VA Claims Agent Orange “Harmless" – Challenged by Other Federal Agencies

– Claim Denied! "No conclusive evidence that TCDD exposure causes any adverse health effects."
(Director VA Compensation Services, personally ordering C-123 vet's claim denial)
– "TCDD is the most toxic of the dioxins, and is classified as a human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency."
(VA Public Health Bulletin )

C-123 "Provider" flown by us 1972-1982

The VA statements are in obvious contrast with each other, yet the VA permits veterans’ claims to be denied by pretending Agent Orange is harmless as per the first statement...a statement which is unscientific, and which flies in the face of VA’s own Agent Orange research.

In September 2012 VA’s Compensation and Pension Service denied C-123 veterans’ Agent Orange exposure claims. Reaching for whatever could be typed on the denial, no matter whether it be legal or scientific, VA leadership opted to deny the claims by pretending TCDD (dioxin, the toxin in Agent Orange) is harmless.

It seems ridiculous...and it is! However, it satisfies the VA’s desire to prevent C-123 veterans’ claims. They might as well have typed that TCDD is beneficial, good for hair restoration, good for food preservation, and  controls earthquakes or whatever else might come to mind. The claims had to be rejected...so VA pretended that TCDD is harmless. 

Science and Medicine, of course, have found otherwise. In particular, the US Government has found otherwise, and even the VA in various Internet pages agrees that TCDD is a human carcinogen, and dangerous to health. But somehow not in the case of C-123 exposures, reads C&P’s tome.

In this, a policy-driven claim denial, VA’s excuse stands challenged by the rest of the United States Government. The agencies with both the statutory responsibility to determine the toxicity of environmental hazards and the scientific expertise to do so, all challenge the VA.

The two agencies in the van of the challenge are the CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the National Institute of Health/National Toxicology Program.

The director of the ATSDR is Rear Admiral (MD) R. Ikeda, who confirmed earlier findings by ATSDR’s director and deputy director which determined C-123 aircraft were contaminated with TCDD and the veterans were exposed. In fact, ATSDR determined these veterans had a 180-times increase in cancer risk because of their service aboard the transports.

The director of the NIH/National Toxicology Program (NIP) is Dr. Linda Birnbaum. On behalf of the NIP, Dr. Birnbaum concluded C-123 veterans were exposed. She stated, “Exposure is assumed based on wipe-tests demonstrating high dioxin concentrations in the C-123K’s. While contact with the aircraft results in exposure to dioxins, the magnitude of these exposures is uncertain.”

Thus, challenging the VA are the ATSDR and the NTP. As regards the NTP, it is important to note that it is a consortium of many government agencies speaking with one voice on toxicological issues. Represented are virtually every concerned US government agency, including DOD, NIH, CDC,  FDA, EPA,  OSHA, National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In her determination that C-123 veterans were exposed, Dr. Birnbaum of the National Toxicology Program represented the many agencies forming the NTP, and her conclusion that C-123 veterans were exposed to TCDD stands in stark contrast to the policy-driven VA refusal to treat C-123 veterans’ Agent Orange illnesses, with VA hiding behind a pretense that TCDD is somehow harmless.

Only VA has stated TCDD is harmless, and VA has made that unfounded statement only in the case of C-123 veterans. VA’s own researchers, including Dr. Mark Garzotto at the Portland VA Medical Center, an oncology urologist treating a C-123 veteran, concluded that Agent Orange-exposed vets suffer twice the rate of highly aggressive prostate cancers. His research was published in May 2013 by the American Cancer Society, and the VA ignored him...without notice at all, his official written opinion that the C-123 veteran was exposed to Agent Orange and that it likely caused the vet’s prostate cancer was simply ignored as the VA denied the vet’s claim. Dr. Garzotto had to be ignored in order to better deny the claim.

TCDD is not harmless as C&P claims. Rather, TCDD is a potent human carcinogen, recognized as such worldwide, and recognized as such by every federal government agency, including the VA. Except...the VA pretends otherwise for the purpose of frustrating C-123 veterans’ claims.
(note: December 2015 – the Department of Justice released VA's admission that their "TCDD is harmless" statement was in error.)

VA Opposed on Its "Exposure" Definition; Word Redefined By VA To Deny C-123 Veterans' Claims

The VA continues to be challenged about their in-house, policy-driven redefinition of the word "exposure," redefined by adding "bioavailability" only to prevent legitimate Agent Orange exposure claims from C-123 transport veterans.

