The Time Is NOW!

WEDNESDAY November 4, 2015 has been designated as TELEPHONE CALL IN DAY for you to contact your senators and urge them to co-sponsor S.901 - Toxic Exposure Research Act of 2015 and TELEPHONE CALL IN DAY for you to contact your representatives and urge them to co-sponsor H.R.1769 - Toxic Exposure Research Act of 2015.

Please spread the word to veterans, families, friends, and  neighbors to help us with this important legislation. Hopefully if we clog the telephone lines with these calls the legislators will know just how important these bills are to us and our children.  Also we need to add to  our calls the Blue Water Navy bills which are senate bill S.681 - Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2015 and house bill H.R.969 - Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2015.

MCB Camp LeJeune: The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's (ATSDR) Meetings Announcement

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) invites the public to hear from the authors of a group of health studies that have been conducted to understand the impact of past exposure to contaminated drinking water at U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The authors will discuss the study results during a public meeting and Community Assistance Panel meeting that will take place in Tampa, FL on December 4-5, 2015. The authors will also be available to address questions about the studies and their results during the public meeting.

For more information about the health studies and other work done by ATSDR at Camp Lejeune, please visit  

( http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/sites/lejeune/index.html.).

H.R.2622: Fort McClellan Health Registry Act

Fort McClellan Health Registry Act

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2622

SUMMARY:

Directs the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) to establish and maintain a special record to be known as the Fort McClellan Health Registry containing the name of each individual who, while serving in the Armed Forces, was stationed at Fort McClellan, Alabama, during the period beginning on January 1, 1935, and ending on May 20, 1999, and who: (1) applies for care or services from the VA; (2) files a claim for compensation on the basis of any disability which may be associated with such service; (3) dies and is survived by a spouse, child, or parent who files a claim for dependency and indemnity compensation on the basis of such service; (4) requests a health examination from the VA; or (5) receives such health examination and requests inclusion in the Registry. Requires the Secretary, upon request, to provide such health examination, as well as consultation and counseling with respect to examination results.

Illnesses, Deaths Spur FDA Warning on Hep C Drugs

http://www.webmd.com/hepatitis/news/20151023/illnesses-deaths-spur-fda-warning-on-hepatitis-c-drugs

FRIDAY, Oct. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Reports of deaths and illnesses occurring soon after use are prompting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to issue warnings on two drugs used to fight the hepatitis C virus.

The drugs, called Viekira Pak and Technivie, appeared linked to serious liver damage in patients with advanced liver disease, the agency warned in a statement issued Thursday.

Of 26 cases reported worldwide where use of the medications has been the possible or probable cause of illness, 10 patients either died or required organ transplant after liver failure, and 16 patients had some form of liver dysfunction. In most cases, liver damage occurred within one to four weeks of patients starting treatment, the FDA said.

The cases occurred after the two drugs were approved by the FDA -- Viekira Pak in December of 2014 and Technivie in July of 2015, the statement said. The agency believes that there may be other cases that have gone unreported.

Based on the reports, the FDA is now warning that "Viekira Pak and Technivie may cause serious liver injury, including life-threatening liver failure, mainly in patients with underlying advanced liver disease."

And, "as a result," the agency added, "we are requiring the manufacturer [AbbVie] to add new information about this safety risk to the drug labels."

The FDA says that anyone taking Viekira Pak or Technivie who begins experiencing "fatigue, weakness, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, yellow eyes or skin, or light-colored stools" should contact their doctor immediately, as these symptoms might indicate liver injury.

"Patients should not stop taking these medicines without first talking to their health care professionals," the FDA added, because "stopping treatment early could result in drug resistance to other hepatitis C medicines."

Viekira Pak and Technivie are used to treat patients with chronic hepatitis C, an infection that can last a lifetime and lead to serious liver and other health problems, including cirrhosis, liver cancer and death. These drugs lower the amount of hepatitis C virus in the body by preventing it from multiplying and may slow down the disease, the FDA statement explained.

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Portion of Agent Orange Act allowed to expire

http://www.cnjonline.com/2015/10/19/portion-of-agent-orange-act-allowed-to-expire/
Almost three weeks ago, the House and Senate veterans affairs committees quietly allowed a provision of the Agent Orange Act of 1991 to expire.

How significant that will be for Vietnam veterans and their benefits is disputed.

Committee staff and the Department of Veterans Affairs agree the change has not impacted the VA secretary’s authority to decide to expand the list of diseases presumed connected to wartime herbicide exposure.

But veteran advocates and at least one lawmaker suggest the change is intended to dampen VA cost risks and perhaps ease political pressure on the secretary and Congress facing a potential tsunami of disability claims.

That scenario assumes that a final review of medical science will establish a stronger link between Agent Orange and hypertension (high blood pressure), a condition that the Center for Disease Control says is so common it afflicts a third of the U.S. adult population.

