Study Shows Agent Orange Still Taints Aging C-123s 166
__roo writes "Herbicides used in Vietnam in the 1970s still pose a threat to servicemen, according to a study published Friday. The U.S. Air Force and Department of Veteran Affairs denied benefits to sick veterans, taking the position that any dioxin or other components of Agent Orange contaminating its fleet of C-123 cargo planes would have been 'dried residues' and unlikely to pose meaningful exposure risks. According to the lead researcher, 'The VA, whether out of ignorance or malice, has denied the entire existence of this entire branch of science. They have this preposterous idea that somehow there is this other kind of state of matter — a dried residue that is completely inert.' To show that such exposures happened, her research team had to be 'very clever.'"
criminals!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Personally, I'm kind of curious as to where a functioning C-123 could still be found these days... I'm former Air Force, worked on active flightlines in numerous places globally, and the only C-123s I've seen were either in museums or were operated by the South Koreans (and the latter was way over 20 years ago).
Not sure where the big alarm is, now that I think about it. I mean, unless some curator leaves one of his exhibits open for public walkthrough, and some kid literally licks the cargo compartment wall
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Yep, they were retired in 1980.
However this should shed some more light on the matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
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Not to mention that this is a fine example of the corruption of science by agenda that permeates our society making even the most useful findings suspect, untrusted and falling near worthless.
See, you dont even need a tinfoil hat to see Science is just as badly corrupt as Politics.
This IS the dark ages.
Enough witht the hyperbole (Score:4, Insightful)
Not saying that dried residues aren't dangerous, but the researcher's quote in the summary comes off as extremely disingenuous.
Of course being exposed to dried residues will result in much lower levels of exposure than being REPEATEDLY DOUSED with liquid herbicide as were field infantry in the Vietnam war.
Toxicology is all about maximum safe dosages - scary sounding toxins like arsenic, radon, dioxin, mercury, and even radionucleotides are pervasive in our environment. The question is whether the level of exposure is biologically significant or not. While the VA's contention that the levels of exposure to Agent Orange residues is safe is a valid matter for debate, they nowhere claim that it has magically transformed into some heretofore unknown state of matter.
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It's "radionuclides". You've been watching too much crap Sci-Fi.
Malice? I think not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:5, Interesting)
My father was a service connected disabled (both physical and mental) WW2 Vet and I would strongly disagree with this assessment. I took care of him for many years and struggled with the VA - although they did increase his pension towards the end.
The VA psych doctors were compassionless, unprofessional and bottom of the class grade doctors and I would often have to research the drugs they were prescribing and inform them of the side-effects and suitability to his condition. They eventually killed my father by over prescribing drugs like Haldol and other harsh psychotropics.
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:5, Interesting)
All I can say is, what I reported is not just my own personal experience, but that of every vet I know who uses the VA. I'm sorry that you ran across a set of bad apples, and that they did your father's condition so much damage. And, I'll agree that the psych departments are probably the worst; I needed help from them at one point and I had to fight with the person doing the original write-up to get her to describe my complaints as I told them to her, instead of re-writing them to fit her own pre-conceived ideas. (She simply couldn't understand that I could be unemployed, broke and depressed without being violent and/or suicidal.)
I understand we each have our experiences. Yes the psych departments are the worst.... I didn't really have a problem with the physical medical care side of things. In fact I would agree that the teams assigned to the general medical side generally do a good job.
People need to understand that wars produce causalities and those causalities need to be taken care... sometimes for the rest of their lives. A war is never over until the last person involved dies.
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Psychologists everywhere are the worst. It's not the VA that's the problem, it's the profession. It needs to be purged with fire and sword.
But perhaps they could never even understand that's figurative language, because none of them took a class in literature.
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite the flames I'll get for saying it and the vehement disagreement proponents will spew, that's because psychology is not a science. Not even a little bit. The human mind is far too complex a thing for the current state of our understanding to treat scientifically. Psychologists aren't much better than snake oil salesmen.
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Despite the flames I'll get for saying it and the vehement disagreement proponents will spew, that's because psychology is not a science. Not even a little bit. The human mind is far too complex a thing for the current state of our understanding to treat scientifically. Psychologists aren't much better than snake oil salesmen.
Simple question is, what scientific test do they perform to diagnose a 'chemical imbalance' before prescribing pills to attempt to 'correct the imbalance'? If it's a chemical imbalance, then there *must* be a test to find it right? Blood workup? MRI/CT scan (with some element that crosses the blood/brain barrier to see maybe)?
