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Agent Orange Shorts

By VVAW

REPORT FROM VIETNAM

The Vietnamese government has sponsored a study which has profound implications for Vietnam vets worried about Agent Orange contamination. The study of 40,000 Vietnamese families, presented at the "International Symposium on the Long Term Ecological Warfare in Vietnam" reveals that men exposed to Agent Orange have an abnormally high number of children with birth defects.

The study was based on a comparison of families where the father stayed in North Vietnam and families where the father served in South Vietnam. Women whose husbands had served in South had a significantly higher rate of miscarriages, still births and children with abnormalities than women whose husbands stayed in the North.

While some right-wing politicians and apologists for thugs like Dow Chemical are calling the findings propaganda, the Vietnamese study only confirms what many Vietnam vets already know--dioxin causes birth defects. Trying to coverup the truth by labeling it "propaganda" is not a new technique: in 1972 VVAW revealed that Agent Orange was causing birth defects in pregnant Vietnamese women. At the time it was called "propaganda." But much of the information is now confirmed by such disasters as Love Canal, Times Beach and the other dioxin disaster areas in the U.S.

One researcher into the problems of dioxin exposure, while not being ready to adopt the finding without further study, did say that this was the first study done yet with a sufficient amount of time since the event, and enough of a sampling of the population to make the study meaningful; she was going to study the results further.

Vietnam veterans can't wait another 10 years for the U.S. government to admit the truth. We need the treatment and compensation now, for ourselves, our wives and widows, and our children.

REPORT FROM AUSTRALIA

The following is from a letter sent to VVAW by Graham Bell, early member of Australian Vietnam Veterans Association, and longtime friend of VVAW.

"Fellow Veterans, Senator Messner, the Minister for screwing veterans, has released a happy report that Vietnam War veterans now have nothing to worry about; birth defects in veterans' children have nothing to do with the service in Vietnam. I have mentioned Senator Messner before: He is the fuckwit who did a tour of the U.S. at taxpayers' expense, then came back to Australia full of bullshit and some great story of having done the rounds of veterans organizations in the U.S. As you said in your letter at time, "..... sorry but we have never heard of your Senator Messner."

The timing and manner of the release of this report in the middle of the federal election campaign was a desperate move which backfired.

Unfortunately, Senator Messner has drawn #1 slot on his party's senate ticket in South Australia so he has a good chance of staying in Parliament anyway, but since his party is doomed, he won't be screwing veterans for much longer. The Labor Party leader, Bob Hanke, has promised veterans a "Royal Commission" -- you Americans don't have an equivalent; a Royal Commission is heavier than a grand jury, similar but not the same as the Warren or Watergate inquiries.

Just on the Birth Defects study: 1) the research design was faulty; 2) data base was too narrow and too biased; 3) certain areas of relevant and important factual material were ignored. There are also unsubstantial rumours about the personnel involved in the study.

Hope all you 'ungrateful' and 'unpatriotic' veterans keep up the good work--

Graham Bell

Toxic Spray Kills, Deforms
By Phil Reser

The issue of Agent Orange continues to haunt the veterans of Vietnam who have attempted to file a class action suit against both the U.S. government and the chemical companies which produced the substance.

While American and Australian vets push for more investigation and research into the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the last Dr. Ton That Tung of Hanoi and other physicians and scientists have continued to make a priority of researching the impact of defoliants on their country.

Dr. Tung, who died in May of last year, had an international reputations in this study that was so great that the Italian government had invited him to help liquidate the chemical catastrophe of Agent Orange which occurred in Seveso at a factory explosion.

In their research, Tung and his associates, studied a group of people from South Vietnam, a total of 903, who had been affected. For clinical study 179 people were selected so that they were a representative set of the afflicted population. They included 90 men, 19 women and 70 children between the ages of 6 and 14.

Tung mentions as the immediate effect of Agent Orange on a human being injury to the upper respiratory organs among 90% of the victims, vomiting and intestinal difficulties among 70%, irritated skin among 41% and heart trouble among 38 percent.

The secondary, long term effects of Agent Orange are not yet all known. For the present, it has been proved that genetic disturbances occur, eyesight is affected and there are tumorous growths and birth defects.

Dr. Tung was interviewed by Abe and Deborah Weisburd in 1980 and asked how he felt about the damage suits by U.S. and Australia vets, to which he responded with support.

"However," he continued, "the Vietnamese victims of U.S. defoliants are much more numerous and suffered more direct hits by the toxic chemicals. They also should be compensated, as should my government, for the terrible losses suffered from the herbicides dropped on this country."

Commenting on the effect of Agent Orange, Tung said, "Clinically I'm sure that the liver cancer of those who had contact with the toxic chemicals was caused by the herbicides." He also said, "The evidence shows the number of spermatozoa in the semen is considerably reduced in men who had contact with Agent Orange."

In the conclusion of one study Dr. Tung and his co-workers did, they wrote, "the study of herbicides and dioxin seems to provide the real concept that the mutagens of the environment can by the principal cause of cancer, birth defects, heart disease and senility."

The Weisburds requested a visit to one of the areas where the spraying of Agent Orange had taken place and this was granted by the Vietnamese government.

"We had along ride northwest of Saigon to Tay Ninh Providence, where the most sustained and heaviest Agent Orange spraying destroyed more than 200,000 acres of the very tall eucalyptus trees."

Leaving the paved road we travelled several miles along a dirt road into an area where we saw blackened, bare eucalyptus trees. The eucalyptus trees hit by Agent Orange no longer produce leaves, the sours of oil of eucalyptus, a valuable medicine. We did not see any commercial logging of trees which were highly prized as timber."

Before leaving Ho Chi Minh City, the Weisburds visited the Tu Du Hospital for the deformed children. The hospital takes care of over 200 children born without eyes, parts of arms or legs and with twisted bodies and other malformations.

The most distressing sight for the Weisburds was in the two rooms of the hospital where some 40 children with incurable brain damage were quartered.

"Those children, many of them more than 10 years old, were all in cribs with high sides. Fifteen, unable to stand up, were lying in their cribs and will lie flat on their backs until they pass away."

The Weisburds interviewed the two women who take care of these children, one a Catholic nurse, told them that all but two of the children had Vietnamese fathers who were victims of Agent Orange spraying in several provinces. The other two had American fathers who evidently, they said, had had contact with Agent Orange.

(Phil Reser authorized this article which has been reprinted from the "Walking Point" section of the "San Francisco Appeal To Reason" newspaper 1983)

ANOTHER STUDY....S.O.S. FROM 'DOWN UNDER'

According to a press release from the U.S. House Veterans Affairs Committee, a new Australian study show that Vietnam veterans are not more likely than others to have children with birth defects.

The study, released by Senator Tony Messner, the Australian minister of Veterans' Affairs, found that, first, veterans had no greater risk of fathering a malformed child than did non-veterans, and second, Vietnam vets had no greater risk than non-Vietnam vets.

--3/22/83 Press Release