Review: Our two goals for C-123 Veterans' Agent Orange Benefits

Simple. A mostly successful seven-year effort. Many folks chipped in funds to help and I never wrote thank-you cards. That is because all I did was work and the contributors know it and know their help was vital.

GOAL ONE. VA designation of C-123 veterans as "presumptively exposed" to Agent Orange, thus entitling us to VA medical care and other benefits.
STATUS: MET ON JUNE 19 2015

GOAL TWO: Get our VA disability claims honored from the earliest date submitted, if earlier than what VA limits for retroactivity (June 19 2015 at the earliest.) This is because many C-123 vets had claims in prior to that date, but were met with the then-automatic VA denial. And VA did deny...100% of all our claims were refused.

STATUS: ONLY VERY PARTLY MET

At least the VA barrier to our retroactive claims has been broken down a little. A handful of C-123 vets had claims approved via BVA appeals (Paul Bailey, Dick Matte) but VA has been firm in limiting retroactive claims to June 19 2015 and no earlier. It has to do with Reservists not being entitled to disability benefits unless disabled during the Reserve duty.

For some, this has cost tens of thousands in anticipated, but denied, "catch-up" checks. An example: a claim submitted in 2007 but denied at the time, then honored by VA once its C-123 rule was published on June 19 2015. If the vet was due a 100% disability rating, that's eight years of compensation VA won't pay...about $200,000 lost by the vet because of VA's limit of retroactivity set at June 2015.

The good news: at least one claim has been awarded retroactive Agent Orange benefits from the date submitted (in this case, March 2011. On the vet's appeal the BVA determined that C-123 exposure itself was a disabling injury that would date from "back in the day" while flying the Provider. That decision meant the affected Reservist satisfied the law's requirements regarding a disabling injury to trigger statutory veteran status, and the claim was honored back to the date the vet first filed for Agent Orange disabilities. That was a lot of money, with thanks due to the National Veterans Legal Services Project and their cooperating pro bono attorneys!

74/439 AES Annual Dinner, Friday Sept 25 in Chicopee

74AES Executive Committee

Steve Caraker and Rosemary Costa have worked their usual magic to organize another great dinner for everyone this Friday evening at the Munich House in Chicopee Center.

Good friends, good food, and I hear they even serve beer. RSVP to Steve.

Hey – I'm coming in hopes of seeing Steve in lederhosen!

Master Sergeant Richard Matte Has Passed

Dick Matte has died. 

It hurt a lot to read Steve Caraker’s email with that news, even though it was sure to come. Dick’s long struggle with illnesses showed strength and bravery beyond what most of us can imagine…heart transplant, heart attacks, the loss of his legs and so much more suffering.

It hurts all of us to lose him, and our condolences to his family. He joins Mayleen Adams, Bob Boyd, Giff, Cliff Turcotte, Mike Lieb, Bill Schindler, General Walker and so many others for whom we cared. His arrangements are here.

Matte made the front page of the Boston Globe last June! He was featured in an article addressing the VA’s reluctance to deal with C-123 Agent Orange exposures and illnesses, and that coverage helped bring the public’s attention to this issue and its resolution on June 19. Secretary McDonald’s welcome decision to provide C-123 veterans our disability benefits was due in good part to Dick’s story told so publicly in the Globe.

Thanks to Arch Battista, John Harris and the Yale Veterans Legal Clinic, Dick's VA claim was honored and benefits established even before the VA decision. He and Paul Bailey are the only two C-123 veterans whose claims were awarded before VA decided to care for all of us.

As his friend Steve Carr wrote, we’ve lost a fellow airman and a good soldier. Dick’s faith grew even stronger with all struggles. Now he rests in the peace he knew was ahead. God Bless.

The Republican: C-123 Editorial 2/4/2015

The Republican again published an editorial demanding action on C-123 veterans' Agent Orange claims. Among these vets, of course, are aircrews, aeromedical folks, maintenance and aerial port....those with hands-on with the C-123s any time between 1972-1982.

We're grateful to the Republic for noting our plight and covering it with accuracy and compassion.

The press has done its job.

May we hope for similar concern and effective action from Massachusetts legislators on behalf of the C-123 veterans, most of whom live in the Commonwealth? Perhaps...something a bit more forceful than a simple letter sent to the VA so long ago? Perhaps a phone call to VHA to explain firmly that veterans need and deserve their care and benefits now, not months from now.

