Brain Cancer and AO

[Berta]

Ben Krause, well known vets advocate, who is also a lawyer and a disabled veteran posted at his site today that John MCCain's brain cancer is an Agent Orange cancer, suggesting it is presumptive, which is not a fact.

A recent CAVC case was vacated for a widow whose Vietnam vet husband had glioblastoma, the same type of cancer John McCain was recently diagnosed with.

The decision is not precedent -setting.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/02/prweb5080394.htm

Other veterans ( and their survivors as this is a deadly type of cancer) have succeeded in AO awards for glioblastoma and there are many links  ,googable , to any vet with this serious type of cancer who was exposed to AO.

If anyone here needs to use my search feature ,much more will pop up:

www.google.com/search?q=glioblastoma+CAVC&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS695US695&oq=glioblastoma+CAVC&aqs=chrome..69i57.6987j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=va+links+brain+cancer+to+agent+orange+exposure+in+recent+court+decision

 

[Gastone]

As always, there's a chance I could be wrong. Senator Mccain served as a Navel Pilot stationed aboard an Aircraft Carrier in the S China Sea. He was shot down over North Vietnam and spent his  POW imprisonment in the North. Consequently no "Boots on the Ground" in South Vietnam.

If that's the case, there's no AO Exposure presumptive involved with his Cancer.

Semper Fi

[Berta]

Right- but my point was that anyone reading Krause's  article might think glioblastoma is a presumptive AO cancer.

 

And of course trying to get compensation for it  is certainly not on the Senator's mind.

But I would love to represent him if he did file a claim !!!!! 

I would fight over the word " anywhere" in the regulations and make the point that he never left service and was still in the Navy before ,during, and after his release.

The Agent Orange  regulations do not differentiate between North and South Vietnam. They do not confine "set foot in" to anywhere below the DMZ.

 

591 POWs were released during Operation Homecoming in 1973.

The “Hanoi Taxi”- a USAF C 141 , picked 20 of them up at Gia  Lam airport The Hanoi Hilton POWs,

others were sent to South Vietnam ( Saigon) where a C-9 A picked them up.

It was days away from the Paris Peace Accord deadline when the " Kissinger Twenty" - the POWs at Hanoi Hilton were released. March 1973. TV cameras rolled as they walked past their captors to the USAF Officers waiting for them. Mc Cain hobbled up to an officer and pointed to one of the Hanoi Prison guards and said on live TV, "That guy is one of the bastards who tortured me!"

In those days bad words never got on TV but his comment was not censored.

In my opinion, although he could hardly walk from his injuries, and might have used  a crutch when he first came out of the Hilton, Mc Cain certainly did have both feet on Vietnamese soil that day , -and the regulations do not cite South Vietnam only.

 

"For the purposes of VA compensation benefits, Veterans who served anywhere in Vietnam between January 9, 1962 and May 7, 1975 are presumed to have been exposed to herbicides, as specified in the Agent Orange Act of 1991.

Service in Vietnam means service on land in Vietnam or on the inland waterways of Vietnam. This includes Veterans who:

Set foot in Vietnam (This includes brief visits ashore, such as when a ship docked to the shore of Vietnam or when a ship operated in Vietnam's close coastal waters for extended periods and crew members went ashore, or smaller vessels from the ship went ashore with supplies or personnel. The Veteran further must provide a statement of personally going ashore.)

Served on a ship while it operated on the inland waterways of Vietnam"

https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/locations/vietnam.asp