VA announces three additional illnesses to Agent Orange "Presumptive" list!

[Gimpy]

The Veterans Administration has added three additional illnesses under VA’s “presumption” rule as being caused by exposure to herbicides during the Vietnam War are:


Relying on an independent study by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki decided to establish a service-connection for Vietnam Veterans with three specific illnesses based on the latest evidence of an association with the herbicides referred to Agent Orange.


The illnesses affected by the recent decision are B cell leukemias, such as hairy cell leukemia; Parkinson’s disease; and ischemic heart disease.


Follow the link below for further information!


http://www.vawatchdog.org/09/vap09/vap101309-1.htm


Gimp

[formergrunt70]

Thanks Gimpy
I checked this out with the VA news. I also went back, and looked at My EKG from the VA
that read: abnormal EKG, in which My PCM (Family Doctor- tri-care) referred Me to a cardiologist because something was not right . So it appeared I had what they called left arterial enlargement lateral ischemia. I was placed on medication called Zocor to try and and control the high cholestorol. This was all taking place in April-May. One Saturday
in late June I was experiencing this awful pain in My right leg, and eventually the lower part
below the knee became completely numb. They called 9-1-1 , and I was admitted to the hospital with a massive blood clot in My right leg. So where Am I going with this? The surgeon that came to see Me stated that I need to have by pass surgery, stint placed in that artery, and that I had what is called P.A.D. paripheral ateriel disease which is nothing more than clogged arteries, blockage, etc. I will be on a blood thinner (plavix) probably the rest of My life not to mention the fact that I run a high risk of stoke or heart attack being type II diabetic, hypertension (high blood pressure). Now I Am wondering if this was not caused by agent orange. As far as I know the diabetes came around Oct 2008, followed by the blood pressure, pain in My legs, and etc. I just thought because I was turning 60 it was time for things to happen to Your "old Ass" Heart disease, and agent orange. Mmmmm!
makes Me wonder. That surgery cost My insurance $26000. With the ten days in the hospital, and all. The VA administered the original EKG, and I truly believe had They started Me on the proper treatment, and medication the blood clot would have been prevented. Hell! I even asked the Doctor why was it abnormal and He gives Me something about it is not uncommon for a person with high BP, or high chlosterol to have a abnormal EKG. Damn! didn't mean for this to be so long. Juist wanted to share, and Who knows what else may be wrong with us. Oh by the way, I requested an increase in the 30% rating for
PTSD, and the VA pretty much will keep it at that until I start sending all type of medical evidence, evalauations, and etc. I'm under too much stress to deal with that right now.
Glad to get things off My chest.
As My "Old Foxhole" buddy Danny would always say: Stay dry "Brother"

[Doc.2/47]

Type II Diabetes is (and has been for awhile) presumptive for AO. It can also cause PAD.
If you haven't already, you need to file a claim ASAP.
If you receive your PTSD treatment from VA they already have your records.

[Boats]

I think this is only the tip of the iceberg. My brother Larry died from complications of AO and since then I've been following up on the issues. I feel there are many more things that they (SAM) isn't telling us. AO was and is deadly and they knew it. Many other conditions will come out little by little. Even my blood test showed minor signs of AO exposure most likely due to the handling the weapons we loaded.

I've had no real issues other than bladder cancer about 8 years ago. But I've also been getting small lumps in different areas of my body. Had chemo for six weeks but they still come and go. I feel blessed in many ways as so many others had much higher doses and much higher exposures. I don't plan to live forever but I've found that the VA where I go is seeing many more AO issues lately. As we are getting older and our resistance to things aren't as good as they were when we were younger.

All and all its sad knowing how many have been affected by this AO and other military chemicals used both peacetime and during all the conflicts. These chemicals are slowly taking many out. But no matter - I would most likely do it again even knowing what I know now. I never said I was smart.

God be with us all and us with him.

[Gimpy]

Doc Hal is right on the money with his advice!

Sounds like you have a viable claim to include Type 2 Diabetes and the associated ischemic heart disease as well.

Get in touch with your local DAV chapter or contact the VA service representative at your local VA clinic or hospital to get the "claim" process started------ASAP!

And----thanks to Doc Hal for his expertise on this issue.

Also---------Boats my dear old friend, you are absolutely right, "God be with us all".

Stay healthy guys!

Gimp

[formergrunt70]

I talked to a VA rep yesterday, and He said this actually goes into effect in 2010.
Said something to the effect that having heart disease that has resulted in cardiac arrest, a stroke or heart atttack would make You eligeable. I'm sure if it is to benefit the Veteran then it will not come without strings attached. key words is: Ischemia heart
disease. We shall see.
Topp Gee

[formergrunt70]

Back to the subject of agent orange, tried to remember back when I first heard this term, and it's effects. Just can't seem to remember. What about You Guys? I think I picked up on the term PTSD in the 80's and maybe that was tied to agent orange.

