Kiosk - Agent Orange and My Father (page 2)

Agent Orange and My Father

2.

My half-brother introduced me to Agent Orange a little over a month ago. I immediately knew this was the subject that I wanted to research for my term project . The subject matter resonated with me. There was a sense of urgency that something had to be done about the controversy. I wanted to bring a topic that had been buried for decades back to the surface.

Agent Orange is the code name for one of the many herbicides and defoliants used during the Vietnam War which caused the leaves of plants to fall off prematurely. . Produced by the U.S. in 1961 as part of an herbicide program called Operation Ranch Hand, Agent Orange was used by the South Vietnamese Air Force as part of the first defoliation test on August 10, 1961. On January 3, 1962, pressured by the need to expedite and improve military conditions in Vietnam,
President Kennedy personally authorized the spraying of defoliants in Vietnam. Classified by the color of the band on the 208-liter storage barrels that contained this herbicide, Agent Orange was contaminated with dioxin, an accidental byproduct that is now known to cause several different cancers and birth defects. Between 1961 and 1971, approximately twenty-one million gallons of this toxin-contaminated defoliant were sprayed on the forests of southern Vietnam, covering over six million acres of land, for the purpose of eliminating enemy cover as well as destroying crops, a military tactic for decreasing enemy food supplies. Dioxin hot spots are still being addressed today because dioxin is a toxic chemical that does not readily degrade, and isn’t water soluble. I t is still present in Vietnam’s water supply and ecosystem.

The first legally documented victims of dioxin exposure were the employees of Monsanto, an agricultural company with a history of toxic contamination , that is known today for producing genetically modified seeds. On March 8, 1949, an explosion at Monsanto’s Nitro West Virginia plant exposed more than 220 workers to dioxin. A Vanity Fair article published in May 2008 reported that following the explosion, workers reported leg and chest pain and a skin condition called chloracne, one of the medical conditions that later allowed some Vietnam veterans to claim benefits following exposure to Agent Orange. In 1981, these exposed workers filed a lawsuit against Monsanto. The case was settled out of court, with Monsanto agreeing to pay a lump sum of $1.5 million to several of the former Nitro employees.

In Vietnam, southern Vietnamese newspapers began reporting in June of 1969 that herbicides were causing birth defects . This prompted a study by K. Diane Courtney and her colleagues at the National Institutes of Health. They presented evidence that a component of Agent Orange called 2,4,5-T caused malformed babies and stillbirth in laboratory mice. In 1970, the U.S. military ceased the use of this defoliant in Vietnam, and 2,4,5-T was banned from most U.S. domestic products soon after. The spraying of other herbicides continued, but in 1971 Operation Ranch Hand finally ended.

More than 2.5 million American military personnel had served in Vietnam by the time the war ended in May 1975. Around that time, the Veterans Administration and other established veterans’ organizations began to see an increase in inquiries from Vietnam veterans that reflected rates of illnesses much higher than previously recorded. But these organizations did not respond to the v eterans’ increasing inquiries. In 1978, the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) was established as a system of support and advocacy. Herbicide-related illnesses dramatically surfaced, but these newly-founded organizations were still gathering resources to take up the cause.

Also i n 1978, Vietnam veterans filed a class-action product liability lawsuit against five chemical manufacturers that produced contaminated herbicides for the U.S. during the war. Six years and two judges later in 1984, the suit was settled out of court just hours before the trial was to take place, for $180 million . Payments were made between 1988 to 1997, the most common being for mental disorders, which thus far have not been proven to be the result of Agent Orange exposure.
Despite the 1984 settlement, the controversy that revolves around U.S. victims of Agent Orange and who or what is responsible persisted. In 1998, veterans filed a new lawsuit, this time arguing that reparations did not adequately address the new illnesses that surfaced as a result of the link to Agent Orange exposure. This case proved unsuccessful; the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the claim and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Vietnam veterans in the U.S. today are still struggling with the adverse health effects of being exposed to this defoliant during the war. Many who have filed for benefits have to await approval, denial, anything from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The answer is not automatic. In December 2009 the Chicago Tribune reported that some veterans have had to wait as long as fourteen months for approval of their disability claims.

U.S. Vietnam veterans, however, were not the only group that was exposed to Agent Orange during the war. Vietnamese civilians could see the effect of the herbicides on the plants and crops. Airplanes that flew at low altitudes left behind trails of white dust that percolated through the air, down to the plants, and onto the soil. Spraying times lasted around eight minutes per mission. In the following weeks, plants would lose their leaves, and what were once acres of rich forest would become dry and barren. The health problems linked to the defoliant did not publicly surface until 1968, when Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, an obstetrician who was working at Tu Du Maternity Hospital in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, started delivering babies with birth defects. As the Chicago Tribune reported last year:

‘ It was very horrible for me and my colleagues,’ [Dr. Nguyen] said, her voice cracking as she wiped away tears. ‘ The first case happened on my duty. I didn’t show the mother because I was afraid she would go into shock. But the father and other family members demanded to see, and it was horrible.’

Dr. Nguyen then took this news to her friends at the South Vietnamese newspapers, who began reporting stories of birth defects linked to the use of herbicides two years before Operation Ranch Hand ended in 1971. It is estimated that at least 2.1 million to as many as 4.8 million people who were present during the spraying had been exposed to dioxin levels of a magnitude much greater than what was used for U.S. domestic purposes. The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that three million Vietnamese civilians in Vietnam are still living with the legacy of Agent Orange today, four decades after its introduction during the war.

3.
I desperately wanted to find a Vietnamese Agent Orange victim currently living in California, but was having trouble. Feeling discouraged, I turned to the best resource I knew: my mother.
I gave her a call one evening and asked her if she knew anything about the topic. In Vietnamese, it’s called Ch?t ??c da cam, which literally translates to “ orange skin poison.” My mother knew the basics: that it was a chemical sprayed in Vietnam during the war. She told me she didn’t know anyone who was currently affected by it, adding that even if she did, they would have died by now.
But she promised me that she would ask her friends. S he did—to no avail. No one knew of anyone living in the U.S. who was a victim of this poison. But t he next day, my mother called me back and asked me a strange question.
“Do you really want to pursue this project?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Because if you do, I will tell you something.”
And so I sat in silence as my mother told me that my father’s health had been affected by exposure to Agent Orange during the war. When she told me this, I wanted to believe her. But I also knew that it would be hard to prove, especially because he died of kidney and cardiopulmonary failure, and the final stages of stomach cancer, all of which are not currently on the presumptive-eligibility list of conditions known to be caused by Agent Orange.

As of the end of last year, three more diseases were added to the list of medical conditions presumed to be connected to wartime exposure to dioxin-contaminated herbicides: Parkinson’s disease, B-cell Leukemia and Ischemic heart disease. Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, respiratory cancers, prostate cancer, and Type- 2 diabetes were among the diseases listed in 2008. Many doctors who treat patients with diseases that are linked to Agent Orange are not even aware of potential links. And even if veterans do know, the process of enrolling for benefits is time-consuming . By the time veterans do get approved for benefits, it may be too late.

The problem with the presumptive-eligibility list is that it continues to grow. The more research that goes into finding more health conditions that are linked to this defoliant, the more disability benefits will have to go out to veterans. The other problem with the list is that it doesn’t grow fast enough. Veterans who have a certain disease may not receive benefits because the disease is not on the list, but that specific disease could be added later, at which point it may be too late.