurological injury, combat-related trauma, the documented culture of militarised masculinity within the ADF, and the failure of the institutional response each contribute, and that they compound one another. The strongest peer-reviewed Australian study of intimate partner violence in ADF families (Pollard and Ferguson, 2020) attributes the problem to cultural and structural factors and does not address drug toxicity at all. This series argues that quinoline neurotoxicity is a serious, under-investigated contributor that responsible institutions have failed to examine. It does not argue that it displaces the other causes. Where the evidence permits only an inference rather than a demonstrated causal chain, this is stated explicitly. **On moral blame:** this series consistently frames harm to the veteran without attribution of moral blame. Neurologically injured individuals are not morally responsible for pharmacologically induced behavioural changes they did not choose and were not warned about. The harm documented throughout this series is systemic in origin. Acknowledging the harm to partners and children does not require — and this series does not engage in — characterising affected veterans as perpetrators in the ordinary moral sense. The veteran is also a casualty of the institutional decisions documented here. Recognising all parties simultaneously is the only accurate account of what happened. --- ## A note on the Royal Commission This series was prepared in 2026 and incorporates findings from the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide (Final Report, September 2024) and the Australian Government response (December 2024). These developments postdate most of the primary source material on which the underlying research draws. The Royal Commission's acceptance in principle of a brain injury program for veterans is the most significant recent development. Its limitations — particularly the absence of any extension to families — are noted wherever relevant throughout this series. The claim that the system offers no recognition of quinoline-related brain injury is no longer accurate as stated. The recommendations of this series should therefore be read as building on, and seeking to extend, the Royal Commission's findings — not as describing a complete vacuum in which nothing has been acknowledged. --- ## The key primary sources For readers who want to go directly to the evidentiary record, the most important primary sources are these. - **The Senate inquiry report** (December 2018) and its submissions — particularly Submission 94 (Stuart McCarthy) — are publicly available at the Parliament of Australia website, along with the full submissions list and the committee Hansard. - **The Royal Commission Final Report**, Volume 4, Chapter 22, is available at defenceveteransuicide.royalcommission.gov.au. - **The FDA Drug Safety Communication** on mefloquine (July 2013) is available at fda.gov. - **The Repatriation Medical Authority investigation record** (August 2017) and the Specialist Medical Review Council decision (September 2018) are publicly available through the Parliament of Australia document store. Peer-reviewed sources cited throughout this series include Ritchie, Block and Nevin (2013); Nevin (2014, 2016); Quinn (2015); McCarthy (2015); Nasveld et al. (2010); Kitchener et al. (2005); and Felitti et al. (1998). If you or someone you know needs support: Open Arms 1800 011 046 · Lifeline 13 11 14 · 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732 Part of *Unacknowledged Casualties*. Read the full series at [/unacknowledged-casualties/](https://www.jacqualineroche.com/unacknowledged-casualties/)