"It is my fundamental belief
that Agent Orange victims, for whatever reason, have been singled
out and have not received the care, have not received the attention,
have not been given the kind of priority that virtually every
other class of veteran suffering from a service-connected disability,
or what he or she claims to be a service connected disability,
has received.
Fifty four diseases are currently
on the VA's list of presumptive disabilities. These presumptions
were made, some by Congress and some by the VA, because it was
determined that they were just as connected to military service
as a wound from a bullet, bomb or grenade. That is what we are
saying about diseases associated with exposure to Agent Orange.
Several presumptive disabilities
have far less evidence associating them with military service
than do diseases associated with Agent Orange, such as soft tissue
sarcoma, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, skin cancer, chloracne, birth
defects in veterans' children, and other disabilities.
I am not here to object to those
presumptions. Those veterans also deserve the benefit of the
doubt. But it is important to point out that in many cases the
scientific evidence is not as strong as the evidence supporting
Agent Orange compensation, so you cannot help but sympathise
with veterans suffering as a result of their exposure to Agent
Orange who ask of us, why them and not us? Why give them the
benefit of the doubt and not us?
This struggle has been going
on for over 10 years. In fact, it started even before the Vietnam
War began. It is becoming increasing clear that almost 20 years
ago chemical companies and military scientists knew that Agent
Orange was at least potentially harmful to humans.
In New Jersey, insurance companies
are now suing chemical companies and uncovering evidence that
chemical companies knew in the 1950's, over thirty years ago,
that Agent Orange was harmful.
I have a letter from Dr. James
Clary, an Air Force scientist who served in Vietnam, saying that
he and others involved in writing the history of Operation Ranch,
the operation that involved the actual spraying of Agent Orange,
knew that Agent Orange was harmful.
Dr. Clary, in a letter to me
dated Sept. 9, 1988, states: "As time progresses, and additional
evidence is forthcoming, it will be increasingly difficult for
anyone to deny the relationship between dioxin exposure and non-Hodgkins
lymphoma and soft-tissue sarcoma.
When we [military scientists]
initiated the herbicide program in the 1960's, we were aware
of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the
herbicide. We were even aware that the 'military' formula had
a higher dioxin concentration than the 'civilian' version, due
to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because
the material was to be used on the 'enemy', none of us were overly
concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel
would become contaminated with the herbicide. And, if we had,
we would have expected our own government to give assistance
to veterans so contaminated."
If this is true, then several agencies of the federal government
have spent decades trying to keep the truth about Agent Orange
from the general public.
In spite of government efforts
to obfuscate and manage the science, the truth has been leaking
out very slowly over the years. And yet, there are those in this
Congress, in the administration, and throughout the country who
continue to claim that there is not enough evidence to support
compensation. No evidence, some say. For some, hiding the truth
seems to be a full-fledged obsession.
The first studies of human reaction
to Agent Orange were conducted from 1974 to 1983. As concerns
grew, the Congress commissioned a large-scale epidemiological
study, to be performed through the VA, of ground troops' exposure
to Agent Orange and potential health effects.
After a series of revelations
that the VA was being less than evenhanded with the study, there
was a general consensus that the study should be transferred
from the VA to the Centers for Disease Control. We later learned
that was a mistake.
Later in 1984, the Air Force
published its first morbidity report on the health status of
those involved in Operation Ranch Hand. The February 1984 Baseline
Morbidity Report concluded that its results should be viewed
as "reassuring".
During a February 1984 press
conference, the Air Force emphasised that the study was "negative"
and that the results, were, again, "reassuring". The
word "reassuring" has become very familiar, and it
seems to be the only one the Air Force is willing to use to describe
its findings, regardless of what the findings are. Rest assured,
no matter what the study shows, it will be "reassuring".
Sometimes, the evidence points to a serious problem, and yet,
the Air Force statement is, "It is reassuring".
At the same February press conference,
one of the Air Force scientists-a principal investigator, chief
statistician, and designer of the study, added some simple words
of caution: that further study was required and that some concerns
remained. For having said that he was taken off the project.