VA asked Congress to keep the Agent Orange law intact five more years. Rep. Timothy J. Walz, D-Minnesota, a VA committee member, offered a compromise, a bill to leave the law unchanged for two years, long enough so its secretarial review requirements held during VA consideration of a final report of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences on health conditions associated with Agent Orange.

The VA committees declined to back these delays because, said a House committee staff member, under separate law “the secretary already has authority to make such (presumption) decisions, and we felt he did not need to be compelled by (the Agent Orange) law to do so.”

The provision that “sunset” Oct. 1 required the secretary to adhere to certain standards and procedures in determining if additional diseases associated with herbicide exposure should be presumed service connected. Vietnam War veterans diagnosed with ailments on the presumptive list qualify for VA disability pay and medical care. 

AO victim's lawyers say defendant making many irrational requests

http://vietnamnews.vn/society/277274/ao-victims-lawyers-say-defendant-making-many-irrational-requests.html
PARIS (VNS) — Lawyers representing Vietnamese-French Agent Orange victim Tran To Nga in a lawsuit against 26 US chemical companies said the defendant continued to make irrational requests in order to prolong the case.
Talking to Vietnam News Agency correspondents in Paris after the latest working session with judges and defence lawyers at the Ervy Court on Thursday, lawyers Amelie Lefebvre and Bertrand Repolt from the Paris-based William Bourdon Forestier law firm said that the defendant's lawyers once again asked for documents proving that Nga used to work at dioxin-sprayed areas – such as working contracts, paycheck receipts and evidence proving the linkage between herbicides and her diseases.
Repolt said those requests were unreasonable at this stage of the trial, as hearings had not yet started. In addition, demanding proof of payroll for hours worked 40 to 50 years ago was unrealistic.
Regarding the accuracy of translated documents, Lefebvre said that the inaccurate translation of several words was unavoidable in hundreds, or even thousands of pages of documents, but such mistakes cannot render the entire documents incomprehensible.
The lawyers also said the plaintiff was expected to undergo new medical tests at a clinic appointed by the court.
At the meeting, the judge also announced that a deadline will be set for US companies' representatives to respond to plaintiff lawyers' conclusions in the lawsuits. The two parties' lawyers will meet again on December 3 to discuss the timetable for hearing sessions.
In May 2014, Nga, born in 1942, filed a lawsuit against 26 US chemical firms for producing chemical toxins sprayed by the US army during the war in Viet Nam, causing serious harm to the community, her children and herself.
The complaint and related documents were filed with the Crown Court of Evry in the suburbs of Paris.
Nga graduated from university in Ha Noi in 1966 and became a war correspondent for the Liberation News Agency, now the Vietnam News Agency. She worked in some of the most heavily AO/Dioxin-affected areas in southern Viet Nam such as Cu Chi, Ben Cat and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, ultimately experiencing the effects of contamination herself.
Among her three children, the first died of heart defects and the second suffers from a blood disease.
In 2009, Nga, who has contracted a number of acute diseases, appeared as a witness at the Court of Public Opinion in Paris, France against the US chemical companies.
From 1961 to 1971, US troops sprayed more than 80 million litres of herbicides – 44 million litres of which were AO, containing nearly 370kg of dioxin – over southern Viet Nam.
Around 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to the toxic chemical. Many of the victims have died, while millions of their descendants are living with deformities and diseases as a direct result of the chemical's effects. — VNS

VA Seeks Presumptive-Disability Status for Camp Lejeune Veterans

http://www.usmedicine.com/agencies/department-of-veterans-affairs/va-seeks-presumptive-disability-status-for-camp-lejeune-veterans/
WASHINGTON — The VA is beginning the process of amending its regulations to establish presumptive-disability status for veterans who have certain diseases linked to contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune.
By establishing presumptive status, it is presumed that the disease was caused by service, making it easier for veterans to obtain disability benefits.
In a recent announcement, the VA said it is reviewing potential presumptive service connection for kidney cancer, angiosarcoma of the liver and acute myelogenous leukemia, which it said “are known to be related to long-term exposure to the chemicals that were in the water at Lejeune from the 1950s through 1987.”
“The chemicals are benzene, vinyl chloride, trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, which are known as volatile organic compounds, used in industrial solvents and components of fuels,” the agency explained. (For more on Camp Lejeune and cancer, see the Oncology Focus.)
Working with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and potentially the National Academy of Sciences “to evaluate the body of scientific knowledge and research related to exposure to these chemicals and the subsequent development of other diseases,” adding, “VA will carefully consider all public comments received when determining the final scope of any presumptions,” the VA explained.
A study from ATSDR researchers, published last month, linked the contaminated water to higher rates of early onset male breast cancer. Previous studies from the same group had found associations between the chemicals at the North Carolina base and a range of cancers.
Lawmakers applauded the announcement.
“The evidence has been accumulating for years now — many of those who lived or worked at Camp Lejeune in years past developed certain diseases after exposure to contaminated drinking water. Compensating these victims, our nation’s heroes and their families, is simply the right thing to do,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC).
Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), a key advocate for those impacted by the contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, said he was “disappointed that we had to pressure the VA to do the right thing for our veterans in the first place.”
“The scientific research is strong, and the widespread denials of benefits will soon end,” Burr said. “Now, these veterans and their families members will not have to fight for benefits they are due.”
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Contact your Senator & Representatives NOW and ask them to Co-sponsor S.901 & H.R. 1769 - the Toxic Exposure Research Act of 2015