[ussfa344]

Originally Posted by formergrunt70

Back to the subject of agent orange, tried to remember back when I first heard this term, and it's effects. Just can't seem to remember. What about You Guys? I think I picked up on the term PTSD in the 80's and maybe that was tied to agent orange.

Topp and everyone,

If my memory serves, the term Agent Orange started after the war. It came from the colored stripes painted on the drums. The anti-Viet Vet media just liked how sinister the term "Agent Orange" sounded. I don't even remember any with orange stripes, but all we ever had at our camp was what we could steal -- excuse me -- resource reallocate. We sprayed it with hand pumps around the perimeter of our camp. We did it to deny the bad guys cover. I seem to recall grey bands for sure, and I think here may have been pink, green or blue painted stripes. But I don't remember any steeenkin' orange stripes.

As for having detrimental effects on us, I can't say. Out of the nine guys on my team, one died of a heart attack, one died of lung cancer, one died of multiple myelomas, one beat his lung cancer but is rated 100% by VA and one beat bladder cancer. That leaves four of us in totally good health. That is damn near half of my detachment unaffected by the herbicides sprayed about in our AO, so how bad can it be?

"What! Me worry?" -- Alfred E. Newman...

Robert

[Arrow]

More than 30 years have passed since the United States released 20 million gallons of herbicides over the forests of South Vietnam to remove the dense foliage that hid enemy troops. Agent Orange, named after the orange stripe on the barrels of the herbicide, was the most common product of several used during the Vietnam War, with 12 million gallons sprayed between 1962 and 1970.

Despite speculation that exposure to Agent Orange has caused health problems among both Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese people, no major studies have addressed the question because there has been no accepted method for estimating veteran or Vietnam resident exposure that could be used in large-scale epidemiology studies.

Mailman researchers have created a geographic information system (GIS) that lets researchers calculate the relative exposure opportunities of the troops to military herbicides, including Agent Orange. In the process of compiling data for the GIS, the researchers discovered that at least twice as much dioxin—the toxic contaminant in the herbicides—was dropped during the war than was previously thought.

"Our research shows patterns of exposure that justify future studies of Agent Orange on the health of military and civilian populations," says the study's husband and wife team of lead investigators Dr. Jeanne Stellman, professor of health policy and management, and Dr. Steven Stellman, professor of epidemiology. The research was published in the March Environmental Health Perspectives and was the cover article of the April 17 issue of Nature.

Though Agent Orange exposure has been linked to several health conditions, including chronic lymphocytic leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and soft tissue sarcoma, these links have been established from studies of Canadian farmers, Swedish lumberjacks, and other groups exposed to the herbicide. The health effects on 2 million to 4 million veterans and Vietnamese civilians remain unknown. Despite the uncertainty, the Agent Orange Act of 1991 directs the Veterans Administration to compensate any Vietnam veteran who is disabled by a disease related to Agent Orange exposure.

The same act also instructed the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to determine if a health study of Agent Orange on Vietnam veterans was feasible. In 1994, the IOM decided more accurate exposure indices could be developed and used for a large epidemiological study. In 1998, the National Academy of Sciences awarded a contract to Dr. Jeanne Stellman to create a methodology based on military records that could estimate a veteran's relative exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides.
The Stellmans used modern mapping and database technologies to refine their previously published exposure opportunity model. The data were entered into a GIS database that divides South Vietnam into a grid of 176,000 squares, each around one square kilometer in area.

During the course of verifying the spray data, they discovered important inconsistencies in the files and surmised that important Air Force operational data had been overlooked. Over the next few years, the researchers dug through the National Archives for records documenting Operation Ranch Hand flights that were responsible for 97 percent to 98 percent of the spraying. They found that although less herbicide was sprayed between 1961 and 1965, the main herbicides used at the time, Agent Purple and Agent Pink, contained the highest levels of dioxin and no systematic records existed of the amounts and locations sprayed. They applied their mapping and modeling techniques to the original reports and maps and also reassessed the records used to calculate the amount of dioxin in each herbicide used in Vietnam.

They concluded that much of the Agent Orange dioxin contamination probably averaged 13 parts per million instead of the original estimate of 3 parts per million and that the early years of the war were probably responsible for a great deal of the dioxin dispersed. With the new average, and their discovery of an additional 7 million liters of sprayed herbicide, Drs. Stellman and Stellman say twice as much dioxin was dropped on Vietnam as previously estimated.