Later in 1984, we finally passed
P.L. [Public Law] 98-542, compensation legislation that codified
the benefit of the reasonable doubt standard, provided for soft-tissue
sarcoma compensation, and required the VA to establish standards
for general Agent Orange and atomic radiation compensation. For
the first time, the Congress addressed in somewhat of a comprehensive
manner exposure to Agent Orange and what we ought to do about
it. And yet, in all those years, having passed that legislation
more than six years ago, not a single veteran was ever compensated
for soft-tissue sarcoma, and to this date, only a handful of
veterans have received compensation for chloracne, a disease
acknowledged by virtually everyone to be associated with Agent
Orange exposure.
Although it was clear that the
Veterans Administration did not want to provide compensation,
P.L. 98-542, at least in theory, established for the first time
the reasonable standard doubt principle that might have prevented
the need for further legislation had it been followed, and had
the federal government acted in good faith with its scientific
efforts.
Since 1984, P.L. 98-542 has been
virtually ignored. In spite of the intent of Congress, in spite
of the efforts of everyone involved in the writing of that law,
in spite of our promises to veterans at that time that at long
last , after all these years, they would be given the benefit
of the doubt, not one veteran in this country has been compensated
for any disease other than chloracne.
In the summer of 1986, the House
Veterans' Affairs Sub-committee on Hospitals and Health Care
hearing called witnesses from the Office of Technology and Assessment,
the Centers for Disease Control and others, to come before the
Congress to explain what had happened with the CDC Agent Orange
exposure study in recent years. OTA reported that the Centers
for Disease Control had changed the protocol for the study without
authorisation. OTA also reported at the particular hearing that
petty arguments at CDC were interfering with the study's progress
and that progress had virtually come to a standstill.
After spending millions of dollars
on the study protocol, the Centers for Disease Control suggested
that a valid ground troop study could not even be done. They
said there was no way to determine exposure and that military
records were inadequate. They reported the last resort would
be to explore blood tests for validating exposure.
The military records experts
from the Army-Joint Services Environmental Support Group, led
by Richard Christian, testified that military records were adequate
and that, in his judgement, the Centers for Disease Control could
do a valid study if they wanted to. DoD officials altered his
followup testimony before it was sent to the Hill, deleting his
information that challenged CDC's claims.
In September 1986, the New Jersey
Agent Orange Commission announced it had tested several veterans
suspected to have high levels of dioxin exposure. It cautioned
that, because of the half-life of dioxin and the fact 20 years
had passed, the blood test would drastically underestimate exposure.
At the same time, the House Energy and Commerce Committee uncovered
an OMB effort to stop all dioxin research. It blasted OMB at
the time for OMB's claim that there had been "enough"
dioxin research and that the federal government should stop worrying
about it.
In 1986, there was a key study
involving Kansas farmers completed at the National Cancer Institute.
That study indicated a sixfold increase in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
among Kansas farmers exposed to 2,4-D, a primary ingredient of
Agent Orange.
Notice the progression of evidence
here. OTA announced that CDC changed its protocol. The Army-Joint
Services Environment Support Group reported that CDC was studying
the wrong people and denying the usefulness of the military records
that, by the way, have since been shown to be amazingly useful.
The New Jersey Agent Orange Commission
came forth, and through its blood-testing capability provided
a major scientific breakthrough. And then the NCI study of Kansas
farmers, completely independent, indicated once again a dramatic
increase in the number of farmers experiencing a terminal cancer
as a result of exposure to a prime ingredient of Agent Orange.
How much more evidence is needed?
How much further does one have to go to draw the comparison to
other presumptions, to acknowledge that relationship, to do what
we have said we were going to do in 1984, simply to provide the
benefit of the doubt to the veteran? Not to the chemical companies,
not to the government, but to the veteran.
