Senator Urges Better Compensation for Agent Orange VN Vets


Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

Saturday, April 29 12:44 AM SGT 

Senator urges more compensation for Vietnam vets exposed to Agent Orange

WASHINGTON, April 28 (AFP) - An influential US senator Friday urged the
government to increase compensation for Vietnam veterans who may have been
exposed to chemicals including Agent Orange during the conflict that ended
25 years ago.

"It's high time we give Vietnam veterans the assurance that their health
problems related to their time in Vietnam will be covered," said Republican
Senator Jim Jeffords at a news conference on Capitol Hill.

Twenty-five years after the end of the war, "we are seeing new patterns of
disease develop," he added, calling on the government to "join us in finding
a more equitable way to ensure that Vietnam veterans finally receive the
care they have long deserved."

The Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) filed two petitions this week with
Army Secretary Togo West calling for "regulations to recognize, and to
provide disability compensation for, a demonstrated phenomenon unique to
veterans who served in Vietnam," said VVA executive, Rick Weidman.

The US military sprayed 70 million liters (19 million gallons) of Agent
Orange over Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 as part of Operation Ranch Hand.

The defoliant has been linked to skin and liver diseases, personality
disorders, cancers and birth defects.

But nearly 30 years after the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam was halted, the
dimensions of the problem are still largely unknown and the links between
the chemical and various ailments remain largely unproven.

"We need to break the cycle where the US Department of Veterans Affairs
seeks to prove causality," added Rick Weidman, saying that "in-country
veterans were exposed to land, air and water that teemed with toxic
chemicals," which "manifest themselves many years or even decades after
incurrence or onset."

A nurse who served in Vietnam and suffers from inflammatory disease stated
that the US Department of Veterans Affairs has "repeatedly turned down"
compensation requests, on the basis that her medical evidence "was as likely
as not to have been caused by chemical exposure."

According to Yale University public health expert Linda Schwartz, herself a
Vietnam Veteran, 99,000 veterans who served in Vietnam have made medical
claims related to their service, but only slight more than 7,000, or eight
percent, have been awarded compensation.
 
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