Word: servicemen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Veterans, and their children who were conceived after the war, began displaying symptoms identical to those known to be caused by dioxin poisoning shortly after the servicemen returned to the U.S., but they and their doctors long failed to connect their illnesses to Agent Orange. After reading about the Seveso incident, however, Paul Reutershan, a veteran who was suffering from cancer of the colon, filed suit in 1977. He died the next year, at age 28, but by then Victor Yannacone Jr., the lawyer who had brought the 1966 suit that helped ban DDT, had taken up his case...
Yannacone contends that the companies knew that Agent Orange was highly dangerous, but failed to warn either the Pentagon or servicemen who might come in contact with it. He is asking the federal district court in Westbury, Long Island, to order the companies to pay a percentage of their future profits-the amount to be determined by the court -into a trust fund for the compensation and care of all Viet Nam G.I.s and their children injured by dioxin. The sum at stake could easily run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, or even billions, as Agent Orange Victims...
...Government to recover any money that the court may eventually make them pay to the veterans. The companies claim that the Government mandated the manufacturing specifications for Agent Orange and then misused them. The veterans cannot sue the Government; a 1950 Supreme Court decision bars suits by servicemen who have been injured on duty because of negligence by military personnel...
...Government has refused any responsibility for the servicemen's plight. The veterans are especially bitter because they cannot get disability payments or free treatment from the Veterans Administration for the illnesses that they believe were caused by dioxin. Says Albrigtsen: "When you go in to a VA hospital and say you are an Agent Orange victim, they look at you as if you were nuts...
Charities, Bakal argues, should be subject to some truth-in-giving regulation. He charges that, in its fund-raising appeals, the Red Cross often avoids mentioning that it helps servicemen with financial aid and counseling. Instead, the organization promotes its more popular activities, notably disaster relief...