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A war's festering wounds

May 2, 2005 1:08 am

Tam Vu, Vietnam--These days, a Westerner is simply a minor curiosity in this small town in the Mekong Delta, about 30 miles south of Ho Chi Minh City.

But when Sam Thompson was here as a young man in 1969 and '70, he was widely viewed as the enemy.

Thompson, 56, of Catalpa in Culpeper County was drafted into the Army and served in this area as a forward observer for an artillery battalion during what people here call the American War.

He said he was just another scared kid who suddenly found himself trying to survive amid the swamps, rice paddies and jungles of southern Vietnam.

"I just did my job as best I could and came home. That was my goal--to get home to my family," he said.

One thing the specialist couldn't avoid, however, was being exposed to the dioxin-laden defoliant Agent Orange, which was sprayed during the war to eliminate enemy cover and food supplies.

Thompson believes every soldier who was in Vietnam for more than about a month must have been exposed to Agent Orange because "it was in everything--the air, the ground, the food, the water."

"You could always tell where the jungle had been sprayed because it was more or less eaten up," he said, likening the ecological destruction to a large-scale version of what happens when homeowners apply a commercially available herbicide such as Monsanto's Roundup.

The 56-year-old Thompson, who heads Piedmont Area Chapter 752 of Vietnam Veterans of America, suffers type 2 diabetes and a skin disorder called chloracne--health problems that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes as being associated with Agent Orange.

While Thompson appears to represent a clear-cut example of a veteran affected by defoliant exposure, the case of Marvin White and his father points to the questions that remain about the long-term and intergenerational effects of wartime herbicide spraying in Vietnam.

White's father, Eddie, a native of Birmingham, Ala., served in Vietnam with the Marines in 1967 and '68.

In August 1998, the retired master sergeant was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He died in December of that year at the age of 57.

The VA does not consider stomach cancer to be related to herbicide exposure during the war, although some research has suggested a link.

Marvin White, born in 1969, the year after his father's return from Vietnam, has severely malformed limbs and gets around in a wheelchair. But the VA doesn't believe his disability is related to herbicides, even though in Vietnam many people with similarly malformed limbs are considered Agent Orange victims.

White, a Stafford County resident, has never seen himself as a victim of any sort and has not spent much time wondering whether his condition is related to Agent Orange. His family--especially his father--taught him not to dwell on his disability.

It was just the "Marine attitude," he said. "You do what you have to do to get things done."

White said his family never talked much about his father's service in Vietnam, so he can't say whether his father was exposed to herbicides in the war.

"We didn't really ask him [about the war] because we didn't want to upset things," he said.

The U.S. government has spent more than $200 million on Agent Orange research, but no federal agency has ever produced a definitive study on the long-term effects of veterans' exposure to dioxin-laden herbicides.

Some veterans groups see this more as a failure of will than of science, and over the years they have kept pressure on the government to find answers to the riddle of Agent Orange. Their persistence has occasionally paid off, such as in 1991 when Congress passed the Agent Orange Act.

The legislation authorized the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine to evaluate the evidence linking Agent Orange to specific health problems and to assess the feasibility of undertaking further epidemiological studies. It also laid the groundwork for compensating veterans believed to be suffering the effects of herbicide exposure.

The VA now draws on the Institute of Medicine's work to determine the conditions for which Vietnam veterans may receive disability benefits. Some of those ailments include chloracne, type 2 diabetes, Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple myeloma and prostate cancer.

The agency also compensates veterans whose children suffer spina bifida. Women veterans whose children are born with certain other birth defects--including cleft lip or palate, clubfoot and congenital heart disease--are eligible for benefits, as well.

The agency says that these health problems are presumed to be service-related, but it does not acknowledge a cause-and-effect relationship between herbicide exposure and any of the conditions.

Some Vietnamese wonder why it makes sense to compensate American veterans in absence of conclusive scientific evidence, but not Vietnamese.

"Americans have been talking about many things--justice, democracy, very beautiful things --and we want to see this, too," said Nguyen Minh Y, a spokesperson for the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin.

Last year, the association filed a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto, Dow Chemical and other companies that manufactured Agent Orange. The suit was partly modeled after a class action by American veterans against the herbicide's makers.

The American plaintiffs won an out-of-court settlement of $180 million in 1984. More than 50,000 American veterans received payments from the settlement fund, averaging $3,800 each. The fund was exhausted in 1997.

The Vietnamese plaintiffs have not fared as well. Their case was dismissed in March, but has been appealed.

Research published in April 2003 may now make it possible to conduct major epidemiological studies that would answer how both Americans and Vietnamese have been affected by herbicide spraying during the war.

Columbia University professors Jeanne and Steven Stellman examined old Air Force data and devised sophisticated computerized maps to determine which U.S. troops and Vietnamese populations were exposed to defoliants, and to what extent.

The Institute of Medicine hailed the Stellmans' work, saying it made possible large-scale epidemiological studies. The institute urged the U.S. government to fund such research.

In November 2003, a bipartisan group of senators and congressman representing the leadership of the Senate and House Veterans' Affairs Committees called on the VA to build on the Stellmans' work by funding new independent epidemiological research.

The VA informed the lawmakers that it would conduct an internal study of the Stellmans' research model.

Critics say the VA is sitting on a promising scientific breakthrough that could help resolve lingering questions about what Agent Orange and other herbicides really have done to people.

But Mark Brown, director of the VA's Environmental Agents Service, which is responsible for the agency's Agent Orange research, said it is necessary to validate the Stellmans' work before funding new studies. He said only the VA has the relevant data--for example, veteran mortality rosters--needed to do the evaluation.

Jeanne Stellman said any of the data the VA collects can--and indeed must--be made available to the public. She said the VA should accept bids for independent research immediately.

Brown said the VA's internal testing of the Stellman model began about six months ago and may be finished after another year.

"This is all too little, too late," Stellman told a Free Lance-Star reporter by e-mail. "Are we waiting for all the Vietnam veterans to be dead so that their grandchildren can get around to studying what really happened to them? Our veterans sure deserve better than that."

Thompson, who has been waiting for more than seven months for his compensation claim to be approved, echoes Stellman's frustration about the way Vietnam veterans have been treated by the government.

"It's a sad thing that when you go over there you're the most important thing in the world to them. But when you get out of the military, you're no longer needed," he said. "You're a nuisance to them, almost.

"It's a hurtful thing as a veteran to see your government do that to you."

ON THE NET: Vietnam Veterans of America: vva.org/agentorange/index.htm

Veterans Affairs Department: www1.va.gov/agentorange

Jeanne Stellman's Web site: columbia.edu/~jms13/articles .html

To reach RICK MERCIER: 540/374-5637 rmercier@freelancestar.com