Challenger: Dr. Linda Birnbaum, Director of the National Institutes of Health/National Toxicology
Program and  Director, NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences:, asked about the VA redefinition of exposure:

In all my years as a toxicologist, I have never heard bioavailability as part of the exposure definition...In my opinion, "exposure" is the contact between a chemical (of any type) and the body. [June 26, 2013]" 

VA: "Exposure=contamination field+bioavailability." VA invented that illogical redefinition of exposure because the law requiring VA to care for Agent Orange-exposed veterans simply states "exposure" as the requirement.

VA and its Compensation and Pension Service, determined as always to frustrate veterans' disability claims, remade the word to their own liking so no matter how much proof the C-123 veterans might submit (touched it, drank it, bathed in it, used as a hair tonic, whatever) VA would deny any exposure having occurred.

But fundamental scientific terms can't legitimately be redefined just for  agency policy objectives – instead, we all have to play by the same rules and regulations, the same science, the same physics, the same language, the same law and rules of justice. Is the VA exempt somehow, able to invent, reinvent, redefine basics just to prevent veterans' claims?

But now, according to the Deputy Director for Post-Deployment Health, none of the C-123 veterans have been exposed. In a conversation with C-123 Chair Wes Carter, she explained that no of Vietnam War veterans had been exposed either, and probably not many of the Operation Ranch Hand spray veterans were ever exposed.

That insertion of "bioavailability" is what VA uses as their magic bullet, because VHA insists NO AGENT ORANGE VETERAN CAN EVER PROVE HIS/HER BIOAVAILABILITY event and were therefore, using the VA's new definition, were never exposed regardless of any ingestion, inhalation or dermal contact with Agent Orange.

Thus, Post-Deployment Health has directed that no C-123 veterans are even  to receive Agent Orange exams, even though VA policy is that ANY veteran believing himself/herself to have been exposed to military herbicides is entitled to an exam if requested. Again, her policy was confirmed in conversation with The C-123 Veterans Association.

Clearly, despite the Agent Orange Law of 1991, Title 38, commitments made in the Federal Register of 8 May 2001, and the requirement to be "veteran friendly," the VA is invested in preventing C-123 exposure claims and has fought hard for two years to deny us medical care and other exposure benefits.

Is this why VA's Director of VA's Compensation and Pension Services ordered C-123 veterans' claims denied on the basis that TCDD (the deadly, cancer-causing toxin in Agent Orange) "no conclusive evidence that TCDD exposure causes any adverse health effects." Imagine that: denying Agent Orange exposure benefits, provided for by law, by pretending Agent Orange is harmless?

Dr. Wayne Dwernychuk, retired scientist from Hatfield Consultants (a leading environmental sciences firm) was not reserved in his comments.  "Frankly, I am dumbfounded by the comment published by Mr. Tom Murphy...Either Mr. Murphy has missed the VA briefing session on the toxicity of TCDD or he genuinely has no idea of the work of the Institute of Medicine...Hundreds of eminent scientists regularly participate in the literature assessment of diseases related to exposure to TCDD...Obviously, Mr. Murphy has twisted science to prevent recognition of your valid claim for exposure to Agent Orange."

It is an amazing situation. Even the US government agencies responsible by law for these fundamental issues cannot get the VA to treat veterans correctly. VA rejected EPA confirmation. VA rejected US Public Health Service confirmation. VA rejected even the CDC Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) which made it clear: "ATSDR concluded aircrews operating in this, and similar environments, were exposed to TCDD." VA reacted by claiming the ATSDR scientists weren't even qualified to make such determinations, even though the ATSDR has reconfirmed their finding three separate times. 

Most recently, incoming ATSDR Acting Director Rear Admiral R. Ikeda (MD, US Public Health Service) said she has reviewed and stands behind the ATSDR C-123 exposure confirmation.

Will nothing will penetrate VA's barriers against C-123 claims? One or two snuck through (I'm thinking of LtCol Paul Bailey, receiving his VA award just two months before his death) but Compensation and Pension Services put a stop to that!

"Unscientific" was the conclusion by physicians and scientists, who complained to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs that Compensation and Pension Services was cheating C-123 veterans out of life-saving medical care.