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C H A P T ER 2 0 Validation The Agent Orange Research, Part 2 To those who say, ‘We don’t have enough evidence,’ I would ask—how high does the body count have to go? How many Vietnam veterans have to die before we have ‘enough evidence’ to start admitting the truth and compensating veterans? This Administration’s rhetoric is out of touch with reality. They tell us that Vietnam veterans are “national heroes.” But they continue to turn a deaf ear to Vietnam veterans who need help. —Senator John Kerry1 There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. —Benjamin Disraeli, quoted by Mark Twain The failure of the CDC’s research had little impact on the Veterans Administration, which had already determined that chloracne was the only disease connected to Agent Orange exposure. Cancer, neurological problems, porphyria—any other health problems—were simply the veterans’ hard luck. This decision, made by the Veterans Advisory Committee (which, contrary to its own rules, contained no members recommended by veterans’ groups), wasn’t based on any actual data. At its first meeting, in April 1985, the committee didn’t look at a single study. The next time it met, in June 1985, it reviewed only seven. None of those studies involved porphyria or chloracne, even though the committee had been specifically asked to determine whether these two conditions were linked to dioxin exposure. Still, at that second meeting, the committee determined that chloracne was the only herbicide-based health problem requiring VA compensation . It met about five more times over the next three years and found no evidence (it reviewed a meager number of additional studies) that more diseases should be added to the list. 188 Later on, when the committee’s procedures were criticized at a congressional hearing, a VA official explained that it really wasn’t supposed to do a better job, and anyway its members were much too busy to try: “The committee is not required to conduct a thorough review of all scientific studies pertaining to the health effects of exposure to dioxin. In fact, the committee has discretion to select which studies to review. Given the time available in which to review the regulations, the breadth of that task, and the busy schedules of the members of the Committee, it was not feasible to review more studies prior to the time the final regulations were published.”2 The VA knew this wouldn’t satisfy the veterans. It issued press releases proclaiming that VA hospitals had treated thousands of men for Orange-related diseases and that its outpatient clinics had served millions more. It’s hard to know exactly where these numbers came from. They certainly couldn’t all have been chloracne cases. A committee of CDC scientists decided to conduct a small validation study to determine, once and for all, whether the military records could show who had and hadn’t been exposed. The researchers planned to identify a few veterans “with very high exposure potential,” and others “with very low or non-existent exposure potential” according to the military records. Then they would take tissue samples from these men and analyze them for dioxin. If veterans with higher TCDD levels also ranked high on the exposure opportunity index, the CDC could move on to the Agent Orange research. The CDC still hadn’t decided whether to rely on company or battalion records for its study. It tried to compromise, selecting the best company records out of those battalions with the most complete exposure documentation. This would eliminate some of the most highly exposed companies. The federal government wasn’t enthusiastic about the new validation study. It had already decided to give up on the Agent Orange research. It even began arguing that this supposedly shoddy data proved that the veterans hadn’t been harmed by dioxin. On April 1, 1986, the Agent Orange Working Group held a scientific panel on exposure assessment. Its members included most of the regular players in the dispute: Richard Christian, Peter Layde, Carl Keller, and Barclay Shepard (from the VA), along with representatives from a few other government agencies. The panel’s report, issued in June, praised the Environmental Support Group’s work but concluded, “We found no way, based on military records, to verify an individual’s exposure to herbicide or dioxin.” There were two problems. The first was “Unit Dispersion. On a substantial number of days, combat personnel were dispersed geographically up to 20...

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