Poisoning Vietnam

Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam By Prof. Marjorie Cohn

Some Excerpts:

“The U.S. government and the chemical companies also knew that the Bionetics Study, commissioned by the government in 1963, showed that even low levels of Dioxin produced significant deformities in unborn offspring of laboratory animals. But they suppressed that study and continued to spray Vietnam with Agent Orange. It wasn’t until the study was leaked in 1969 that the spraying of Agent Orange was discontinued.”

“Mai Giang Vu, a member of the Army of South Vietnam, carried barrels of the chemicals on his back. His two sons could  not walk or function normally, their limbs gradually “curled up” and they could only crawl. They died at the ages of 23 and 25.”

“To Nga Tran is a French Vietnamese who worked as a journalist during the spraying. Her daughter weighed 6.6 pounds at the age of three months. Her skin began shredding and she could not bear to have skin contact or simple demonstrations of love. She died at 17 months, weighing 6.6 pounds. Ms. To described a woman who gave birth to a “ball” with no human form. Many children are born without brains; others make inhuman sounds.”

“Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, from Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City ( Saigon ), sees many children born without arms and/or legs, without heads or faces, and without a brain chamber. According to the World Health Organization, only 1 – 4 parts per trillion (PPT) of Dioxin in breast milk can cause severe deformities in fetuses and even death. But up to 1450 PPT are found in maternal milk in Vietnam.  Dr. Jeanne Stellman, who wrote the seminal article about Agent Orange in the magazine Nature, testified that “this is the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world (except for natural disasters).”

Thoughts:  Nationalism is a form of racism, and war profiteers should pay for this ecological disaster.  Of course, few of the men having made the decisions related to the dropping of Agent Orange will still be working for these organizations, and who realistically will spend much thought on holding them accountable 40 years later?