Current VA regulations already cover these veterans. All that's happened is science has informed the VA that C-123 veterans were exposed to Agent Orange, and VA's regulations describe the proper course of action and no new legislation, regulation or Federal Register comment are necessary.

First C-123 Claim Approved Since IOM Report (9 Jan 2015)

MATTE HAS WON HIS VA CLAIM!

photo: Boston Globe

Great news today: Dick Matte, veteran of the 74th AES and resident of Chicopee, MA, received his VA disability award (via DRO decision) of 80% today! This is simply terrific and reflects well on VA acting to help our most seriously ill vets – ASAP!

Thanks, Boson VARO!

The award was for 80% service connected, not the full 100% requested but sill, wonderful news and the remaining 20%, if it is due him, will be sought via further appeals. Dick was represented by scholars from the Yale Law School Veterans Legal Clinic and supported at the hearing by Yale, Arch Battista and John Harris. What a team!

To all who helped, both in and out of government, THANK YOU!

Thanks Today Are Due VBA!

Thanks are extended to certain VBA executives for a kindness offered a deserving veteran of the 74th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron. God Bless!
    Wes

The Giff Ill Following Open Heart Surgery

William Gifford, better known for decades to fellow members of the 74th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron as "The Giff," had open heart surgery last week in Massachusetts. A subsequent emergency procedure was necessary and his kidney function is impaired.

All of us who remember (with a little embarrassment and but great admiration) Giff's tendency to grab a microphone and start singing when we'd RON'd somewhere (why did it always seem to be New Orleans or Oceana?)  and after a couple (?) drinks at a dinner bar, pray that strength of character and humor sustains him and his family now.

Its too early to sign out on the Form 40, Giff!

C-123 Veterans Agent Orange Exposure: August 2014 Update

The C-123 Veterans Association has updated its summary of our situation thus far, with the next major events being VA's redefinition of exposure through some sort of regulatory process, and the anticipated September Institute of Medicine C-123 report to Secretary McDonald. Included is an updated document list in chronological order and with hyperlinks.

The problem with the C-123 IOM report is that even if the investigators' findings support us, there is still a year or so for the Secretary to take any action. Then, claims will sit around on the VA regional office desks for a year or so, making any solution, however positive, years away.

We don't have those years. VA knows it. Which is why they stall. Every day's delay is money saved for Veterans Health Administration and Veterans Benefits Administration. Every claim denied is big money saved!

Policy rather than law makes for today's VA claims process.

C-123 Casualties – Deaths With Agent Orange Claims Wrongly Denied

At least 10 C-123 veterans have died after VA denied their Agent Orange claims, groups say

In this May 1966 file photo, a U.S. Air Force C-123 flies low along a South Vietnamese highway spraying defoliants on dense jungle growth beside the road to eliminate ambush sites for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Crews that flew and serviced these aircraft after the war say the VA has unfairly denied their claims of Agent Orange-related illnesses. (Department of Defense photo)

Mike Francis | mfrancis@oregonian.com 
Follow on Twitter
on June 30, 2014 at 11:05 AM

At least 10 veterans exposed to Agent Orange while serving aboard aircraft contaminated by the Vietnam-era defoliant have died after being denied care by the Department of Veterans Affairs, two veterans groups charged Sunday.

The veterans, who served between 1972 and 1982, flew or maintained the C-123 aircraft that were used to spray Agent Orange on Southeast Asian forests during the Vietnam War. They maintain that the residue from those flights exposed them to deadly toxins – a charge the Air Force has disputed.

While the VA has said it presumes that certain illnesses among Vietnam veterans were caused by exposure to Agent Orange, the veterans groups said they don't extend the same presumption to those postwar veterans who flew in contaminated aircraft. The reason is that the agency has adopted an unscientific notion of the definition of "exposure," the groups said.

"VA continues to deny all claims from post-Vietnam C-123 veterans, while at the same time deceptively assuring Congress that claims are considered 'on a case-by-case basis,'" the Vietnam Veterans of America and the C-123 Veterans Association said in a joint statement. "In fact, VA does not tell Congress that all C-123 claims are refused following a year or two delay."

This argument is playing out in a more restrained way before the Institute of Medicine, which recently took testimony on the question of whether C-123 veterans were exposed to dangerously high levels of toxins from contaminated aircraft. On one side was a VA consultant who has long argued that any exposure to Agent Orange residues by C-123 crews was "negligible." On the other was a C-123 veteran and an array of scientists including Rutgers professor and microbiology researcher Peter Kahn.

