Download PDF of this full issue: v12n3.pdf (8.4 MB)

Agent Orange Hearings: Going Secret with the Truth

By VVAW

The window is slamming shut! The VA?s Advisory Committee on the Health-Related Effects of Herbicides (ACHREH) had a closed session following its public meeting on May 13, 1982. This Committee had been a rare opening whereby the public and exposed vets could follow the various studies underway or beginning with regard to Agent Orange and other herbicides used in Vietnam. Now we are notified by the VA that the 13th quarterly meeting, to be held at the VA central Office on the morning of August 31, 1982, may also include a closed afternoon session.

When will we have had enough of this nonsense? First, years of inaction and denial of the Agent Orange problem was followed by a flurry of committee-creation (of more value to under-worked bureaucrats than sick veterans). Then, a grand epidemiological study was proposed and the protocol design for the study awarded by the VA to a UCLA school of medicine team under the leadership of Dr Gary ?Alleviate vets fears ? Spivery. Spivey produced an unacceptable design which was then reworked and sent back to the ACHREH with the recommendation that certain sections be classified (the questionnaire and the health exam). The VA complied only sharing these portions with the members of the ACHREH on May 13th behind closed doors. Now it seems that closed sessions may become the norm. (Slam!)

The delay becomes unconscionable. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnam vets were undoubtably exposed to Agent Orange and other herbicides in the service of their country and yet not one claim has been upheld to this date. As of June claims filed number 13,190 and over 87,000 Vietnam vets have been given general exams (such as they are) and placed on the VA's computerized Agent Orange registry. In fact, action on the claims cannot be expected to be forthcoming for several years or until the grand epidemiological study is completed. There must first be a pilot study of some 900 vets and that will take some time as well. The VA will either have to develop to develop the in-house capability to conduct the study (the VAW has no department of epidemiology).

One base of the study will presumably be an "Exposure Index" which the VA has announced having been created by the Department of Defense and the Department of the Army. The criteria used for this index and its structure are, of course, confidential. Questions go begging. How, exactly, will, this index be used? If it is to be used to determine a greater likelihood and degree of exposure it might serve as a useful but crude tool to add to other factors. But anyone who was in the Vietnam jungles knows that Agent Orange was sprayed and dumbed in all kinds of places for which there are no records at all. Might this "exposure index" be used as a way to deny thousands of vets?

Then there's a mortality study which the VA feels is eminently suitable for its shining computers. The death rate and causes of death of Vietnam vets and non-Vietnam vets are to be compared. Causes will come from state death certificates. But dioxin poisoning is not easy to discern particularly when little is known about it even in major medical centers to say nothing about small towns across the country. If a vet shot himself because of problems associated with Agent Orange poisoning, he will not appears as an Agent Orange death on a state certificate. There is immense room for statistical error, particularly if this data is to be added to a questionable "exposure index."

Despite a growing number of studies there exists an uncomfortable sense in the proceedings of the ACHREH that the VAW wishes the problem would just go away, and that the needs of human beings might be taking second place to finely crafted, numerous and lengthy studies. Time and again the VA has cried crocodile tears over the possibilities that accumulating data might be misleading. They worry that vets who report to the VA hospitals are "self-selected"—that is, a vet who goes to the VA for the Agent Orange exam does so because he thinks he has symptoms. It's a logic hard to argue with—most people who go to a restaurant are hungry. They worry that only 1/3 of the vets on their Agent Orange registry report current illnesses and the remainder are the "worried well." They worry that the Vietnam-era vets—the group that is being compared to the Vietnam vet—might have somehow "self-selected" service outside of Vietnam. They worry that Vietnam vets might be somehow a different breed of cat because they are "survivors" (if they had been killed they would presumably be statistically all right). They worry that Vietnam vets and Vietnam-era vets who were not in Vietnam might come from different socio-economic groups.

To be concerned about all these things in the name of scientific accuracy is one thing. But the VA seems much more concerned about heading off the growing anger of vets and their families. The message of VA head Nimmo to the ACHREH gives reason to pause. He did direct the Committee to continue "pursuing scientific inquiry" into the subject of health effects of Agent Orange and did point out that the VA is new to the field of environmental medicine. But he also describes the issue of Agent Orange as an "emotional" one, and the tone of his message became even clearer when he directed the Committee to "set the record straight wherever and whenever you see any of the many exaggerations and distortions of this subject." He then gave the following instruction: "I believe our responsibility to relieve unfounded (emphasis is Nimmo's) anxiety among veterans and their families is at least equal to our responsibility to press on for whatever final answers there might be." A strange instruction indeed! Shouldn't this Committee merely press on for a final answer and let that determine whether there should be treatment and compensation or, alternatively, "relieved anxieties"? Apparently, not according to Nimmo whose primary concern seems to be simply, "Get the heat off!"

The May 13th meeting of the ACHREH was notable for one reason. VVAW and its allies were present, both inside and outside. OUtside, over 150 pickets called for an end to VA cutbacks and for aggressive action on Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress disorders. Inside, 12 participants in Dewey Canyon IV attended the ACHREH meeting while 30 more were meeting with Chuck Hagel, the VA Deputy Administrator, since deposed.

It is unfortunate that this level of involvement cannot happen every time the ACHREH meets, but there is much that can be done. Fight VAW cutbacks. Lobby in your own state for an Agent Orange outreach program and state medical support. Join the class action suite and file a claim with the VA or take their exam in order to be placed on their Agent Orange registry. Regarding our one window into the VA's activities around Agent Orange, the ACHREH, we should demand immediate public disclosure of protocols and study results, open meetings, and inclusion of state representatives and non-governmental epidemiologists. If you are in or near Washington, DC on the 31st of August when the next meeting will be held, go to it to show that Vietnam vets and their friends are not willing for the question of Agent Orange to be "solved" away from the public view.

It is up to us to open these windows.

Mike Sutton
Washington VVAW