But the incoming tide of evidence
did not stop in 1986. In 1987, a VA mortality study was released-only
after being leaked to The New York Times. The Times reported
that the study indicated a serious problem in Vietnam veterans
who were likely to be exposed to Agent Orange. That study, titled
"Proportionate Mortality Study of Army and Marine Corps
Veterans of the Vietnam War". a Veterans Administration
study, indicated a 110 percent higher rate of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
in Marines who served in heavily sprayed areas as compared with
those who served in areas that were not sprayed. The VA study
also found a 58 percent higher rate of lung cancer. And yet,
with that release of new data, the VA tried to discredit the
study and tried to say that there was still some doubts about
its validity, which was supported by independent scientists.
Increases in soft-tissue sarcoma
and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are found in veterans throughout the
country. A Washington State study again verified that in 1987.
Another VA study found an eightfold increase in soft-tissue sarcoma
among veterans most likely to have been exposed to Agent Orange.
This was of borderline statistical significance, but the findings
were nevertheless remarkable. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease
Control released its "findings" that the Agent Orange
exposure study could not be done validly.
CDC based that announcement on
a small group of veterans' blood tests, saying the people it
chose for the blood tests did not have enough dioxin in their
blood, and concluding that military records, therefore, could
not be used. Furthermore, CDC argues that because these few tests
were "negative", the "study", which was never
conducted, proves that there is no problem at all. Scientists,
veterans groups and military records experts all challenge the
CDC claims and called the CDC decision scientifically insupportable
and medically irresponsible. Some of the people within CDC itself
have since hinted that they disagreed with the decision. But
there it was.
Returning to Ranch Hand, in 1987,
I began my own investigation and discovered that those who have
insisted that the Ranch Hand study is negative were wrong. Compensation
opponents insisted that Ranch Hand offered irrefutable proof
that Agent Orange is not a problem at all-their theory being
that Ranch Handlers were the most heavily exposed veterans and
that they had no problems, proving that no veterans have problems
relating to their exposure to Agent Orange. And yet, when we
pressed the Ranch Hand scientists about much of this, we found
there were important discrepancies between a 1984 draft and the
Final February 1984 Ranch Hand report. We found that Air Force
statements and Air Force facts were not the same. The facts,
which had become known to the Air Force by late 1984, still had
not been released.
We learned that there was an
unpublished report showing a doubling of birth defects in Ranch
Hand children. That was never released or discussed publicly.
The January 1984 draft Ranch Hand morbidity report stated, "It
is incorrect to interpret this base line study as "negative".
The draft also reported that the Ranch Handlers were less well
than the controls by a ratio that was 5-to-1 and "overwhelming
directionality of results".
The reason I say remember those
words is because they were never released in the Ranch Hand report.
The Air Force chose for some reason to delete those words in
the report. It was "reassuring" they said. It is reassuring
if you delete some of the most damaging, the most critical information
suggesting a relationship between Agent Orange and some of the
diseases. The Air Force deleted these findings at the suggestion
of a Ranch Hand Advisory Committee set up by the White House
Agent Orange Working Group.
The Air Force also chose to dismiss
the increased birth defects in the Ranch Hand children. That
was not discussed at the 1984 press conference. In 1987, Air
Force scientists confirmed to me that birth defects in the Ranch
Hand children are double those of children of the controls and
are not "minor" as originally reported in the 1984
report. These are Air Force scientists who are confirming Ranch
Hand information that was deleted from the 1984 report. And they
also confirm that they had completed a draft report on birth
defects in the Ranch Hand children in December 1984, in followup
to the February 1984 Ranch Hand morbidity report. That birth
defects report has never been released.
Why was it not released? Why
did scientists who worked on the Ranch Hand report not want this
information to get out? Why was there a cover-up? The Ranch Hand
Advisory Committee under the White House Agent Orange Working
Group told these scientists not to finish it. Later the advisory
committee told them to do more work-to check some data. Five
years later, there is still no report. It took 10 months to write
the draft, and so far it has taken five years to check the data.
Five years later there is still no public acknowledgement-other
than what I have reported-of some of this information left out
of the original report. There are several other findings that
I think are very interesting.
