Veterans want answers as new data shows rise in cancers over two decades of war
mcclatchydc.com
mcclatchydc.com
Read about Agent Orange if you want to be pissed off for the rest of the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#U.S._veterans
I decided not to be a helpless by-stander when it was my fathers time to contend with the VA. I took nearly 3 years off of my life and moved back home to help him. He was eventually able to successfully obtain a disability rating and was able to get prior/existing health issues linked to his exposure, which secured disability back pay to the 90s. All of this, his experience and the back pay, specifically, is something of an outlier, as we understand it. As we understand it, most folks don't have the resources to navigate the system successfully. It wasn't a massive financial windfall, but it meant that my parents future was financially secure (their finances were in ruins by the mid-00s) and once he was mobile again, with his health issues under control and with an effective management plan in place, I was able to get back on with my own life.
There are also inter-generational effects with Agent Orange, but they're not very well understood (to my knowledge). That frightens me today, especially now that I've had my own children. There's a whole other dynamic there, too, in that I also served, and that I've been exposed to burn pits and a lot of diesel fumes and high RF environments and some solvents and etc... I feel like it's an inevitability in my own life's story that I'll eventually have to contend with the VA, as well.
My Grandfather was killed by the stuff too. He had a condition that wasn't one of the conditions that the VA established as linked to it. I've found some other cases online of other service members that had what he had. The other game the VA plays is they'll dispute you were ever even exposed to it in the first place.
I do, very frequently, in fact. I have many friends who are Vietnamese today (I live in Orange County, CA), and they have many stories about extended family in Vietnam and elsewhere about birth defects and such. My wife's mother is Vietnam-born Chinese. She came to the US as a refugee. They have family that was exposed as innocents caught in the middle of the conflict, just trying to escape with their lives. There are countless generations of people in Vietnam, and now abroad, that will never be properly acknowledged, let alone compensated, for what we did to them. And, in some cases, what is still happening to them today, as the byproducts of the herbicide can still be found in their food supply.
Not 'we.' The war criminals running the government.
It leads to family feuds, tribal war that lasts centuries or even millennia and it's a very likely trigger for WW3.
There are inter-group grievances that will never be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. Not only that, but they're so inflammatory that even attempting to resolve the conflicts of centuries past, leads to further anger and cycles of violence going forward.
People need to be held accountable for their own actions, not the actions of others who look like them, have the same family name, live on the same patch of land or worship the same god(s).
I advocate for the peaceful dissolution of the federal government because I believe it's unfixable and unaccountable.
I believe the de-facto two-party system is illegitimate.
It is today's kids who must grow up ready to live in the absence of a powerful state. Even if they aren't culpable, they are responsible.
edit/ Cursory search seems to suggest this is fairly new -- I'm only seeing hits from news in 2019. Better late than never, but many servicemembers have languished and died in the meantime while the VA administration continues to delay processing.
I'm glad that they're at least not fighting so hard against service-connected illnesses and disability ratings. But, that still doesn't tell the full story, either. I'd be curious to learn what disability % different illnesses and times in service, branches, etc... are receiving. That could get closer to telling the truth.
Many of the Vietnam veterans my father and I know are < 50%, despite being incapable of working due to their service-connected health issues (nevermind the ageism, nevermind the loss of industry where these people live taking decent jobs away from entire regions, nevermind the fact they wouldn't be considered anyway because of their health issues, etc...). If you attempt to get a new rating, you can end up rated lower than where you started. And, so, it disincentivizes otherwise deserving people from pushing their luck, as it were.
I wrote this anecdote commend @scruple on taking the time to get his dad fixed up, and so that others in a similar place might recognize the situation and act. I do not think the VA did anything wrong in this case. I had a chance to get my brother to move in with me, but I failed to do so.
At least they now use d-limonene, which is a food addictive derived from orange skin oil.
Other kind of radiation will resonate with bigger molecules and could do things like denaturalize them.
Have you ever fried an egg. You are denaturalizing a protein that is liquid and becomes solid, and you have done that just with heat alone.
You can actually denaturalize an egg in the microwave oven, and there are certainly lots of health problems when the microwave oven leaks microwaves.
When you denaturalize something in the body, it stops working as it should. This creates a cascade of things that stops working as they should.
Military vehicles and generators run on diesel, the fumes of which has known links to cancer, especially without any emission controls.
Lead in ammunition probably contributes somewhat.
Tungsten in training ammo has links to cancer.
Stress and lack of proper nutrition probably doesn't help.
Also I didn't know training ammo used it - I thought it was mostly used just as an armor piercing metal.
Dietary fiber intake and risk of colorectal cancer and incident and recurrent adenoma in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4588743/
If there's anyone getting a carefully controlled diet and precisely balanced nutrition, it's soldiers on operations.
You don't just "get over" heavy metal poisoning. It has long term effects exactly like radiation, and is more insidious because you can't just wave a geiger counter around to find it.
Toxic chemicals can cause cancer themselves - poisoning isn't the only option there. Coal tar, for example, has no (or minimal) radioactivity, but is still carcinogenic.