Death Takes Other Forms
One of the most tragic episodes involving chemical agents has been the suffering caused to Army veterans by Agent Orange, a defoliant widely used in Vietnam which contains the lethal chemical dioxin.
Freedom’s investigation into negligence in treatment of Agent Orange victims featured an exclusive interview with an official who disclosed a government strategy to “outlast” Agent Orange survivors—rather than seek effective means of dealing with their problems.
The official, who worked for years with veterans exposed to Agent Orange, also revealed that a high percentage of women exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam had since had hysterectomies because they feared having deformed children. Freedom also disclosed the results of an unpublished study which showed that more than 30 percent of American women who had served in Vietnam and had later become pregnant had suffered one or more miscarriages or stillbirths.
Many groups and individuals worked to achieve restitution for the country’s affected veterans. Weeks after the 1988 publication of the results of Freedom’s investigation, the U.S. Supreme Court declared certain veterans to be eligible for compensation for exposure to Agent Orange. Not long afterward, a restitution plan was worked out whereby some 30,000 veterans and 18,000 members of survivors’ families would receive payments, in addition to the $52 million set aside for grants to agencies serving Vietnam veterans and their families.
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