S. 901 - Toxic Exposure Research Act of 2015

 H.R. 1769 - Toxic Exposure Research Act of 2015

What your father did before you were born could influence your future

https://theconversation.com/what-your-father-did-before-you-were-born-could-influence-your-future-48857
It might not just be expectant mothers who have to pay attention to their lifestyle. Now a new study published in Science could be relevant to a growing body of research looking at ways in which the lifestyle and environment of men before they become fathers could influence the lives of their children and grandchildren.
We know that many human traits, such as weight, height, susceptibility to disease, longevity or intelligence, can be partly inherited, but researchers have so far struggled to identify the precise genetic basis for this. This may partly be due to limitations in our understanding of how genetics works, but now there is growing interest in the potential for something called “epigenetics” to explain this heritability.
Epigenetics refers to the information in the genome over and above that contained in the DNA sequence. This information takes a number of forms, but the most popular ones scientists have studied relate to the chemical modification (known as methylation and acetylation) of DNA and the proteins called histones that together make up the human genome.
This epigenetic information – which influences which copies of the genes in our DNA are “expressed”, or used – may be passed from one generation to another during reproduction. It can even persist within a lifetime in a person’s tissues and organs, even as their cells are replenished.
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Media: Is the US ignoring military burn pits’ harm to Middle East civilians?

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2015/oct/media-is-the-us-ignoring-military-burn-pits2019-harm-to-middle-east-civilians
The “new Agent Orange”: US media coverage of toxic burn pits during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars excludes the health impacts to civilians, reflecting a historical pattern 
October 16, 2015

By Brian Bienkowski
Environmental Health News
The U.S. media has failed to expose the civilian toll of recent wars by largely ignoring burn pits’ toxic effects on local people, a U.S. researcher argues in a new report, suggesting the burn pits are this generation’s Agent Orange.
The coverage gap helps legitimize war and overlooks the undeniable humanitarian impacts, said Eric Bonds, an assistant professor of sociology and researcher at the University of Mary Washington.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, things such as plastics, Styrofoam, electronics and unexploded weapons were burned in large pits, sending toxics into the air and people’s lungs. Bonds surveyed major U.S. newspapers from 2007 to 2014, and found that of 49 stories that mentioned wartime burn pits, only one mentioned civilian impacts on par with that of soldiers.
This “silence and selective attention” of the U.S. media extends to the U.S. government and researchers
who are well aware of what toxics in the air might do to local citizens, said Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an independent environmental toxicologist who studies the environmental toll of recent Middle East conflicts.
“This makes me, as a public health researcher, feel extremely uneasy,” said Savabieasfahani, who won the 2015 Rachel Carson prize for her research in the Middle East.
In comparing the open pit burning to Agent Orange used during Vietnam, Bonds points out the U.S. government has performed some small scale cleanup of Agent Orange-contaminated areas, but has never made amends with the Vietnamese who were most affected and said the burn pits are on the same track.
“Even as the U.S. government establishes a ‘burn pit registry’ to study the impacts of toxic pollution on soldiers, it is on course to leave Iraqi and Afghan victims exposed to burning-trash fumes unacknowledged and uncompensated,” Bonds wrote in his study published this month in the journal Environmental Politics.
As U.S. soldiers have returned home over the past decade many have complained of various illnesses—fatigue, respiratory problems, rashes, muscle pain—linked to the pits.
Stories have trickled out on such impacts to soldiers but rarely mention that the pollution doesn’t stop at military borders or barricades and would similarly impact local people, Bonds said, adding that drawing attention to soldiers' illness is important and should continue. 
"This makes me, as a public health researcher, feel extremely uneasy."-Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, independent environmental toxicologistSavabieasfahani has found links between the burn pits and birth defects in nearby Iraq communities. Also, along with colleagues, she found the same type of magnesium and titanium in the hair samples of children with neurological disorders in Hawijah, a city taken over by U.S. military in 2003, as was found in the lung tissues of U.S soldiers that served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S. military burned waste there from 2003 to 2010.
Savabieasfahani, along with researchers from the University of Washington, is petitioning the U.S. government to bolster the federal burn pit registry, and provide health care to both veterans and the residents of Iraq and Afghanistan exposed to burn pits. 
“The U.S. military has a poor environmental record and an even poorer record for cleaning up its bases, especially those located outside of the United States,” the authors wrote, calling the Pentagon the “largest polluter on earth.”
Bonds said the lack of media coverage is important because it’s how people learn about the world.
“A lot of time when we think of Iraq or Afghanistan, we think of them as war zones and not places where people are living, working, trying to raise families,” he said.
“Unfortunately this [lack of coverage] is symptomatic of that thinking.”