Using the GIS system and software they developed, researchers can calculate herbicide exposure in troops that were stationed in, or moved through, the squares. The model built by the Mailman team factors in how much herbicide was present, how close the troops were to exposed areas, and how much time the troops spent in exposed regions. Troops who were directly sprayed with the agents receive a higher exposure index than troops who moved into the sprayed areas weeks later. Researchers who use the database, however, are not required to employ this exposure index and can develop their own models.

The GIS databases show that parts of South Vietnam were heavily sprayed and exposure levels in some troops and 2 million to 5 million Vietnamese warrant more health studies. "Special Forces or commandos living in the heavily wooded Iron Triangle near Saigon were heavily exposed, the 101st Airborne was directly sprayed many times, and chemical corps and Ranch Hand Air Force personnel were also pretty heavily exposed," Dr. Jeanne Stellman says.

But other parts of Vietnam were left untouched. "That means in an epidemiological study, you would want to look at troops in the highly exposed regions, compared to troops where there was no spraying," she says.

Funding for those epidemiological studies may be forthcoming now that the IOM's Committee on the Assesment of Wartime Exposure to Herbicides recently commended the project and recommended that government agencies facilitate additional epidemiologic studies of veterans by non-governmental organizations and independent researchers.

"Thirty to 40 years ago, we sent young men to Vietnam to fight a war and we've been ignoring them ever since," Dr. Jeanne Stellman says. "Hopefully, because of our work, that will end”

The work was supported by the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Public Health Service.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12059

http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10819#toc

http://www.ehponline.org/members/2003/5755/5755.html

[Arrow]

ADM's Moon Callison interviews
Admiral Zumwalt
the former Chief of Naval Operatons,
for "Environmental Impact of War"

ADM. ZUMWALT: During the Vietnam war from 1968 - 1970 I was commander of U.S. Navel forces in Vietnam. For the following four years I was Chief of Naval operations and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

CALLISON: I had heard that you were, at some point, in charge of ordering the use of Agent Orange. Can you explain what the purpose of Agent Orange was?

ADM. ZUMWALT: The U.S. Army began using Agent Orange in about 1965 to defoliate those jungle areas where they were taking heavy casualties. In 1968, when I took command of the Brown Water Navy and moved our 1000 small craft out of the ocean and major rivers and into the narrow rivers and canals along the Cambodian boarder, we began to take casualties at the rate of 6% a month, which meant the average young man would have about a 70% probability of being killed or wounded during his years' tour.

With the Army informing that they had seen no harmful effects on humans except for the occasional skin problems, and with the Pentagon's assurance that there were no human affects, I then ordered the use along those narrow rivers and canals to defoliate. And we reduced the casualties to less than 1% a month.

CALLISON: What exactly happens when you used Agent Orange? How did if affect the foliage?

ADM. ZUMWALT: Agent Orange, rather quickly, kills the leaves and leaves just dead looking trees, and also kills the weeds and grasses in which the enemy was hiding.

CALLISON: You said fairly quickly, how long do you mean?

ADM. ZUMWALT: A matter of days.

CALLISON: When you were spraying along the rivers, you said canals?

ADM. ZUMWALT: The narrow rivers and canals that run several hundred miles along the Cambodian border.

CALLISON: Did that get in the water? Was there any affect on the marine life or was it specific to foliage?

ADM. ZUMWALT: Agent Orange was sprayed by Air Force Ranch Hand aircraft and therefore that spray of Agent Orange not only hit the foliage but also hit the water and populations living on those narrow rivers and canals and our boat people. At the time we of course did not know this would lead to rather permanent poisoning of the areas. Recent studies show that Agent Orange still remains in sprayed areas these many years after the use of it.

CALLISON: Did Agent Orange affect the agricultural land? Did it get into the crops? And if so, does it still show up in tests or has it dispersed and gone away?

ADM. ZUMWALT: The Navy did not use Agent Orange in agricultural lands. There may have been some little plots along those narrow rivers and canals that were affected. The Air Force did spray some agricultural areas that were under enemy control to deny them the use of crops that they had planted in their hideaways and outposts in the mountains particularly in Tucour. We now know from recent studies done by Halifax Associates, a Canadian firm, from tests that they made, there is evidence of dioxin contamination in growth in those areas that were sprayed and in animals.

CALLISON: When you returned to Vietnam and saw some of the areas that had been sprayed, what did it look like?

ADM. ZUMWALT: When I returned to Vietnam in September of 1994, at my request I was taken by the Vietnamese officials to see two areas that had been sprayed that were agricultural and they were barren of trees and agricultural products but were filled with a weed-like grass which the Vietnamese had dubbed "American Grass."

CALLISON: Have the jungles come back or do they look the same as the agricultural land?

