In March, Veterans Affairs officials said they may have a
decision on adding four new diseases to the list of Agent Orange presumptive
benefits eligibility by the start of the summer. Five months later, they still
haven’t moved ahead.
“They told us they
were ready to go, and we haven’t gone anywhere,” said Rick Weidman, executive
director for policy at Vietnam Veterans of America. “It feels like they just
don’t want to spend any money on this.”
Vietnam veteran advocates feel a sense of urgency because the
the youngest who served there are in their early 60s.
Last November, researchers from the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering and Medicine announced they had compiled “sufficient
evidence” linking hypertension, bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, and
Parkinson’s-like symptoms with exposure to Agent Orange and other defoliants
used in Vietnam and surrounding countries in the 1960s and 1970s.
No comments:
Post a Comment