Mysteries of Agent Orange

Two government agencies are in a quandary over the medical effects of Agent Orange on veterans of the Vietnam War. The Centers for Disease Control said recently that a lack of sufficient data will invalidate its study of suspected links between Agent Orange and cancer among Vietnam veterans. But a Veterans Administration study found that Marines who served in Vietnam had a higher death rate from herbicide-related lung cancers and rare lymphomas than did veterans who saw duty in Vietnam with other branches of the armed forces. Eight years after ordering the investigation of the hazards of Agent Orange, the federal government still cannot answer the many questions about the substance that obliterated acres of foliage all over Vietnam.

The CDC has likely underestimated troop exposure to Agent Orange by relying too heavily on vague and incomplete records to show the location of troops at various times during the war. Thus the findings are as inconclusive as the data. A better methodology, veterans’ groups contend, would include interviewing veterans who recall being indirectly, but more persistently, exposed to the chemical defoliant. The Marines cited in the VA study are just such a group.

Designed to find answers, these studies have generated only new questions. For example, was the CDC’s study flawed by bad statistical management, or are the statistics such that they will never yield an answer? Does the the VA discovery relating to Marines mean anything, or are those statistics also the result of an incomplete sample? Is it still possible for the two federal studies to be merged, as perhaps they should have been in the first place? Finally, is either agency thinking in terms of any of these questions?

The two agencies certainly must think in these terms, because the CDC’s statement that exposure to Agent Orange cannot be measured accurately appears to be contradicted by the VA’s report on Marine veterans. On a subject so crucial to so many veterans, the agencies cannot just let the matter rest there.

It is possible that Washington never will be able to do an exhaustive and satisfying investigation on behalf of the victims of Agent Orange. The chemical is an extremely sensitive issue at the VA, and that agency is often reluctant to confront the matter directly. When America’s Vietnam veterans ask for peace of mind, medical advice or someone to shoulder the responsibility of finding the truth, bureaucratic lack of interest frequently deflects their appeals into hopelessness.

The CDC’s study should be abandoned, but only because a study should never have begun if predicated on records as vague and incomplete as those that it used appear to be. Whatever the future of these studies, the federal government cannot abandon the problems that Agent Orange has created. It is now up to review groups like Congress, the Domestic Policy Council and the Office of Technology Assessment to make a fresh assault on the medical quagmire that is one more legacy of the Vietnam War.