Word: vietnam
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When a study by the Centers for Disease Control concluded in the late 1980s that the link between Agent Orange and various cancers was too tenuous to prove, it looked as if the many years of highly charged debate over the notorious defoliant used in Vietnam were over. Only 1,000 of the 39,000 claims made would be paid out; the rest of the veterans would be left with nothing but bitter memories...
Jesse Brown, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, immediately added Hodgkin's disease to the short list of maladies for which Vietnam veterans are automatically compensated. And he has promised to decide, within 60 days, whether to include lung and prostate cancers and other diseases. Because these afflictions are so common, such a move could ring up tens of millions of dollars in additional claims. "We did not pay attention to the price tag but just to the scientific evidence," says panel member Dr. Graham Colditz, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. "If anyone raised the issue and said...
...huge issue, though, for a budget-strapped government. The experts predict that within the next seven years there will be a total of more than 3,000 cases of lung cancer and nearly 1,000 cases of prostate cancer among Vietnam veterans. Even so, Secretary Brown claims the potential cost will not affect his decision. Says he: "I am committed to taking a fresh look at the issue and to doing the right thing...
White House sources have provided Time with specifics on heretofore undetailed joint U.S.-Vietnamese investigations into the fate of American POWS AND MIAS. In Vietnam, since January 1992, there have been eight joint field searches and 40 crash- or grave-site excavations; also, 422 cases from files and 92 live sightings were checked out. Vietnam and the U.S. have been making searches together in Laos and Cambodia as well; there have been a total of roughly 170 investigations of various types in the former country and 110 in the latter. The high numbers seem to indicate that Vietnam -- recently...
Meanwhile Clinton discovered that getting what he wanted without a fight with Congress was impossible. He had one significant ally in Senator Bob Kerrey, the Congressional Medal of Honor winner who lost a leg in Vietnam. In a speech last week, Kerrey admitted that his own experience in the Navy SEALs had caused him initially "to drift toward the military point of view." But he changed his mind in May after he heard Marine Colonel Fred Peck testify that he would not want his gay son to serve in the Marines, fearful that his son's life would be threatened...