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Agent Orange Still Kills: VVAW Delegation Returns to Vietnam

By John Zutz

From November 30 to December 8, a delegation representing Vietnam Veterans Against the War went back to Vietnam. This is the second VVAW delegation to return in recent years.

The group was made up of David Cline from Jersey City, NJ; Stanley Campbell from Rockford, IL; Greg Payton from East Orange, NJ; and John Zutz from Milwaukee, WI.

We met in Bangkok and from there we obtained our visas and flew to Hanoi, the capital of reunified Vietnam. During out five days there we met with heads or representatives of the 10-80 Committee (Agent Orange), Bach Mai Hospital, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Vietnam-US Society. We also visited the War Museum, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Hanoi circus.

After this we flew to Hi Chi Minh City where we visited Tu Dy Gynecological hospital, several orphanages, an industrial exhibit and attended a concert of Vietnamese traditional music. One day we drove to Cu Chi where we saw the tunnels and Tay Ninh where we met with a number of Vietnamese veterans.

Throughout the trip we pretty much did what we wanted when we had the time and got to see a lot of things and meet a lot of people we would have missed otherwise. We met people from various western embassies, business people and foreign teachers. In Hanoi we talked with a team from the Joint Casualties Resolution committee searching for MIA remains. In Hi Chi Minh city we talked with former ARVNS and bar girls as well as numerous Amerasians.

While we were only in the country a short while, we felt we got a glimpse of Vietnam today—a much different place than we had seen before. We urge all Vietnam veterans to make this journey. And we hope that we will see the day soon when there is friendship and normalization of relation between our two countries.

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War Friendship Delegation to Vietnam in December of 1988 found that some questions about the effects of Agent Orange and related chemicals used during the war are starting to be answered.

The Vietnamese, pursuing basic research on herbicides and dioxin, have developed statistics showing birth defects caused through both male and female vectors, and have discovered why dioxin is toxic. They have also investigated the ecological effects on the forests, and possible recovery methods. The U.S. meanwhile has waffled and fumbled even the simplest research, spending years arguing which questions to ask, and when the answers don't please them, denying the results of their own research.

Tetracholoro Dibenzo para Dioxin (TCDD), the most toxic known man-made chemical, is one of a family of over 80 related chemicals called "dioxins." It is the inevitable by-product of the production of chlorinated phenols which were widely used by the U.S. and our allies in Vietnam to kill food crops and other vegetation. The herbicides, known as Agent Orange and Agent Purple, were made from chlorinated phenols, and contained dioxins. Millions of gallons of these herbicides were sprayed over Vietnam. Accordingly, the Vietnamese have the largest known amount of dioxin in their environment, many times more than Seveso, Italy where an industrial accident spread more than a pound of dioxin over the city with devastating results.

The recent VVAW delegation to Vietnam learned directly from researcher Dr. Nguyen Van Tri how he used electro-magnetic resonance to detect dioxin in blood, fat, and liver tissue. The then showed how the symmetrical structure of TCDD acted to resonate the magnetic field generated by its free electrons. He explained that when the magnetic fiends resonated, they actually amplified each other causing the molecule to be attracted to iron atoms, particularly in hemoglobin. The dioxin deforms the molecules preventing them from functioning. Hemoglobin carries oxygen throughout the body; if it can't perform this function, the body dies.

In the U.S., the National Cancer Institute (NCI) found that 2-4D causes cancer in Kansas farmers; when their findings were questioned by the EPA, they reconfirmed their study. 2-4D composed 50% of Agent Orange; the other half was 2-4-5T which has been effectively banned in the U.S. for causing birth defects. No action has followed the NCl studies.

In Hanoi a recent publication by the National Committee for Investigation of the Consequences of Chemicals used in the Vietnam War (the "10-80 Committee") details the results of 26 separate research programs. The Vietnamese had to use relatively limited resources and primitive equipment to gain their results.

For some U.S. scientists, the first reaction is to question the data—it comes from a Communist country, you know. But those who do should have their own scientific credibility questioned. All data is questionable; but, until you do research to disprove it, it must be accepted.

The Long-Term Effects of Herbicides and Defoliants Used in the Vietnam War, the 10-80 Committee publication, includes studies of:

• 40,064 couples in the North with 154,062 pregnancies and 140,497 live births, which divides the couples into two groups: one in which both parties stayed in the North, and the other where the husband served in the South. The second group had higher rates of spontaneous abortion and higher rates of birth defects.
• 1309 women, some from the North and some from the South showing higher rates of spontaneous abortions and still births in the group from the South.
• Monstrous birth defects to children of men who had served in the South, some of which have never been described in world medical literature. Comparisons between those defects and those caused by Thalidomide, and those caused by Dioxin in experimental animals (Thalidomide has been shown to cause birth defects if taken by the male as well as by the female).
• Environmental effects of herbicides on various types of forests and soils, and methods of reforestation.
• Degradation of Dioxin.
• Measures to overcome consequences of toxic chemicals used in the war.

—By John Zutz, VVAW Milwaukee