VA Agent Orange Consultant & Others Take Action to Oppose C-123 Veterans' Disability Claims

Included in the public comments submitted to REGULATIONS.GOV regarding the VA's C-123 interim final rule, about 52 responses were received and 48 accepted for posting.

Except for four, all encouraged VA to recognize the legal and moral argument for providing retroactive disability compensation to C-123 veterans and survivors whose claims were submitted prior to June 19 2015. The rule only provides for compensation after June 19, even if claims have been in to VA for years already.

The VA consultant explained his opposition by submitting a copy of the challenge he sent to the IOM C-123 committee, detailing the committee's scientific failures (from his perspective.) The highly-paid consultant, known for disagreeing with Agent Orange being harmful, didn't address concerns we raised about his clipboarded Internet photos taken about 2000 but which he told IOM represented 1971 restoration and reconditioning of C-123 aircraft. The photos were of #664, which never even was an Agent Orange spray airplane. Very creative but misleading wordsmithing, indeed.

Prompts bought further challenges from some Ranch Hand aircrews who disagree with others aircrews' Agent Orange cancers being treated by VA, and by a scientist who actually did testing on the Davis-Monthan C-123 fleet then in surplus storage. This testing was done around 2009.

Such challenges were already weighed by the IOM C-123 committee and found wanting, compared to the body of evidence submitted from the CDC, DOD, US Public Health Service, EPA, NASA, National Toxicology Program, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and dozens of independent scientists, physicians and research centers.

The VA paid $600,000 via his unusual no-bid, sole source contract to its Agent Orange consultant to oppose C-123 and other exposure claims, and to affirm all VA decisions and positions already assumed by the Department. The VA permitted no expense to support the veterans' perspective of having been exposed, and the veterans themselves paid nothing to the experts whose opinions supported our exposure claims...we didn't have to and we couldn't anyway...no money.

We had to pay our own way, depending on a handful of checks from fellow veterans very few of whom are included in this effort because most of us are Vietnam vets, retired military, or already totally disabled with the VA...so the final results, however VA writes them up, mean nothing to us other than the invaluable satisfaction of serving our fellow crews, both Active and Reserve.

And yes, we draw special satisfaction having won for them the benefits flowing to our Active Duty C-123 brothers and sisters!

National Academy of Sciences on Financial Disclosure

In 2014, the Institute of Medicine C-123 Agent Orange committee had a presentation by a scientist who did not offer information about his $600,000 consulting contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Both he, and the Department, opposed C-123 veterans' arguments as to Agent Orange exposure aboard the former Agent Orange transports.

Because the VA proposed the question to the Institute of Medicine, it was improper for it to advocate a particular finding by the IOM. The consultant explained, in his preface to comments to the committee, that he was not there to represent the VA but to explain the science behind the VA's perspective on C-123 Agent Orange exposures. However, never did he discuss his unusual historical involvement with the VA and the US Air Force, and the C-123 veterans, including his personal role in 2009 recommending destruction of those aircraft.

At the time of the IOM meeting, it seems only VA was aware of the consultant's unusual no-bid, sole-source contract addressing post-Vietnam herbicide concerns. Later, the committee was informed that the scientist had a consulting relationship with the VA, and at some point after that, the amount of the contract was also made known to the committee by IOM staff.

Veterans and others presented IOM their financial statements; even the authors of papers sponsored by Dow and Monsanto met this fundamental ethical obligation. But not the VA consultant. The VA took no action, even though it had several representatives at the IOM hearing well-aware of the issue.

This writer is no scientist, and the nuances of this profession's ethical considerations are unfamiliar. Perhaps the consultant and VA were perfectly proper in the IOM presentation. It is hard, however, to find any positive spin to put on this: VA paid a lot of money to oppose veterans' Agent Orange exposure claims, and failed to reveal anything about this. Most of the work product of the consultant's contract was submitted in opposition to the veteran's claims, and nothing that was helpful...his view was quite clear and only information supporting that view was offered, a view he has espoused for decades.

This would be acceptable in a high school debate, but not as the National Academy of Sciences tried to address the health concerns of thousands of veterans.

In addition to tremendous amounts of its staff resources, VA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to oppose the veterans. Not a penny was permitted to support the veterans' presentation to the IOM in which we argued that we'd been exposed Thus, VA presented its policy to the IOM, not an even-handed scientific analysis.

The VA was hardly neutral and should not have posed this question to the IOM with their ill-disguised objective of using IOM to obstruct veterans' exposure claims. VA selected only materials, reports, opinions and other materials for the IOM which argued against the veterans, withholding everything helpful to the veterans' cause. The only materials supporting the veterans' perspective were submitted by the veterans, by unpaid concerned scientists and physicians, or obtained by the IOM itself.

VA showed it was not seeking an objective examination of the C-123 Agent Orange exposure claims. Veterans were entitled to advocate the basis of their situation, but VA was supposed to be not only objective, but pro-veteran, and seek a clean scientific analysis through IOM of the issue. VA failed.

On March 8, 2015, the president of the National Academy of Sciences addressed the issue of financial disclosure and the importance in science that that ethical requirement plays. Although the particulars of his address dealt with climate change, the fundamental ethical problem is identical to the C-123 Agent Orange meeting:

By National Academy of Sciences President Ralph J. Cicerone
     March 6, 2015

The methods, motives, and results of scientists come under special scrutiny when
societal or economic matters are involved, for example, in cases involving medicine and health, governmental policies and regulations, and commercial applications.  Recently, two new examples have arisen, both involving the science of climate change and societal responses to it.  

One case involves allegations of failure to disclose financial interests and research support from corporate interests on the part of a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who testifies on behalf of organizations that discount the role of human activity in global climate change.  The other consists of requests to seven universities by Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) for the names of funding sources for a group of scientists and policy analysts who have publicly disputed widely accepted scientific findings about the causes of climate change and the value of public responses to it.  An earlier Congressman’s request for professional and personal materials should also be remembered. 

These incidents and prior ones show that scientists must disclose their sources of financial support to continue to enjoy societal trust and the respect of fellow scientists, while also maintaining high standards in the enterprise of science.