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Agent Orange: A Continuing Legacy of the War

By David Cline

Severe health problems associated with the US military's use of a chemical defoliant during the Vietnam War have long been an issue of concern for the veterans' community. Popularly known as Agent Orange, this herbicide was heavily contaminated with tetrachlorodibenzoparadioxin (TCDD), one of the most deadly carcinogens known to man.

Over many years, Vietnam veterans began to get sick and have children with birth defects, and many died. Veterans have struggled to have the VA provide testing, treatment, and compensation for those affected.

This struggle began in the 1970s and went through many twists and turns as the chemical companies who manufactured Agent Orange—and the US government, who ordered and deployed it—tried to deny any responsibility and even claimed that it was harmless.

In 1984, the chemical companies who manufactured Agent Orange agreed to pay $180 million in damages to veterans. In 1991, Congress passed the Agent Orange Act, recognizing the negative health effects of this defoliant and acknowledging certain conditions for VA medical treatment and disability compensation. Since that time, more conditions have been acknowledged, but many others are still not recognized. Veterans who served in the South Korean, Australian, and New Zealand militaries under US command have also brought lawsuits.

But the largest group of people affected by Agent Orange have never received any form of justice. They are the people of Vietnam, both NVA/VC and ARVN soldiers and many times more civilians who were trapped in the war zones.

Some of the children being cared for at the Cu Chi hospice run by the Catholic Church

In 2004, the suffering Vietnamese formed the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) and initiated a lawsuit in US courts against the companies who manufactured the chemical poison. The case is scheduled to be heard in a federal appellate court in New York City this fall.

In support of the Vietnamese victims, we have formed the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign and are working with them and other Agent Orange victims throughout the world to continue this struggle until all those affected receive some justice.

At the end of March, I took a delegation of four other US veterans who are Agent Orange victims (Joan Duffy, Ralph Steele, Dan Shea, and Frank Corcoran) to Hanoi for an international conference on Agent Orange that included participants from Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and Canada, along with support groups from France, England, and several other European countries.

After that, we traveled to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Cu Chi, and Hue, where we were hosted by VAVA chapters, met with victims, and visited hospices and friendship villages where some of the many thousands of the most seriously deformed Agent Orange children are tended. They are run by the support of international veterans, the Catholic church, or local governments and hospitals.

This issue is an ongoing and unresolved legacy of the US war in Vietnam and is something that needs to be addressed and resolved if we are ever going to heal the wounds of that period in our nation's history.

To find out more and to get involved in the campaign in the United States, contact the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, PO Box 303, Prince Station, New York, NY 10012 or visit the website at www.vn-agentorange.org.

Vietnam Air Force nurse Joan Duffy addresses the international conference in Hanoi