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They dump a bag of chicken bones out and get a reading from the way they land. The bones never lie!
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In fairness social psychology at least seems to be becoming a real science - it's apparently not nearly so difficult to model the behavior of groups of people as individuals. Just our luck that the only branch of psychology to be an actual science is the one that's really good for manipulating us (as a group) into buying shit we wouldn't otherwise want, and predicting just how far they can push a population before something snaps. Coincidence?
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Sociology / Social Psychology is largely statistics though, they
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I find it truly amazing (in a bad way). They claim to know the mechanism for depression and even psychosis yet they just use trial and error with the drugs they prescribe. They have no idea why one 'works' and another doesn't nor why the one that works stops working and another that didn't work starts working. It's about as scientific as slapping the side of the TV until the picture stops rolling.
The so-called double-blind tests of psychiatric drugs are a farce since sugar pills have no side effect but the
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Some psychiatric drugs have noticeable side effects. Not all do. Individual reactions differ, also.
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Practically all do. Not all of those effects are terribly noxious, but they exist.
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Psychologists everywhere are the worst. It's not the VA that's the problem, it's the profession.
Except he wasn't talking about psychologists. He was talking about psychiatrists. Not at all the same thing.
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Pretty much the same thing. Only real difference is one gets paid more and can prescribe drugs.
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Psychologists seem to do a lot less damage and there are at least a few things psychology seems to actually effectively treat. Psychiatry is voodoo with the ability to prescribe really whacky drugs indiscriminately.
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I think the mental side is often more difficult than the physical side when it comes to the effects of war on an individual service member. We still don't have a really good understanding of what goes on inside the head due to the events and demands of war, although a much better picture is emerging with modern medicine, research, and the veterans of the current conflicts. When you add to that the difficulties with finding effective treatments and drugs without bad side effects, some veterans have had a v
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In wars past the US hasn't always done well in treating psychological casualties. And the US military's personnel system used in some wars didn't provide the structure and practices that other armies have had that helped provide resilience in soldiers.
This is a bit of an understatement. Other than to create terms like 'shell shock' and 'combat fatigue', long term psychological problems developed by people (non soldiers as well) in combat areas were actively ignored and swept under the table. The reasons are actually pretty clear - PTSD (the current term of art) is pervasive among combat veterans and very, very dificult to treat. Best if it doesn't happen.
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As a point, it's not just US VA in the US but Canada, and Europe as well with piss poor psych departments. I've always wondered if the field draws up a special kind of asshole, especially from everything I've seen or heard second hand from friends who've been at their mercies.
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:4, Interesting)
All I can say is, what I reported is not just my own personal experience, but that of every vet I know who uses the VA.
Did you all use the same VA hospital?
I know that the quality of the Principal heavily dictates the quality of the school. Maybe the same goes for hospital administrators.
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Not all VA facilities are hospitals. Yes, some of us used the same VA hospital, but others get their care at a clinic that's closer to where they live. Depending on what I need, I use both, giving an overlap and a broader perspective. Although they're both in the Los Angeles area, neither one of them has any authority over the other. What happens in other parts of the country I don't know, but I have no reason to think that my experiences aren't typical.
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(She simply couldn't understand that I could be unemployed, broke and depressed without being violent and/or suicidal.)
As part of the general descent into fascism, there is a movement within the US to prevent veterans from privately owning guns by declaring them mentally unfit. She couldn't understand that because she was directed not to. Lots of people she reports to have told her that you're potentially very dangerous, and a few high-profile shootings were likely blown out of proportion in order to reinforce this point. The lack of hard science in the field makes psychiatry particularly easy to influence.
The truth i
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I gave the VA the benefit of the doubt and tried them out. yes the people there seem to care and I doubt there is any malice. However, I refuse to use them for anything beyond my benefits physical. I'll have to be unconscious and near death before I'll go back to them. The level of care is slightly above active duty health care... which is to say, still not very good. you're just another number in their system waiting to be processed. Just trying to schedule a visit for something simple was painful, as the
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My father was a service connected disabled (both physical and mental) WW2 Vet and I would strongly disagree with this assessment. I took care of him for many years and struggled with the VA - although they did increase his pension towards the end.
The VA psych doctors were compassionless, unprofessional and bottom of the class grade doctors and I would often have to research the drugs they were prescribing and inform them of the side-effects and suitability to his condition. They eventually killed my father by over prescribing drugs like Haldol and other harsh psychotropics.
