U.S. Gets More Involved in Programs for Vietnam’s AO Victims: Washington Post

The governments of Vietnam and the U.S. have put Agent Orange in their agendas and the U.S. is gradually increasing funding to victims of Agent Orange/dioxin in Vietnam, the newswire Washington Post has reported. The U.S. Congress allocated $7 million this year to health and disability programs in Vietnam, much of it targeting presumed AO victims. “We are not aware of any widely accepted scientific study that conclusively establishes a connection between dioxin and these types of physical or psychological disabilities,” said Tim Rieser, a foreign policy aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who has led the effort to appropriate money for Agent Orange. But “the United States is essentially acknowledging by our actions that there is likely a causal effect, and Sen. Leahy believes we have a responsibility to help address it.” In places such as Cam Lo town of the central province of Quang Tri, a heavily sprayed area where birth defects surged after the war, nongovernmental organizations and foreign governments have stepped in to ease the burden on AO families, who also get small payments from the Vietnamese government. Many activists contend the U.S. is shirking true responsibility. “The U.S. government is never going to step up on Agent Orange,” said Suel Jones of Veterans for Peace. Jones fought in Vietnam as a Marine, then returned to work with war victims. “It opens them up to a moral responsibility. Say what we want to say, but we sprayed poison on this damned country.” Through direct contact or from eating food raised or grown in contaminated areas, thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese were exposed to dioxin, a highly toxic chemical in AO. There is no treatment. A 1991 law provides benefits to service members who came in contact with AO and now suffer from cancer or other ailments. Vietnamese do not get the same compensation. Vietnamese victims sued the chemical companies that manufactured the herbicides, but the case was dismissed in U.S. courts. Scientific proof of physical impairments linked to the American spraying would be difficult and expensive to come by in a developing nation where other environmental factors could contribute to dioxin poisoning. Vietnamese advocacy groups estimate that four million people suffer from health problems related to AO. While most dioxin has dissipated over the years, a Canadian research firm identified three major hot spots where Agent Orange was stored and contamination lingers. Another two dozen potential hot spots dot the country. The Danang Air Base is the first to be cleaned up, under a joint venture launched in 2012 by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Vietnamese government. “A nuclear bomb that is dropped — it kills a person. They die. It’s finished.”. “But this is lasting over three or four generations,” said Nguyen Thi Hien, who runs a foreign-funded center supporting AO victims in Cam Lo town. (Washingtonpost.com, www.omaha.com June 6)