Orange crush

Slow down the Agent Orange gravy train

No doubt the author is a member of the TEA PARTY bunch and undoubtedly one of those who believe Obama is a Muslim … a real bright spark, this one.

Dr. Wayne Dwernychuk

Doesn't matter! Whoever the author is, in whatever one-horse newspaper it appeared; the gauntlet has been thrown down. Some one (or more) of the sorry ass politicians in DC see this, and they'll trumpet it like the tablets from the Mount. I refuse to let anyone use the excuse that we veterans cost the taxpayer too much. ALL GAVE SOME, SOME GAVE ALL.

Are the few crumbs this government throws our way to be sacrificed so that the AIGs, brokerage houses, automotive makers and big banks can get away with screwing the American taxpayer, while veterans are told they have to sacrifice once again. Not this Marine - not this time!!

Date published: 8/29/2010

NO ONE DOES door-to-door collecting for child molesters. The biggest sucker would not lose a penny to a scam touting kitten torture. To pry the marks from their money it is shrewd to invoke the worthiest objects of benevolence: "the children," "our senior citizens," and, in the case of tens of billions of dollars in Agent Orange boodle about to be hauled as if by boxcar from the U.S. Treasury, "America's veterans."

To be sure, American military members who suffer wounds and illnesses during, or due to, their service deserve the nation's best ministrations. And Vietnam veterans pose a unique compensatory challenge to a decent nation because of the indecency many encountered: Spit, sneers, and (worst of all) stony indifference are poor substitutes for the cheers and confetti that greeted returning World War II soldiers, or the spontaneous thank-yous and orchestrated welcomes accorded U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But no upright Vietnam vet expects to profit from another injustice--the governmental "miracle" of turning Agent Orange into bottomless casks of milk and honey for aging survivors of the Indochina war.

Agent Orange, for those unfamiliar, was a defoliant sprayed copiously on parts of the lush landscape of Vietnam to deprive the enemy of cover. Containing dioxin and other exotic compounds, "Orange" became linked to several human ills, starting with a temporarily disfiguring skin condition called chloracne. Its most famous victim is ex-Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, poisoned (non-fatally) by a dose of dioxin 6,000 times the amount normally found in the human body.

But then the list of Agent Orange-related illnesses began to grow, much like the jungles it once dampened.

At present, the Veterans Administration awards Orange-related disability payments to Vietnam veterans--most now 60 or older--with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, some connective-tissue cancers, peripheral neuropathy (pain and weakness in the extremities), and several other maladies. These include two hallmark diseases of aging: prostate cancer and Type 2 diabetes. "By 2009," notes Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., "more than 263,000 Vietnam veterans were receiving disability compensation related to Type 2 diabetes--nearly 10 percent of everyone who went to Vietnam."

JUST ONE TOUCH
Who among Vietnam veterans is eligible for such benefits? Any such vet whose boot touched the ground of South Vietnam. That includes airmen based in Thailand or Guam who might have gotten 24-hour orders to the Republic, or a sailor who motored once into the docks at Danang to pick up supplies. (Not that other Air Force and Navy veterans who served "in theater" need feel neglected: "Blue Water" and "Blue Skies" bills in Congress would extend Agent Orange benefits to them, too. Perhaps Vietnam-era astronauts will be considered next.)

Washington's assumption is that Agent Orange in its pathological reach is something like anthrax, strontium 90, and the Ebola virus all rolled into one. However, a longitudinal study of the C-123 air crews (the "Ranch Handers") who sprayed, breathed, and were often soaked in the defoliant found no epidemiological differences, save for slightly more diabetes, between them and Air Force veterans of Vietnam who worked far from where Orange fell. In fact, Ranch Hander Association President Jack Spey tells us, "We have a higher life expectancy than the average white-male group."

Perhaps such paradoxes gave Congress migraines. In 1991, it washed its hands of deciding which diseases rate Orange payment, delegating the job to the National Academy of Sciences--with some troubling instructions. Not only was the academy to identify for VA payment any disease showing a "positive association" with Agent Orange exposure, but Vietnam veterans were to get the nod "if the credible evidence for the association is equal to or outweighs the credible evidence against."

What does this language permit? B.G. Burkett, who has exposed hundreds of phony Vietnam veterans and malingerers, notes that Orange researchers can tap government grants until they get "suggestive" results sufficient to meet the malleable NAS standard. "Not one of these scientific reports conclusively states that Agent Orange causes disease X, Y, or Z," says Mr. Burkett.

The VA is poised to approve Orange benefits for three more diseases--B-cell leukemia, Parkinson's disease, and coronary heart disease, one of the most common age-related illnesses, now affecting about 18 million Americans. The VA puts payments for these ills at $42 billion over a decade. Given that Vietnam veterans are mainly past 60, however, the heart-disease-driven tab could hit $150 billion over 10 years.

Mr. Webb has set a Sept. 23 Veterans Affairs Committee hearing to probe the latest batch of NAS evidence. Let Congress be diligent. Vietnam veterans, who served faithfully in a good cause, deserve the nation's honor; they will deserve it even more if they refuse to be used to speed the nation's ruin.


Read original ==>> Fredericksburg.com - Orange crush - page 2 FLS http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2010/082010/08292010/571765/inde...

Read original ==>> Fredericksburg.com - Orange crush - page 1 FLS http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2010/082010/08292010/571765/inde...