Reply #28: A Book: Agent Orange:Collateral Damage in Viet nam

[leftchick]

<snip>
Agent Orange:
"Collateral Damage" in Viet Nam
January 2003
by Philip Jones Griffiths

When I was covering the war in Viet Nam there were reports from Ha Noi in 1967 claiming that millions of people had been victims of chemical warfare. Officials in Saigon dismissed these as crude propaganda and for us journalists in the South there was little opportunity to verify claims made by the North.

In the summer of 1969 four Saigon newspapers ran stories with pictures of deformed babies born to women who had been sprayed with Agent Orange. The South Vietnamese government argued that the deformities were caused by venereal diseases and President Thieu closed down the papers for "interfering with the war effort." After such moves, tracking down any victims proved difficult.

In 1970 I heard stories that babies were being born without eyes. Remembering my time working in hospitals, as a pharmacist, in London, rumour had it then that the staff induced acidosis in a baby born seriously deformed (killing the child) to protect the mother from the trauma of seeing her baby. I assumed something similar could happen in the hospitals and orphanages of Viet Nam, except I reckoned, in those run by Catholics.

Over the next few months I visited as many such places as I could find. In almost all cases I was denied access, usually by polite smiling nuns. At the risk of sounding paranoid I became convinced they had been told to keep the press away.

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0401/griffiths_intro.html

there is a link to photo galleries at the site with more graphic photos. Children born with deformities stared showing up within the first couple of years after the use of Agent Orange. There is also a link to help out these people abandoned by the US government.