Air Force scientists confirmed
that there is an increase in skin cancers in the Ranch Hand group
and that skin cancers are not related to over exposure to the
sun, as was suggested in the 1984 report. They confirmed that
misclassification in the Ranch Hand exposure index is far reaching
and has the potential to hide other problems in the Ranch Hand
group. They admitted that Air Force and White House management
representative became involved in scientific decisions at Ranch
in spite of the study protocol's ban on such involvement. The
Air Force admitted that veterans are not represented on the Ranch
Hand Advisory Committee in spite of a protocol requirement that
they be represented.
Yet another inconsistency was
discovered through two different responses to my inquiries. We
learned that there are two versions of the minutes of a February
1984 Advisory Committee meeting advising the Air Force scientists
to change the conclusions in the 1984 Ranch Hand report. The
scientists made their report and at the very last minute, they
were told by a White House advisory committee: "We do not
care what you are telling us, what your conclusions may be. We
want you to change the report, delete those conclusions, delete
that table, minimise the relationships you are talking about".
The version of the minutes the
Air Force scientists received and sent to me clearly directed
the Air Force scientists to "rephrase the statement. This
base line report is not negative", and to take out the table
and language showing Ranch Handlers were less healthy than the
controls by a 5-to-1 ratio. The version I received from the Agent
Orange Working Group dated two days later did not contain that
language, though it was identical in every other way.
None of these findings were made
public. By this time it was January 1988, and the public and
the veterans had had no update on Agent Orange since 1984 in
spite of these findings. So you cannot help but understand why
somebody, in response to our desire on the basis of scientific
information to provide compensation to veterans afflicted by
Agent Orange, would point to the Ranch Hand report and say, there
is no relationship, the Ranch Hand report clearly says so. It
says so alright, but why it says so ought to be investigated
by both the veteran's committees, and by everyone else interested
in good government and how decisions are made in this town, because
what happened there was a fraud perpetrated by people whose names
we still do not know.
On May 12, 1988, the Senate Veterans'
Affairs Committee held a hearing. The CDC released its Agent
Orange Exposure Study findings again and announced that it would
terminate the study, that a study could not be done. This, however,
did not stop CDC from continuing to speak about the study as
if it was proof that Agent Orange was not a problem-that no one
was exposed. Yet, the testimony contradicted the CDC's published
study results.
CDC also released its Vietnam
Experience Study findings with great fanfare, saying that it,
too, showed there is no problem. Yet the testimony did not even
mention an increase in non-Hodgkins lymphoma found in the study
results, and CDC later suggested that the increase was not verified.
In the same hearing, the Air Force officials tried to distance
themselves from the February report on Ranch Hand and to belittle
its importance, but admitted under questioning that it was technically
correct and that all three scientists wrote it. The Air Force
admitted at this hearing that veterans were not represented on
the Ranch Hand Advisory Committee, and they had no explanation
for this violation of the study protocol. The Air Force officials
denied there was any government interference in the Ranch Hand
study in spite of the fact they had acknowledged such interference
in writing to me and in a personal meeting.
For this part, the VA testified
that there was not a "shred" of evidence that Agent
Orange is associated with veterans' disabilities. When asked
what would constitute a "shred" or "reasonable
doubt", the Deputy Director refused to answer, saying we
should stop worrying about Agent Orange. He suggested that the
entire problem was nothing more than a figment of veterans' imagination.
Several days after the May 12 hearing, however, CDC acknowledged
in a letter to the chairman and ranking minority member of the
committee that the increase in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was real
and bigger than first thought. A sixfold increase, it said. And
yet there was no press release from CDC, no public information.
Can you blame veterans for wondering
what is going on? Can you blame their families who continue to
watch all this unfold, and not share their sense of frustration,
their sense of indignation at the conflicting comments, the duplicity,
the obfuscation that occurs time and time again when government
officials at the highest level are being called upon to inform
the public, but they cover up information instead?
Late in 1988, CDC released its
Agent Orange Exposure Study "findings" yet again in
the press, and again argued that no one was exposed in spite
of the fact that the study was never actually conducted.
The National Cancer Institute
replicated its study of Kansas farmers in Nebraska, providing
further evidence of a link between Agent Orange and non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma. Dr Hardell in Sweden replicated his earlier study of
pesticide workers and soft-tissue sarcoma. A Massachusetts mortality
study showed a fivefold increase in Vietnam veterans with soft-tissue
sarcoma.
