4 decades after war ended, Agent Orange still ravaging Vietnamese

[unhappycamper]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/22/197318/4-decades-after-war-ended-agent.html



Le Thi Thu, 42, and her daughter, Nguyen Thi Ly, 11, live in a village south of Da Nang, Vietnam. They are second and third generation victims of dioxin exposure, the result of the U.S. military's use of Agent Orange and other herbicides during the Vietnam War more than 40 years ago.


4 decades after war ended, Agent Orange still ravaging Vietnamese
By Drew Brown | McClatchy Foreign Staff
Posted on Monday, July 22, 2013

~snip~

But Ly is also very different from other children. Her head is severely misshapen. Her eyes are unnaturally far apart and permanently askew. She’s been hospitalized with numerous ailments since her birth.

Her mother, 43-year-old Le Thi Thu, has similar deformities and health disorders. Neither of them has ever set foot on a battlefield, but they’re both casualties of war.

Le and her daughter are second- and third-generation victims of dioxin exposure, the result of the U.S. military’s use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides over parts of southern Vietnam and along the borders of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The herbicides were contaminated with dioxin, a deadly compound that remains toxic for decades and causes birth defects, cancer and other illnesses.

To this day, dioxin continues to poison the land and the people. The United States has never accepted responsibility for these victims – it denies that Agent Orange is responsible for diseases among Vietnamese that are accepted as Agent Orange-caused among American veterans – and it’s unclear when this chain of misery will end.



unhappycamper comment: The 21st Century equivalent of AO? Depleted Uranium.

[Drunken Irishman]

1. My father died of complications from Agent Orange.

I worry I may suffer complications from it one day too.

[JustAnotherGen]

2. Another one

But they attributed it more to Agents White and Blue than Orange with my dad. . . what the marines were throwing down in Central/South America for the Special Force (my dad) to make their way through.

You must be aware then . . . what some of the theories are on it being in people's 'DNA' and then it was passed through to us? It's in this little girls DNA as much as it was our fathers'.

Shame on us.

[unhappycamper]

3. A good friend of mine was a grunt in Nam.

In addition to Agent Orange, he has also seen Agents White, Blue and Purple in use there.

[JustAnotherGen]

4. Didn't even have to come into

Physical content. The father of a good friend was a Pilot transporting it back and forth.

Same death my dad had in August 2011 in January 2012 - Various pneumonia, lung cancer - two weeks later - stage four liver and intestinal cancer.

This shit eats you from the inside out once the wire trips and the bomb gets set soff. It's so quick.

But to think a baby - and that little girl is a baby to me - is paying for the sins of the grandfathers? Shame on us all. That poor little kid. Because I know she is going to have her intestines come out of her in the last 48 hours of her life. That poor little kid.

And for your friend and what you give to our vets here unhappy - and