ADM. ZUMWALT: It's my understanding that in some areas trees have returned. I don't have first hand knowledge of that. And in others it has not. I suppose it has to do with the extent of the dioxin contamination.

CALLISON: You have mentioned that you were very much involved in getting the U.S. to pay benefits to veterans exposed to Agent Orange. What made you get involved in this action?

ADM. ZUMWALT: In 1989 the then Secretary of Affairs, Edward Durinsky, having watched my battle with my son, our effort to help him recover from exposure to Agent Orange and cancers, asked me if I would serve as a pro bono special assistant and go through all of the documents so that I could give him a recommendation as to what he should do. The law giving him the responsibility to make a judgement, to compensate for health affects if the evidence was, proved it was likely as not that there were correlations between exposure and specific diseases.

I spent about nine months doing that and turned in a study that pointed that there were very badly flawed studies done by the chemical corporations which had been used for years as a so called reference study to denigrate very good scientific studies done by Swedish scientists. I recommended that those flawed studies be disregarded and that if one did that that there were, in my judgement, assisted by scientific advisors, 28 diseases that were as likely as not a result of exposure to Agent Orange.

We found and reported in that report that the Bureau of the Budget had ordered all the agencies of government in essence not to find a correlation between Agent Orange and health affects stating that it would be most unfortunate for two reasons:

A) the cost of supporting the veterans and

B) the court liability to which corporations would be exposed.

To his great credit, President Bush, faced with this report immediately ordered compensation to be provided for the first three diseases and supported the execution by the Congress of my recommendation that the flawed scientific committee advising the Secretary of Energy be disestablished and the responsibility was given to the National Academy of Science to report every two years the state of the science. This over time, has led to a total of 13 diseases to being compensated. And if I live we'll get to 28.

CALLISON: When you were doing your research, did you look into the health of the people in the areas that were sprayed or did you focus on the veterans?

ADM. ZUMWALT: It was focused exclusively on the veterans because we just didn't have adequate data, although I did refer to the fact that studies by Dr. Schecter did confirm that dioxin did remain in the Vietnam area. We've been doing quite a bit to get such work started and have some now after great reluctance on the part of the Vietnamese for many years.

CALLISON: Knowing what you do know, would you still use Agent Orange? Were the loss of casualties enough to warrant the use of Agent Orange?

ADM. ZUMWALT: It's my understanding that we now have defoliants that are not carcinogenic and obviously one would use those instead. Faced with what we had at the time, had I known of these long term affects, I would still have used it because we saved literally thousands at the long term cost of several hundreds being affected by it.

CALLISON: Going back to your return visit to Vietnam, did you see other evidence, besides defoliation, of the war in Vietnam?

ADM. ZUMWALT: I did not. However, as I said, the studies done by the Halifax Associates do show continuing evidence.

CALLISON: Shifting gears a here a little. What is your interest in the Gulf War?

ADM. ZUMWALT: When the Gulf War began I called the Secretary of Defense and recommended very strongly that positions each day be recorded and I was assured that would be done; the positions of our people. Regrettably it was not done.

I therefore, after the war, because of my knowledge of how the government had prostituted the process at the time of the Vietnam war, my responsibility to keep in touch with both White House officials and Pentagon officials, to make sure that we were going to do it right this time. I think because of that contact, the President decided to have me be a member of the Special Oversight Board which was created in part as a result of the recommendation of an earlier Presidential Advisory Committee and some concern of the nature of the work going on in the Pentagon.

CALLISON: What events and concerns have led up to these Public hearings that the oversight board is overseeing?

ADM. ZUMWALT: The creation of the Special Oversight Board was, in my judgement, the result of the President's desire after he received the recommendations of this earlier Presidential Advisory Committee, to make sure that no stone was left unturned in regard to ensuring that every aspect of what might have occurred was examined. I think it was a very worth thing to do. We will report directly to the President the out come of our conclusions and make our recommendations. And that work is on-going at the present time.

CALLISON: When you say no stone left unturned, what exactly does that mean?

ADM. ZUMWALT: The reason for saying that no stone should be left unturned is that there are many possibilities of what might have happened. All of them need to be researched and examination of the possibility of synergistic effects of a group of such exposures needs to be researched. And the job of the Special Oversight Board is to make sure that all of this work is on-going and in an objective fashion.
CALLISON: When you say exposures, are you referring to depleted uranium, oil fires, that type of stuff?

ADM. ZUMWALT: Exposures that are being examined range all the way from the oil fires, to the use of depleted uranium in our shells and projectiles, to the shots that our people were given and the sort of individual actions that were taken by our soldiers in using Deet and other kinds of insect repellents that were not specifically authorized.


http://www.cdi.org/ADM/1251/Zumwalt.html