VVA to VA: Don’t Wait for Us to Die: Grant Association to Agent Orange Exposure
For Parkinson’s, Heart Disease, Hypertension
This release from Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) is related to our headline
SPECIAL REPORT: Agent Orange Directly Linked to Heart Disease
After reviewing scientific studies of the past few years, the Institute of Medicine (IOM)of the National Academy of Sciences has determined there is "limited or suggestive evidence" of an association between Parkinson’s disease and ischemic heart disease with exposure to Agent Orange. With these findings John Rowan, the National President of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) issued the following media release on July 24, 2009
Robert L. Hanafin
Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired
GS-14, U.S. Civil Service-Retired
Life Member, VVA
Veterans Advocacy Editor
VT News Network &
Our Troops News Ladder
VVA to VA: Don’t Wait for Us to Die:
Grant Association to Agent Orange Exposure
For Parkinson’s, Heart Disease, Hypertension
"We thank the IOM for their efforts and applaud them for their conclusions," said John Rowan, National President of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). "Now, we urge the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to immediately make Vietnam veterans with either of these conditions eligible for disability compensation as well as health care, and we will petition him to do precisely this.
"We also urge the Secretary to reconsider hypertension, which the IOM, in its 2006 report concerning Vietnam veterans and Agent Orange, also found elevated evidence of an association," Rowan said.
"We do believe that the IOM must focus on what we consider to be the very real association between a veteran’s exposure while serving in Southeast Asia and the birth defects, learning disabilities, and cancers, not only in his children but in his grandchildren as well," Rowan said. "We continue to get far too many calls from the children of veterans who wonder if their father’s experiences in Vietnam -and along the demilitarized zone in Korea in 1968 and 1969-have any connection with their health issues and now those of their children.
"Let’s not wait until we die, and for our children to be forgotten," Rowan said. "The time for real action is now."
Readers are more than welcome to use the articles I’ve posted on Veterans Today, I’ve had to take a break from VT as Veterans Issues and Peace Activism Editor and staff writer due to personal medical reasons in our military family that take away too much time needed to properly express future stories or respond to readers in a timely manner.
My association with VT since its founding in 2004 has been a very rewarding experience for me.
Retired from both the Air Force and Civil Service. Went in the regular Army at 17 during Vietnam (1968), stayed in the Army Reserve to complete my eight year commitment in 1976. Served in Air Defense Artillery, and a Mechanized Infantry Division (4MID) at Fort Carson, Co. Used the GI Bill to go to college, worked full time at the VA, and non-scholarship Air Force 2-Year ROTC program for prior service military. Commissioned in the Air Force in 1977. Served as a Military Intelligence Officer from 1977 to 1994. Upon retirement I entered retail drugstore management training with Safeway Drugs Stores in California. Retail Sales Management was not my cup of tea, so I applied my former U.S. Civil Service status with the VA to get my foot in the door at the Justice Department, and later Department of the Navy retiring with disability from the Civil Service in 2000.
I’ve been with Veterans Today since the site originated. I’m now on the Editorial Board. I was also on the Editorial Board of Our Troops News Ladder another progressive leaning Veterans and Military Family news clearing house.
I remain married for over 45 years. I am both a Vietnam Era and Gulf War Veteran. I served on Okinawa and Fort Carson, Colorado during Vietnam and in the Office of the Air Force Inspector General at Norton AFB, CA during Desert Storm. I retired from the Air Force in 1994 having worked on the Air Staff and Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon.
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