This weekend, I took my daughter to our local bakery for quiche when I bumped into an old friend of my father’s, Bruce Leinback, our city attorney.
They had both been in the Army together in Vietnam and the friend was asking about how my father is doing. I told him, “Not good. He has been bed-bound for three years. He sleeps 20 hours a day, is over 300 pounds now, and is in a lot of pain. The doctors don’t know what is wrong with him, but he has no balance and can’t walk.”
Bruce asked if my father had ever been checked for Agent Orange. I told him that one of the doctors down at Shands Hospital suspected this might be a factor.
Bruce encouraged us to look into it. Bruce said that Agent Orange had given him a very aggressive case of prostate cancer and he had only been in Vietnam for 8 months. My father had been in Vietnam for much longer and in an area where they used Agent Orange everywhere – along the perimeters of the camps, under the barracks, and around their drinking supply.
Then Bruce hit me with the real knowledge bomb: he said the effects of Agent Orange could be hereditary.
WHAT?!?!
I immediately looked this up on. Here is the first paragraph from Wikipedia on Agent Orange:
Agent Orange is a herbicide and defoliant chemical, one of the “tactical use” Rainbow Herbicides. It is widely known for its use by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand,[1] during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971.[2] It is a mixture of equal parts of two herbicides, 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D. In addition to its damaging environmental effects, traces of dioxin (mainly TCDD, the most toxic of its type)[3] found in the mixture have caused major health problems for many individuals who were exposed, and their offspring.
Wikipedia
OK – PLOT TWIST.
Time to start investigating this.
I will report back on what I find.
