diabetes Agent Orange Issues Set For September Hearing

[mozartplayer]

This article was posted online today 6/18/10, the gist of which is that Senator Webb has asked Secretary Shinseki to appear before a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on 9/23/10 to explain his decision to compensate veterans who have Parkinson's disease, ischemic heart disease, or hairy cell leukemia. The amendment that Senator Webb attached to HR 4899 passed attached to the Senate version of that bill, but both the Senate and House versions of that bill are now with the Senate-House conferees. If the bill passes with the amendment intact, it'll mean a delay of 60 days after the VA publishes the final regulation in the Federal Register unless perhaps the VA publishes it before the September 23rd Committee hearing. The last I knew, the VA was still working on its final version of the regulation before sending it to OMB where it could take up to 90 days for the fiscal review. In any event, my own guess is that we won't see the new regulation implemented any earlier than October, if ever. As one who has had both prostate cancer and hairy cell leukemia which I believe to be associated with exposure to Agent Orange, I would hate to see my claim delayed too many more months because it has already been pending since August of last year. I have already written to Senator Webb and both of my Senators and my Congressman expressing my disappointment at what appears to be an effort on the part of Senator Webb to delay or kill the new regulation. I appreciate his concern for the taxpayers' dollar, but he did not have a problem with being the primary architect of the post-9/11 GI bill which has a far higher projected 10-year cost than the proposed new VA reg adding the three diseases to the Agent Orange presumptive list.

Article posted today 6/18/10: http://www.jdnews.com/articles/hearing-79498-sept-agent.html

Agent Orange issues set for Sept. hearing

TOM PHILPOTT 2010-06-18 10:15:22 VA Secretary Eric Shinseki will get the Senate hearing he didn’t want.

Sen. James Webb, D-Va., says he will use a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing — rescheduled now for Sept. 23 — to have Shinseki explain his decision to compensate Vietnam veterans, and many surviving spouses, for three more ailments including heart disease.

Shinseki announced last October that ischemic heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and B-Cell leukemia will be added to the list of illnesses presumed caused by exposure to defoliants, including Agent Orange, used to clear jungle in combat areas during the war.

VA projects that the decision will cost $13.4 billion in 2010 alone as it will qualify a few hundred thousand more veterans for service-connected disability compensation.

Those veterans, it now appears, will have to wait at least a few more months before claims can be paid. And there is at least some doubt now they will be paid. That will depend on whether Webb and enough of his colleagues are dissatisfied with the science behind Shinseki’s decision.

In an interview in his Capitol Hill office Wednesday, Webb said he was surprised to find among line items in an emergency wartime supplemental bill (HR 4899) a few weeks ago $13.4 billion attributed to “veterans.” He asked staff to find out what it would fund.

“It came back this was the Agent Orange law,” Webb said. Webb, a highly-decorated Marine from combat service in Vietnam, said this deepened his skepticism over the soundness of that law and how it has been used.

“When the law was passed there were two areas that raised questions for me,” Webb explained. “One was the presumption of exposure for anyone who had been in Vietnam; 2.7 million people had an automatic presumption of exposure. And then the notion that the VA administrator, now the secretary of veterans’ affairs, has discretion based on scientific evidence to decide a service-connection” to various illnesses. “It’s very broad.”

Webb amended HR 4899 so claims can’t be paid on the three newly-named Agent Orange illnesses until 60 days after a final rule is published.

“This is an area where we have a responsibility to pump for more (information) to tell us specifically how they made the connection. The only appropriate way to do that is say, ‘Let’s fence the money for 60 days and get some clarification here.’”

Webb said he was unaware on finding the $13.4 billion in the bill that Shinseki had asked Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the VA committee, not to hold a hearing on this issue. Akaka had scheduled one for April, then rescheduled for early May when VA declined to send witnesses.

One theme he ran on in 2006, Webb said, was restoring a proper balance of power between the legislative and executive branches. Too much authority had been conceded to, or usurped by, recent administrations.

Webb said he even fired off a letter to President Obama last December challenging a claim he made as he prepared for a summit on climate change that he would return from Copenhagen with a binding agreement.

“I just felt compelled to say, ‘You do not have the constitutional authority to bind the United States to an international agreement. The Congress does.” Webb said.

Shinseki’s decision on Agent Orange strikes Webb as more proof too much power has been conceded to the executive branch.