And yet, Slashdot in general lauds the takeover of medicine by government.
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And that of course is why you received a "-1 flamebait" unjustly. Some moderators believe, mistakenly, that their job is to punish nonconformity in thinking.
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And that of course is why you received a "-1 flamebait" unjustly. Some moderators believe, mistakenly, that their job is to punish nonconformity in thinking.
Guess I made the mistake of saying something true :)
Anyway, I must have been wrong. I'm sure their government doctors would be skilled, compassionate, etc., nothing like the government doctors we already have and can see. Er, just because.
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess I made the mistake of saying something true :)
No, you made the mistake of thinking a doctor paid by the government is the same thing as a doctor employed by the government. Those of us who live in civilized societies know this to be false, under most (if not all) UHC schemes the government takes the role of medical insurer, not the role of care giver. The doctors and nurses are the same people under both regimes.
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under most (if not all) UHC schemes the government takes the role of medical insurer, not the role of care giver.
That really depends on the form of government. In some it does, in many it hasn't, historically. You could inquire with the former residents of what was the Soviet bloc, for example.
Those of us who live in civilized societies ...
Which includes the US. The US has a different system with different trade-offs in terms of pricing, wait times, drug and technology availability, and so on. Although there are challenges for the US system, it isn't clear that either the UK's NHS or Canada's current systems are sustainable in their present form either. Austr
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You pay twice as much for a lower overall quality of care. That is a BAD tradeoff
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Not really, no. Our system costs twice as much for less effective medicine.
I agree that Obamacare (AKA Romneycare) isn't really the answer but the GOP wouldn't allow an actual comprehensive system to get through the House.
Here's a citation from the peer-reviewed literature that supports your claim.
It's important to realize that when we say that Canada and other health care systems cost half as much as ours with about the same outcomes, that's not an ideological slogan like the Republicans use, but we have science-based facts to back it up.
http://www.openmedicine.ca/art... [openmedicine.ca]
Open Medicine, Vol 1, No 1 (2007)
Vol 1, No 1 (2007) > Guyatt
A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States
Metho
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Good links, thank you.
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I'm not one of these, I don't know any of these, but I can't think of any reason why it is moral to force these people (under threat of legitimate violence) to pay other people's personal expenses.
How are they any more personal than expenses incurred when the police investigates a crime that you've been the victim of? Or, perhaps a better example, when the fire department helps put out a fire, that if left to itself would lead to much greater damage?
Answer: That's how society, especially risk management through insurance, works. Put another way. Why should these ingrate people's little pet peeves be allowed to cost society twice as much for a worse outcome? What gives them the right to make other's p
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with government is sometimes the business types get in charge. It's happening in my country, veteran affairs was cut back to close to nothing, no more pensions as they're too expensive. Most all offices closed down because too expensive. Large amount of Afghanistan vets committing suicide, just a cost of business and they should have been tougher. Yet the government has lots of money for PR purposes with record amounts spent on advertising how fiscally responsible they are and what a great job they're doing.
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The problem with your theory is that the problem he described applies equally to non-VA psychiatry.
Note the many comments lauding the other practices within the VA system.
Based on the horror stories I have seen and heard outside of the VA, I would be prepared to give it a try if I could.
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"And yet, Slashdot in general lauds the takeover of medicine by government."
Yes, because what he describes has nothing to do with private/public so what exactly is your point?
As a counter point, in the UK we have had major scandals with private sector care homes for the elderly where people have been abused physically and mentally and generally treated like shit left to sit in their own urine and faeces for days.
Or were you under some deluded impression that private sector is some magical saviour, with a wa
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Or were you under some deluded impression that private sector is some magical saviour, with a ward against all things that could possibly be bad or go wrong?
You have accurately summarized the American right-wing faith in a nutshell.
The amount of mental gymnastics you must have had to perform to reach that conclusion based on the comment you referred to is astonishing and takes a special kind of stupid to achieve.
I'm glad you appreciate the hard work, effort and (most of all) money that the Koch brothers have put in to advancing the cause of stupidity for the 21st century. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02... [nytimes.com]
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And yet, Slashdot in general lauds the takeover of medicine by government.
Medicine was taken over by government decades ago. At this point I'd settle for them doing a better job at it and if that means admitting that the government is in control then so be it.