Agent Orange Linked to Increased Risk of MGUS in Some Vietnam Veterans

https://www.mskcc.org/blog/agent-orange-linked-increased-risk-mgus-some-vietnam-veterans
Fifty years after the US Air Force began spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam, new research shows that veterans exposed to the herbicide are more than twice as likely to develop monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), a precursor to multiple myeloma.
A team of researchers led by Ola Landgren, Chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Myeloma Service, analyzed serum samples from 459 US Air Force personnel involved in aerial herbicide spray missions during the Vietnam War, as well as 459 samples from veterans who served there at the same time but were uninvolved in the spraying missions.

All of these veterans served between 1962 and 1971, when the US military dropped more than 19 million gallons of herbicides in Southeast Asia during Operation Ranch Hand.
Researchers tested for the presence of MGUS and also concentrations of TCDD, a contaminant of Agent Orange that’s been classified as a human carcinogen since 1997.
They found 7.1 percent of Ranch Hand veterans had MGUS, a precursor of multiple myeloma, compared with only 3.1 percent of the comparison group, says Dr. Landgren — a more than twofold higher risk. The risk of getting MGUS was significantly higher among veterans younger than 70 years of age.
The researchers also found that those vets who developed MGUS had higher TCDD levels in their blood samples.
 “This provides the first direct scientific evidence that there is a link between Agent Orange and the development of multiple myeloma [in Ranch Hand participants],” Dr. Landgren explains.
The findings were published in JAMA Oncology on September 3.

Wide Use and Exposure

Agent Orange was the most widely used herbicide combination sprayed during the Vietnam War, according to a 2003 Department of Veterans Affairs report. Most adverse events linked to it are blamed on TCDD.
The herbicide was used to protect US troops on the ground by stripping the forests, thereby depriving enemy soldiers of protective foliage. Agent Orange was first used in 1965, according to a 2003 Department of Veterans Affairs report. More than 11 million gallons of the chemical were used as tactical herbicides.

Dr. Landgren advises Vietnam veterans to get a simple blood test to identify MGUS. Research shows that early detection of MGUS results in better outcomes for those who do develop multiple myeloma.

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Agent Orange law changes as cost fears surface

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2015/10/15/agent-orange-law-changes-cost-fears-surface/73979188/
Two weeks ago, the House and Senate veterans affairs committees quietly allowed a provision of the Agent Orange Act of 1991 to expire. How significant that will be for Vietnam veterans and their benefits is disputed.
Committee staff and the Department of Veterans Affairs agree the change has not impacted the VA secretary’s authority to decide to expand the list of diseases presumed connected to wartime herbicide exposure.
But veteran advocates and at least one lawmaker suggest the change is intended to dampen VA cost risks and perhaps ease political pressure on the secretary and Congress facing a potential tsunami of disability claims.
That scenario assumes that a final review of medical science will establish a stronger link between Agent Orange and hypertension (high blood pressure), a condition that the Center for Disease Control says is so common it afflicts a third of the U.S. adult population
VA asked Congress to keep the Agent Orange law intact five more years.  Rep. Timothy J. Walz, D-Minn., a VA committee member, offered a compromise, a bill to leave the law unchanged for two years, long enough so its secretarial review requirements held during VA consideration of a final report of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences on health conditions associated with Agent Orange.
The VA committees declined to back these delays because, said a House committee staff member, under separate law “the secretary already has authority to make such [presumption] decisions, and we felt he did not need to be compelled by [the Agent Orange] law to do so.”
The provision that “sunset” Oct. 1 required the secretary to adhere to certain standards and procedures in determining if additional diseases associated with herbicide exposure should be presumed service connected.  Vietnam War veterans diagnosed with ailments on the presumptive list qualify for VA disability pay and medical care.
The expired provision also set a timetable for the secretary to accept or reject IOM findings and required him to explain in writing if he declined to add IOM identified conditions to the presumptive list.
Walz told colleagues at a hearing last week they effectively “allowed the Agent Orange Act to expire” and “it’s altogether possible” the next IOM report, due in March, will support adding hypertension and stroke to the presumptive list.  Consequently, Walz said, “literally hundreds of thousands of people” will be able to point to scientific data showing they experienced health consequences from exposure to Agent Orange.
“And the pressure is going to be on,” he warned.

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