It was the Carter administration, he said, that adopted a presumption “that everyone who was in Vietnam was exposed” to Agent Orange. At the time, he said, the decision wasn’t “onerous” on VA budgets because the department only had linked Agent Orange to some rare illnesses.

More recently, VA has found links to ailments generally associated with aging, committing VA to pay billions in additional compensation. Webb felt the scientific evidence linking Type II diabetes to Agent Orange in 2001 was soft. He is reluctant to say the same about the three illnesses Shinseki has endorsed until he hears his testimony.

But Webb does intend to question the science behind presuming everyone who served in Vietnam was exposed to defoliants. He knows his own Marine Company was, he said, as were many other units who were engaged in combat in the countryside or handled Agent Orange directly.

“On any given day in Vietnam they say about 10 percent of the people were actually out in direct combat. Percentages are actually higher than that because of rotations…But the majority of the people weren’t in combat” where defoliants were used. “That’s just the reality of it.”

The issue was handled with more precision, he suggested, in the late 1970s when Webb served as legal counsel on the House VA committee.

“The discussions were you could develop a chronological map overlay of where defoliants had been used, and then develop a nexus in someone’s service record on whether they had been in those areas. From that you could say whether these conditions would be presumptively acquired. Back then it was very small in numbers.”

“Everyone up here wants to help veterans — no one more than I do. But a lot of people have asked about this. They want to make sure we’re really (a) following the law and (b) taking care of people who are service connected. I don’t want to be the one person out here doing this. I know Chairman Akaka has joined me in his concerns. The main thing is let’s have Secretary Shinseki come forward and explain the causality.”

In our interview, Webb said VA wouldn’t publish a final regulation until after the Sept. 23 hearing. His staff later said the hearing might fall within the 60-day period, an indication VA officials plan to publish a final rule before the hearing. That would narrow Webb’s window to try to block compensation payments if he and colleagues decide such action is justified.

© Copyright 2010 Freedom Communications. All Rights Reserved.

[SgtAFMOB]

This Webb thing is going to get out of hand and is going to add to the VA Claims backlog. I was also Air force stationed at TSN for three months and walked by the Ranch Hand Planes to go to work as well as lived within a block and a half of their area on Charlie Row. I later made several brief trips to forward locations to assist in the operation at forward aristrips for Search and Destroy Operations. I spent seven months at Tay Ninh, the 196th Light Infantry Base Camp, Tay Ninh Provence, III Corps. I have a picture with Black Virgin Mountain behind me and that mountain alone received 118,000 gal of Agents Orange, White, Purple and Blue. The area within 5 to 20 miles of the base camp is completely Orange on the spray maps because of the Checko Report documented Ranch Hand Missions. I have a picture of a white banded barrel (you think anyone qued us in) we used in the construction of our bunker. The perimeter and assault chopper areas were defoliated and no record of those defoliations are available. I have pictures outside the perimeter where all trees are denuded in certain areas. As mentioned in another post AO deformed victims are still being born in the Tay Ninh Regional Hospital.

I am 30 percent rated for PTSD (I have tried for two months to get VA help to no avail, and live 136 miles from the nearest center) and my stressors were conceeded stating that my 201 file indicated that I had participated in Combat Operations against the enemy while at Tay Ninh and there were numerous fatalities. My records were destroyed in the1973 NPRC fire and I am the one who provided all my orders as well as comprehensive After Action and Lessons Learned reports that could not be refudiated. What Webb does not understand is that many of us were boots on the ground and combat related. We were the ones who supported that small percentage out in the field and when they went out we had to defend the base camps, when they got clobbered as diversionary tatctics. We also cleaned up their messes to include the handling of human remains repeatedly and I figure I smelled and tasted the smell of over 145 KIA's. I have been treated for hypertension, anexity since the age of 24, and had a significant MI sometime prior to my bypass surgery at the age of 49. I have spent thousands of dollars out of pocket expense to keep me afloat. I have five other disorders that are secondary to Ischemic Heart Disease that I did not file for in October 2009. With a Cardiologist and thalluium verified stress test my Left Ventricular EF of 39% qualifies me for 60% compensation. I don't care who reads this or what they think, but it is my intent to file this month for the secondary conditions, one at a time. Should IHD be blocked I have already begun claims for IHD as secondary and the secondary issues to IHD to PTSD as there is a wealth of scientific connective data out there and I have a pending nexus letter from my cardiologist. I will NOD and appeal any decision that is not in my favor or low balled and will seek legal assistance and appeal under the proposed new appeal period of 180 days. In otherwords I will create a paperwork nightmare but a correct and within policy version. I chaired a Discipline Committee at a Fedarl Prision for three years sat across from the offender, pronounced the verdict, signed my name to the document and handed the inmate a copy. These VA raters hide behind some stamped administraters signature, grow a set of you know whats.