Personally, though I believe in the power of the purse... let people control the spending of their own healthcare dollars directly and you will get people making better decisions on cost and quality. And if people don't want to make their own decisions then lets pay for healthcare with an equitable income tax instead of ta
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That sounds like a description of psychiatry in general, not just a VA thing.
Psych's in general (Score:2)
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From the stories I've heard from people that have dealt with psychologists (particularly assigned ones), is that they tend to be fairly dismissive an uncaring in general. Your experience may have been more because it was a psychologist than them being with VA.
Just to provide a little counterargument, can you imagine what it would be like for doctors, especially psychologists and psychiatrists, if they did start caring that much about every patient? After a couple years, they would be the ones needing the full-time care.
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If the VA has been denying that dioxins in C-123s is a hazard, there are many possible reasons, but malice is the least likely of all. As in everything else, ignorance is always a much more probable reason.
If the person making the statement was simply ignorant of the facts he could look them up before acting. Wilful irresponsibility counts as malice in my books.
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Especially if the fight is over some relatively large epidemiological class ('Post-Vietnam C-123 crews') potentially being blanket-added or default-denied, that would be where the cost-reduction guys come slithering out from under their rocks.
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I object the serpentine imagery you're attaching to amoral cost-reduction professionals.
It's deeply insulting to snakes.
Re:Malice? I think not. (Score:4, Interesting)
The VA folks you have encountered are all rank-and-file types and none of them top brass, correct? If so then your analogy is misleading, since the people we are discussing here are in fact the decision-makers and the adverse consequences of their decisions. While the rank and file folks may be very humane people, experience has (or should have) taught us that the majority of top brass in every human hierarchy are sociopaths, not humane people. Your anecdote is not representative of those people, and they are the subject here.
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I won't say that I've ever encountered any of the top brass, but I have had a number of interactions with managers of various levels. In one case, a manager apologized to me for slow service, explaining that although he was authorized to have twelve clerks, upper management had only given him five, and he'd not been able to pry the other seven loose from whatever else they were doing. And once, I was compl
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Re: Malice? I think not. (Score:1)
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1. Chemicals degrade over time oxygen is great at destroying most compounds.
2. The C-123s have been out of US military service since the early 1980s.The only C-123s left in US military service are in museums.
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Do you know anything about how Agent Orange specifically degrades?
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Somewhere else in this thread I mentioned that I had cataract surgery done by the VA. There's a very small chance that I developed cataracts because I worked on CW radar in the Navy, but if so, there's no way of proving it. I never set foot ashore i
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Yep, my father used the VA medical system for pretty much everything major that happened to him after 65 or so due to very little income during his retirement years. They not only took care of his service related injuries (a land mind went off about 3 feet away from him, killing his buddy and throwing shrapnel into his leg and feet, destroying some of his toe joints) but they also performed cataract surgery, took care of several bits of cancer he had in his lungs, bladder and a couple other places, and the
Linked articles (Score:1)
Serving in the Military (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet *another* reason not to serve in the military.
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Yet *another* reason not to serve in the military.
Um, your other choice is to do whatever your invaders happen to want you to do, which will likely also be dangerous and unpleasant. Possibly even more so ...
Do you really think that the rest of the world would just leave your country alone, if it didn't have a military?
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There's always the idea the U.S. Founding Fathers had: citizens should join a defensive militia, but not a standing army.
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If the US had a military that was only defensive, then, yes, the rest of the world would gladly leave them alone.
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Clearly you don't understand the defensive doctrine known as preemptive retaliation.
Damn. That was supposed to be snarky, but then I remembered it's a real thing well-supported by game theory.
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Most of those states are either isolated islands or European city-states. Both are under the effective protection of countries with militaries - either major sea powers like the US, or large European states like Italy.
The only states not in those categories are Costa Rica, Panama, and Haiti. Each of these countries is relatively isolated (no more than one border with a country that has a military), without oil or other resources to fight over, and to some extent under the shadow of the US military.
So this i
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Still? (Score:1)
Err, those planes have been out of the inventory for thirty years or more, as the abstract confirms. All or damn close to all have been turned back into aluminum ingots - a process that should eliminate dioxin contamination from the metal. You might have the occasional light exposure from moving an old aircraft about, and anyone still using these on the civilian market (there used to be a few) should pay attention to this, but staying 'still contaminating' is a bit alarmist.
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Pretty sure the USAF knew (Score:1)
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Agent Orange damage can be permanent, and debilitating (at least, as it was used in Vietnam). If some of those planes lasted until 2010, and if the residue in question is at all dangerous, then it's not outrageous to imagine ongoing diagnosis.