Agent Orange compensation opponents,
whose strategy seems to hinge on endless waiting, began to argue
that we should wait for the "next" study. Congress
should not act until the CDC Selected Cancers Study is concluded.
They argued that the study will be the "definitive word"
on Agent Orange. I was told that a couple of days ago: "Let
us not act until the Centers for Diseases Control provides the
"definitive word". Yet, Agent Orange victims say there
are other veterans afflicted with 54 presumptive disabilities
who never had to wait for the "definitive word". There
are victims of radiation exposure who are eligible for compensation
for 13 different diseases who did not have to wait-for too long-until
Congress finally decided that the "definitive word"
might never come. We must not make that mistake again.
The Selected Cancers Study, even
if it were the definitive word, which it will not be, is not
an Agent Orange study. It does not even attempt to determine
exposure. How can it be the definitive word on Agent Orange if
it does not even focus specifically on veterans affected by Agent
Orange? The CDC protocol acknowledges that the study does not
have sufficient statistical power to detect substantial increases
in rare cancers, such as soft-tissue sarcoma and non-Hodgkins
lymphoma, and that the problem of mis-classification inherent
in the study will further hinder the study's ability to detect
increases. Furthermore, CDC's general handling of the Agent Orange
Exposure Study and the Vietnam Experience Study calls into question
the integrity of the Selected Cancers Study.
You cannot blame those of us
who have watched CDC for the last five or six years for being
sceptical about whether this definitive study is going to provide
any new evidence that we have not had before, much less anything
definitive. And so while we ask these veterans once more to wait,
to let us get the final word next spring, they shake their heads
and say, "Its funny, the double standards between those
other veterans and us, between the criteria that the government
has set for virtually every other group and us."
Last year, the Senate was again
called upon to do what it has done on several different occasions:
to pass Agent Orange compensation legislation both independently
as well as an amendment to the compensation bill. The House sent
it back in the last of couple of days of the 100th Congress indicating
there would be no legislation on Agent Orange.
This year has also produced evidence
and new developments with regard to the case of Agent Orange
compensation. It began when a federal judge in a law suit that
VA's Agent Orange rules under P.L. 98-542, the very act we passed
in 1984, are too strict and do not give veterans the statutorily
required benefit of the doubt. It has be a little embarrassing
for the VA, the so-called advocate for veterans, to be told by
a judge somewhere in California that you are not doing what the
law says you are supposed to do, that you are not giving the
veterans the benefit of the doubt.
This is where a new Secretary
stepped in. Secretary Derwinski had a lot of options. He could
have said, "We are going to appeal that decision because,
for whatever reason, we have decided that the judge is wrong."
But for the first time someone in the VA did what he was supposed
to do. For the first time someone in the VA put all politics
aside and did what the law required. He gave the benefit of the
doubt to the veteran. He said-and I might add he got in a lot
of hot water for saying this-we are going to give the benefit
of the doubt. We are not going to appeal the judge's decision.
The House Government Operations
Subcommittee on Human Resources held a hearing not long ago.
It concluded as a result of all the testimony received during
the hearing that the Centers for Disease Control had badly bungled
the study. Recently, the VA Advisory Committee on Environmental
Hazards, the same committee that said that veterans who were
exposed to atomic radiation were not harmed by atomic radiation,
said that veterans were not exposed to Agent Orange either.
That brings us to where we are
today. The House has chosen again not to consider legislation
dealing with Agent Orange. In spite of the wealth of evidence
from scientists all over this country-scientists from virtually
every field of study have come to the same conclusion: That there
is a relationship between Agent Orange and both soft-tissue sarcoma
and non-hodgkins lymphoma; that we ought to give the benefit
of the doubt to the veterans, as they so richly deserve.
Yet, we are put in the difficult
position of telling these veterans once more that they have to
wait. I do not know how much longer this wait will be. But I
do know this: We are not going to quit. We are going to continue
to press this issue. It is not going to go away. We are going
to find a way to pass this legislation."
1994
Report Vietnam Veterans Association of New Zealand