This seems to some to be selfish, not rational , or playing poor baby, but I am going to get my issue one way or the other. I am tired of being a biproduct of an unpopular war, denegrated because I have no CIB, etc. I just hit the deck and returened fire without getting hit does that make me any less of a combatant that the turncoat. I suggest those of you who want to read about Webb go to Wikipedia, look at his denegrating comments regarding women when he was the Sec. of the Navy and gave an address at West Point using the analogy "thunder thighs" to describe women in the military. Also the comment that he only lasted a year in that position, before turning his regisnation. President Regans memours indicate he was only too glad to see him go. He was involved in the 9mm affair entering the Capitol Building and a staffer took the beef (I wonder why he packs, must be popular). I am doing everything I can to generate interests in our plight and as a Vietnam Vet who has experienced disgrace and discrimination I am not going down as a wuss without a fight. I have a former POW, Senator (or Staffers) who cannot manage a response indicating his position on this issue and he is up for re-election, guess what he was a POW for 5 years I have lived in this messed up body for 44 years, were even and it's time for a change.

[rotorhead]

SgtAFMOB, It's almost like you are listening to my thoughts. I am not taking anymore BS from these VA pricks. They have awakened a sleeping giant. I am sick and tired of begging for what I gave 18 months of the most formative years of my life. I WAS NOT AND NEVER WAS A BABY KILLER, a coward who ran off to Canada, or hid behind daddy's candy ass, or kept getting deferments so I did not have to do my duty as a AMERICAN CITIZEN!!!

I am happy for those of you who have got yours, now I'm going to get mine. This bastard Webb hid this amendment so it would slide by in the darkness of night, just like every thing else that is coming out of that pi** hole in DC. We were poisoned by this stuff and they know it. It's time to pay. I'm tired of them twisting my words, out right lying, and finding anyway to turn down our legitimate claims.

I will beg no more.

[Berta]

"From 1962 to 1971, US military sprayed herbicides over Vietnam to strip the thick jungle canopy that could conceal opposition forces, to destroy crops that those forces might depend on, and to clear tall grasses and bushes from the perimeters of US base camps and outlying fire-support bases. Because of continuing uncertainty about the long-term health effects of the sprayed herbicides on Vietnam veterans, Congress passed the Agent Orange Act of 1991. The legislation directed the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to request the Institute of Medicine to perform a comprehensive evaluation of scientific and medical information regarding the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used in Vietnam. 

Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2008 is the eighth report in this series. The authoring committee found suggestive but limited evidence that exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used during the Vietnam War is associated with an increased chance of developing ischemic heart disease and Parkinson's disease for Vietnam veterans. '

http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2009/Veterans-and-Agent-Orange-Update-2008.aspx

“Based on the scientific evidence reviewed in this report as well as the cumulative findings of research reviewed in the previous Veterans and Agent Orange reports, the committee finds that there is limited/suggestive evidence of an association between exposure to the herbicides used in Vietnam or the contaminant dioxin and Type 2 diabetes. This is a change in classification from previous Veterans and Agent Orange reports, which found inadequate/insufficient evidence to determine whether an association existed. 3"

2000

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9982&page=2

Seems to me that the terms "limited" and " suggestive" from IOM were strong enough for the DMII AO regs -but now not good enough for the IHD regs?

[stillhere]

Th VA will never say out right that spraying AO in Vietnam had any effects other than killing off forest cover. That is the reason the IOM uses the term limited suggestive for the cause of any of the diseases associated to AO presume list.

I agree though that if limited/suggestive was good enough to get all the others listed then it should be good enough to get any and all diseases added that show the same results!

[mesaron]

It is already with the OMB, see link

http://www.reginfo.g...4&RIN=2900-AN54

Searched the net last night. I found that the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC) has ordered VA Secretary Sinsek to publish the new Agent Orange Presumptive Rules. He had to sign the Court's Order by Monday, July 19, 2010. (Docket No. 949)