In fact, military preparation for decommissioning / dismantling might dramatically increase the risk of airborne particulates containing the substance. (For instance: asbestos is generally quite safe until you stir it up doing remodeling, etc.) It's still a dose tha
Is Classic the new Beta? (Score:2)
The last couple of days I've been seeing layout bugs (like right now one of the sidebar boxes is blocking the "Load More Comments" button) and links to stories getting disabled a few seconds after loading the front page.
Has Dice decided to make classic the new beta or something?
For the want of editors (Score:5, Informative)
Original article title:
Agent Orange Posed A Health Threat To Servicemen Long After Vietnam
Slashdot headline:
Herbicides used in Vietnam in the 1970s still pose a threat to servicemen
These planes were repurposed for other duties during the 70's. They went out of service in 1982. They don't "still" pose a threat because nobody is using them. The issue is for the servicemen who worked on them 40 years ago.
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Maybe I have a claim (Score:2)
All but three.... (Score:3)
Sigh....In the article: "All but three of the aircraft were smelted down in 2009"
So smelt down the last three.
Dioxin is a real problem but the 34 aircraft involved and their crew is a very small
population. There are vastly more dioxin contaminated transformers and workers
scattered far and wide.
Someone is attempting to make a buck selling instrumentation in most likelihood.
Blowback (Score:2)
Wars hurt everyone who participates. I don't see why Agent Orange is any more or less worthy of our outrage and horror than the land mines, heroin addiction, PTSD and metal projectiles fired with the purpose of penetrating flesh.
For some reason, we have classified guns and fighter jets as sexy, but Agent Orange as a monstrosity. There must have been less profit in poisonous chemical defoliants.
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I think it probably boils down to how many friendly-fire casualties it causes. So long as you're not fighting on your own soil, land mines only kill enemy combatant infrastructure support personnel (mustn't call them civilians). Guns and fighter jets are mostly tightly-controlled, they only kill civilians and friendlies if you tell them to. And most addiction cases are self-induced, especially for non-pharmaceuticals. If you walk naked and unarmed into the wolf-filled woods very few people will have much
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Guns are targeted. When you engage an enemy with guns and bombs, it's possible your information is in error, but at least you made some attempt to identify an enemy combatant. At least, we hope so.
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Why is a missile not also an act of a coward? Or a bomb dropped from a B-52? Or a drone?
I understand why you see a difference, but you're slicing it all pretty thin. I believe the bomb dropped from a B-52 also harms the bombardier and the drone strike harms the drone operator. War diminishes all participants.
Herbicides!? (Score:1)
When the US does it, it's herbicides. When anyone else does it, it's chemical weapons.
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"But we were using the chemical weapons against the jungle, not against the people who were IN the jungle. So that means we're still the good guys. U-S-A! U-S-A!"
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There is a slight difference between dropping chemicals on open jungle and dropping chemicals in the middle of the town square ... where there isn't a jungle for 4500km in any direction.
Make them eat it... (Score:2)
They can sprinkle it on their research and make burritos.
vietnamese (Score:5, Informative)
It is interesting everyone ignores the greater harm agent orange is doing to the Vietnamese servicemen.
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Actually, I'm not at all surprised. This is typical of American reporting.
FTFY (Score:2)
...has denied the entire existence of this entire branch of science, entirely.
There, entirely fixed that entire sentence for you.
Longevity of Dioxin in Agent Orange. (Score:5, Informative)
Did or Did Not: that's not the problem (Score:2)
When I'm President, the VA rules will be simple: did you serve in the Armed Forces? If "yes," then you get full medical coverage at the doctor and hospital of your choice.
I personally oppose our military buildup and oppose war in general, but given that we have a military, and that every person in uniform is theoretically running the risk of being sent to a live-fire zone, I think lifetime medical coverage is the least we can do for them. I don't give a damn whether the illness is service-related or not.
Re:Just wondering (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, hundreds of thousands to millions of Vietnamese were harmed depending how you count - everythings from terrible birth defects to characteristic cancers.
And, of course, the main use of agent orange in Vietnam was to destroy the farm land so that the peasants would be forced, by starvation, to move to the cities (that happened to be controlled by the USA).
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You realize a hell of a lot of them were drafted, right?
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I hope you do recall that US had a draft. It's not fair to call US soldiers murderers, if that's what you are implying. The officers who called the shots probably weren't the ones exposed to agent orange.