"What the government has been doing," he told the panel during his testimony earlier in June, is "putting up the façade of scientific objectivity in order to avoid action. I regard it as a failure of political courage and moral courage."

Instead of stonewalling claims from C-123 veterans, he said, the VA should treat them as it does other veterans who suffer from service-related injuries.

The veterans groups didn't name any of the deceased veterans, except for Lt. Col. Paul Bailey of Bath, N.H., who died of cancer last year after the VA denied his claim, then approved it after he was featured in a Washington Post story and members of Congress raised questions. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., was among those who asked then-Secretary Eric Shinseki to examine the way the VA was treating claims from C-123 crews.

The Boston Globe focused on the issue Sunday, featuring the case of 70-year-old Richard Matte, a retired Air Force reservist and C-123 crew member who's had a heart transplant, his leg amputated and been treated for bladder cancer, lung cancer and nerve disorders. He is one of about 50 C-123 veterans or their survivors living in Massachusetts, according to the C-123 Veterans Association.

With at least 10 C-123 veterans already dead from diseases associated with Agent Orange exposure, "surviving C-123 veterans do not want more comrades' names added to this list," the joint statement said.

The C-123 Veterans Association is headed by former McMinnville resident Wes Carter who's also being treated for cancer. He now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. He maintains the C-123 Veteran Agent Orange Exposure website.

-Mike Francis

© 2014 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.

Newsweek Correspondent Jamie Reno: C-123 Exposures "Tip of the Iceberg"

 (from Newsweek correspondent Jamie Reno, 7 March 2014)

A VA spokesperson said that due to the consideration of possible long-term adverse health effects from potential exposure Agent Orange in C-123 aircraft crewmembers post-Vietnam, VA has formally asked the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine to study the issue and report back to the department.

Rick Weidman, executive director for policy and government affairs at Vietnam Veterans of America, said that many veterans were exposed to Agent Orange after the Vietnam War – and not just on Johnston Island. “Everything Army veteran Steve House (who recently won his VA exposure claim appeal) has shared with us about his experience at Camp Carroll in Korea is credible and authentic,” Weidman said. “He is telling the truth. He has the documentation, a lot of it.”

But the paradigm for veterans exposed to Agent Orange after the Vietnam War may be about to change in their favor. A study published last week in Environmental Research found that airmen who flew and maintained the C-123 Provider aircraft long after the planes were used to spray Agent Orange over Vietnam were exposed to dangerous levels of the dioxin that remained in the aircraft.

The American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans organization, responded to this news last week with a new call for VA to extend disability compensation benefits to former C-123 aircrews. “I believe this new study will blow a big hole in the DOD and VA’s story,” Army veteran Steve House said.

 “Now there’s proof that vets were exposed well after the Vietnam War. But the C-123s are just the tip of the iceberg.”

Note: The C-123 exposure issue was well-covered in the recent Air Force Times article, about which the Times editors also delivered a hard-hitting editorial calling on the VA to act on the veterans' exposure claims. "Callous and tone deaf" were the editors' description of VA intransigence. 

"Unscientific" was the conclusion of the Committee of Concerned Scientists and Physicians in their letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki.

"That's no dioxin expert" observed the director of a major federal science agency, referring to the staffers who created the Veterans Health Administration's unique redefinition of exposure, developed to block all C-123 veterans' Agent Orange disability claims. 

VA Stats Improve – Good Job, VA!

Unfortunately, too many of these claims were resolved by dumping them into the BVA pile for years of additional inaction. Nonetheless, progress is progress and let's hope it continues.

VA – Do Something Right Here!

No question now in law. (Yale Law)

No question now in science. (NIESH, ATSDR, US Public Health Service, scientists & physicians)

No question now in ethics. (Consult your own National Center for Ethics in Healthcare)

Eventually, some Pulitzer-destined reporter is going to ask, "and how many claim-by-claim awards have been permitted? as a follow-up to the pre-programmed VA public affairs blurb. Eventually that reporter will note that C-123 veterans like Dick Matte are being denied life-saving VA medical care on the personal whims of VA lawyers and at the direction of a few VA personnel in Post Deployment Health. Their agenda is personal, and targeted at us veterans.

The Lord Jehovah did not publish a rule change in the Federal Register directing Post Deployment Health to redefine exposure for the worlds of science and medicine, and empowering Post Deployment Health to campaign agains the medical needs of fully eligible veterans. At least, we didn't see the announcement, so probably the world continues to function under the rule of law.

