Word: hac
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Even as Thieu spoke, 45 American helicopters were flapping into Laos for what he called a "new-type operation": a quick raid by ARVN Hac Bao (Black Panther) commandos about five miles across the border into the Communist depot known as Base Area 611. During their 24 hours on the ground, the Panthers killed just one North Vietnamese and found little in the way of enemy supplies. Their main mission seemed to be to let Hanoi know that its Laotian supply lines would never again be safe and to support Thieu's claim that Lam Son was "still going...
...HAC studied hospital records in South Vietnam to try to see if dioxin or another chemical herbicide, 2,4,5-T, were implicated in birth defects. Because of the scarcity of data on birth defects and the haphazard way most of them are collected, the HAC found it very difficult to find reliable information. Precise information on quantities of herbicide sprayed, the type of herbicide used, and the location of each spraying mission is classified confidential by the military and is inaccessible to the HAC researchers. The Commission does have enough information to evaluate the magnitude of the problem, however...
Allowing for all these factors, John Constable, HAC team member, was able to interpret birth statistics from Tay Ninh Provincial Hospital. This hospital serves a heavily defoliated province, and "showed an average stillbirth rate in 1968 and 1969 of 68 per 1000 live births. During this same time, the Tu Do [in Saigon] rate was 27.5 per 1000 and that of the Army sample of the entire country...
...addition, using data from a U. S. Army study, the HAC found "a decided upward trend in stillbirths, moles, and deformities" in the Vietnamese countryside, excluding data from Saigon (where no spraying has taken place, of course). Nevertheless, the HAC is cautious in drawing any conclusions. A scientific approach remains to be developed, concludes the Commission's preliminary report, for "determining the amounts of herbicide residues in the diet and in human tissues, waiting for future research to determine the implications, if any, of whatever levels are found...
Together with Robert Baughman of the Harvard Chemistry Department, Meselson is trying to develop the needed technology for detecting dioxin in food, human tissues, and other materials the HAC collected in Vietnam...