Fred Wilcox - Scorched Earth

“I had a better understanding than most people of what it means when a scientist advocating for the chemical companies says, ‘Well, Dean, you can’t prove that dioxin causes anything.’ All that means is that no one has spent the time and money to do the requisite studies in Vietnam that are required to prove causation. Why haven’t the chemical companies or the US government done these kinds of studies? Certainly the American government doesn’t have the incentive. And the companies that manufactured Agent Orange don’t have the incentive.

“So the only place where you have the kind of mass exposure to dioxin that you could do a meaningful study with enough people, where you could do a high-powered study, would be in Vietnam.”

The Vietnamese have conducted scientific studies; however, some American scientists refuse to accept this research.

“In those scientists’ minds, the Vietnamese standards don’t rise to the ‘acceptable level of Western standards.’ And I put that in quotes.”

“Scientific research,” says Dean, “leaves little doubt that dioxin harms animals and human beings. Dioxin is a known carcinogen, and in terms of the other things—birth defects, miscarriages, and other illnesses—it is well established that dioxin causes these things in animals.

“I mean, you start to examine what effect this substance, dioxin, has on the human cell. And then you move on by feeding it to animals, and scientists have learned that dioxin interferes with the reproductive system, it causes birth defects, and it causes miscarriages and all kinds of cancers and tumors. So there’s a lot of evidence there.

“The chemical companies benefit from not doing the studies. That way, they can say that there is no evidence that dioxin harms human beings. After all, if they did the kind of studies I’m talking about, they might actually prove that what American, Korean, Australian veterans, New Zealand, the Vietnamese, and others are saying about dioxin is true.”

Dr. Wayne Dwernychuk, a senior Canadian scientist who worked the with Hatfield Consultants to locate the most contaminated areas in Vietnam, thinks there’s no need for more studies to prove that Vietnamese exposed to Agent Orange are in danger.

“My point has always been,” says Dwernychuk, “that the toxicity and potential health issues related to dioxin are not really disputed…. With this as a firm background, removing the exposure potential for hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to dioxin contaminated lands/food/sediments should be the primary goal…. If there are enough funds, which I can almost guarantee there won’t be, health studies on the Vietnamese population could proceed.” 5

The humidity is rising and the noise from JFK International makes it difficult to hear. We have to stop mid-sentence and wait for aircraft to gain altitude. Trinh suggests we move inside where it’s cool and quiet.

“It’s important,” Dean continues, “to remember that the wartime manufacturers of herbicides for use in Vietnam never intended to manufacture dioxin. They would not have wanted to do that. But at some point they did realize that dioxin is a byproduct of baking trichlorophenol, which is a component of 2,4,5-T, one half of Agent Orange. The chemical reaction to make trichlorophenol happens in an autoclave, which is something like an oven. It’s a machine that heats up this stuff. I guess you could say it cooks it. A couple of German researchers working for C. H. Boehringer Sohn Company back in the fifties published an article in a scientific journal identifying dioxin as being responsible for chloracne, a serious skin rash from which people who’ve been exposed to this chemical often suffer.

“C.H. Boehringer Sohn discovered a way to minimize the dioxin content in a substance by keeping down the temperature in the autoclave. Dow purchased this information from Boehringer Sohn, and the company knew how to reduce levels of dioxin when it started making Agent Orange in the early sixties.

“Dow, Monsanto, and Diamond Shamrock were able to make a batch of Agent Orange in about forty-five minutes, but if they’d lowered the temperatures, it would have taken a lot longer—possibly twelve hours—to make the same batch of herbicide. By keeping the autoclave temperatures higher, they made it more quickly and for a lot cheaper. Dow and other manufacturers of Agent Orange ignored the safety precautions because they wanted to make Agent Orange more quickly, and they wanted to make more of it.”

We pause for lunch and more coffee. It is Saturday. Dean might prefer to spend it puttering around the house, going to the beach, or relaxing with a good book in his comfortable living room. Dean has been giving talks on college campuses to students who want to learn about the Vietnam War. He tells them about Agent Orange, how once the defoliation campaign started, it kept expanding, covering more land, killing more trees, more food, and no one knew how to stop it. He understands that students might find it hard to believe that corporations were willing to profit from manufacturing and selling millions of gallons of deadly chemicals. Dean speaks in a soft, deliberate voice. He does not exaggerate or embellish. He doesn’t have to. Like any good horror story, this one tells itself.

According to the defendants’ lawyers, those living in a war-zone, or who just happen to be in one when fighting erupts, have no recourse to the law:

The Supreme Court has recognized for more than a century that no civil liability attaches to personal injuries sustained or property damages arising from combatant activities during war. To the contrary, the Court has made clear that “[t]he destruction or injury of property in battle, or in the bombardment of cities and towns, and in many other ways in the war, ha[s] to be borne by the sufferers alone as one of its consequences….” As the Court of Appeals explained in Koohi , “it simply does not matter for purposes of the ‘time of war’ exception whether the military makes or executes its decisions carefully or negligently, properly or improperly. It is the nature of the act and not the manner of its performance that counts.” 6

“There’s no dispute that the chemical companies knew about dioxin and did not tell the government what they knew while they were supplying it,” Dean explains. “But the argument Weinstein patched together is unconvincing. By the way, I took a class from Weinstein when I was in law school, on scientific evidence.

“Judge Weinstein claimed that the government knew just as much as the chemical companies about the dangers of dioxin because, he said, the US was going to build its own herbicide plant at Wellman Springs. Moreover, even before the defoliation campaign began in Vietnam, scientists at chemical weapons labs had adjoining offices with other government agencies that studied the effects of dioxin on cancer.

“Weinstein creates this very broad definition of government. The fact is that the US military knew nothing about the presence of dioxin in Agent Orange . Nor did the procurement people who purchased herbicides from the chemical companies know anything about dioxin. Nevertheless, Weinstein stretches his argument so far as to say that scientists at various regulatory agencies, not really connected with the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, knew about dioxin.

“He extrapolated from what scientists in individual agencies might have known to what the government, as an entity, had to have known .

“So the latest court of appeals panel had to be much more careful how they approached this case. ‘Okay,’ they told us, ‘you know what? We have evidence here that we did not have before in the last round of appeals. And you guys actually made a very good case for the chemical companies knowing about the dangers of dioxin, and not telling the government about that.’”