VA's last assurances to Congress that veterans exposed to military herbicides outside Vietnam, as published in the Federal Register of 31 August 2010, still applies. Thank goodness the VA took special pains, as they wrote, "to make it clear!"

Science still defines exposure the regular way, not the VA way. And medicine is still denied C-123 veterans who flew the contaminated C-123 aircraft for a decade. Post Deployment Health has a vital role to play in meeting the needs of all America's veterans, and must do so for all of us from an unusable platform of science, law and ethics.

They should begin shoring up their platform on all three of these supports because each is limp. Personal views of those folks, and their determination that no C-123 veterans will be considered exposed, are wrong.

ATSDR CONFIRMS Dermal Route for C-123 Dioxin Exposure

VA has "explained" to the veterans' community that C-123 flyers were not exposed, and primarily

because, as they put it, "TCDD does not readily cross human skin." This was their summation of Weber's quite dated 1991 article.

So, quoting a 23 year old publication and ignoring more current juried articles with contrary findings firmly supporting C-123 veterans' claims, VA's Post Deployment Health unit concluded C-123 veterans were not exposed. Because the dermal barrier is near-perfect, they told us. Anything to block disability claims.

They're wrong. VA VHA issued a blatant twist of facts. Along with similar conclusions in TG312, here what the CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said, confirming our OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE resulted in dermal absorption – BIOAVAILABILITY! 

"[T]he ability of the skin to absorb dioxins (bioavailability)is slow except during occupational exposures." (p.5)

Also, the Japanese Environmental Agency:

 "Oral Intake and Absorption: Dioxins are absorbed through the gastro-intestinal tract, skin, and lungs. The degree of absorption varies with the congener, the route of absorption,and the medium."

Thus, even with VA's twisted redefinition of exposure (exposure = contamination field + bioavailability) we have federal agency support for both our exposure and the bioavailability.

There's more. The NIH/National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences also reported that dermal contact with TCDD results in absorption...dermal exposure:

Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 1991 Feb;107(2):302-10.

Absorption of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) after low dose dermal exposure.

Banks YB1, Birnbaum LS.

Author information

Abstract

Human dermal exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) occurs through contact with soil and paper products

Bait & Switch – VA Teaser on C-123 Agent Orange Claims?

Maybe VA leaders believe they've found a way to help us by the IOM referral. No! Many thanks, but this works against us!
As we've detailed for years, the C-123 veterans are legally qualified for Agent Orange benefits upon proof of their exposure, but VA has created barriers to that proof...most notably, by redefining the very word "exposure." Also, by refusing all evidence supporting the veterans' exposure claims from other federal agencies, universities, physicians, etc.

Here is what feels like a bait and switch part of what VA does to look veteran-friendly. Right on their web pages VA describes categories of veterans and includes C-123 vets, yet regional offices deny claims stating "regulations do not permit recognizing C-123 exposure claims" and "a thorough search of available records fails to substantiate your claims of exposure" and also in what passes for VA humor, the famous "TCDD is harmless" from Compensation and Pension Service 

Below is a screenshot from their web page, listing C-123 vets as eligible with proof of exposure, yet VA insists no exposure was possible. Science disagrees with VA. It is an interesting teaser, but outrageous to list C-123 vets as eligible but provide links to VA pages denying that eligibility. 

Actually, this part of the VA page is correct, but the pages which deny C-123 veterans' exposure claims are in error.

DOD Refused (Again) To Designate C-123s As Agent Orange Exposure Sites

Asked for the third time, DOD declined for the third time to recognize former Agent Orange spray aircraft as "Agent Orange Exposure Sites." While we are not aware of the political reasons which prevent this logical step, we understand the reluctance DOD has in anything likely to assist veterans in claiming Agent Orange exposure.

Usually DOD cites lack of medical information or some other dodge, but this time they simply and honestly said, "no."

In a touch of DOD humor, we were referred back to the VA, where both we and DOD already know how C-123 veterans' claims are treated.

Institute of Medicine 2012 Report - Covered In-Country Issues Only!

Many point to the 2012 Institute of Medicine Agent Orange Report as somehow disagreeing with non-Vietnam herbicide exposure claims. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The VA assigns specific goals to the Committee ("Charge to the Committee") which restricts what is to be addressed. Thus, proof upon proof could be offered on various topics such as Blue Water Navy or C-123 exposures, and note will be made of the off-topic presentations but nothing done by the Committee nor commented upon!