Published: October 23, 2009 10:59 pm      

Agent Orange program expanded

Stored in 55-gallon drums across a war-torn country in Southeast Asia, the defoliant Agent Orange was a common sight in the former Republic of South Vietnam.

Three decades after the troops came home, Agent Orange remains a specter that haunts the men who served there and many Vietnamese civilians themselves.

Of late, the Department of Veterans Affairs has decided to expand the list — once again — of disorders for which veterans may seek monetary benefits from the government with the addition of three other disorders.

But in West Virginia, Veterans Affairs Secretary Keith Gwinn doesn’t foresee any major impact.

“They do that every so often,” Gwinn said of the national agency’s move to put more ailments on the list.

“About three years ago, they added lung cancer. And a couple of years before that, they added diabetes. What happens is the medical research goes out and does all this testing, and they say, ‘Well, OK, we’ve come to the conclusion this exposure to herbicide would cause this condition.’ Then they turn around and add that condition to the presumption list.”

One Internet source says nearly 21 million gallons of Agent Orange were distributed on the dense foliage of Vietnam, exposing some 4.8 million people in that nation, and figuring in 400,000 deaths. The source said half a million birth defects resulted from the defoliant.

One new disorder presumably caused by exposure is hairy cell leukemia, a rare cancer of the blood, affecting B cells, a type of white blood cell. A second one is Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. The third one is ischemic heart disease, characterized by reduced blood supply to the heart muscle.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said his decision to put those three on the list of service-connected health problems associated with Agent Orange was based on an independent study by the Institute of Medicine showing a link to them with exposure to the defoliant.

Agent Orange was a name applied to a blend of herbicides the United States military scattered above tree tops from 1962 to 1971 as a means of denuding them of leaves that were providing a natural cover to the enemy.

The name was derived from the orange identifying stripe around barrels of the defoliant and was part of the so-called “Rainbow Herbicides” that were sprayed, some of which didn’t contain dioxins.

Vietnam veterans with a “presumed illness” needn’t prove the association with the defoliant, and the “presumption” serves to accelerate the application process for benefits.

Shinseki’s recent decision boosts to 15 the number of presumed illnesses recognized by the VA.

“We must do better reviews of illnesses that may be connected to service, and we will,” the secretary said.

“Veterans who endure health problems deserve timely decisions based on solid evidence.”

Besides the newest additions to the list, the VA also recognizes these under the “presumption” rule: acute and subacute transient peripheral neuropathy; AL amyloidosis; chloracne; chronic lymphocytic leukemia; diabetes mellitus (Type 2); Hodgkin’s disease; non-Hodgkin’s disease; porphyria cutanea tarda; prostate cancer; respiratory cancer and soft tissue sarcoma (other than osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, Kaposi’s sacroma or mesothelioma).

For additional information, veterans may visit www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange.

“We’ve had more cases of claims for diabetes and lung cancers than we’ve had for those (newest ailments added) so far,” Gwinn said.

“Lung cancer was a big one. And quite a few Vietnam veterans have diabetes now. They couldn’t figure it out. It was Type 2. We’ve more cases for that.”

While some might be inclined to pass this off as merely reflecting American society as a whole, Gwinn said the diabetes associated with Vietnam veterans is actually occurring at a higher rate than the nation.

“It came out to a larger number that had diabetes than the ordinary population,” the veterans director said.

There are an estimated 202,0000 veterans in West Virginia, counting the active service members and the National Guard, and about 32.5 percent of them served in the Vietnam War, roughly 60,000 from this state.

“We don’t have an exact number,” Gwinn said. “We’re waiting on the census to come out to give us an exact number. We’ve had quite a few to pass away already.”

Vietnam-era troops make up the largest segment of surviving veterans, given the rapidly declining veterans of their fathers’ generation — World War II and Korea.

Given the more frequent problems of diabetes and lung cancer, Gwinn sees little impact among Vietnam veterans in West Virginia with the recent expansion of the “presumed condition” list.

“This won’t be that many claims, not that we see coming in,” he added.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com