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London Surgeons Help 'children Of Agent Orange'


SpiceMan

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Well, the US is planning action against Syria for chemical weapons' use. Glad to see they never went down that road. :rolleyes:

 

 

Slight difference: Agent Orange was used against plants. Mustard gas is used intentionally against people.

 

The military is always a bit slow to learn. No one seems to have thought about what effect AO might have on people. :p

 

One of my teachers had been in the Navy in WWII and told us about roaming around Nagasaki "sightseeing" right after the surrender. Everybody had to go see the nuclear bombed cities. Radiation poisoning ... what's that? He brought some souvenirs to class for us to handle - an alarm clock, melted bottles etc. He told us they were still radioactive enough to register on a geiger counter! Nice "show and tell" time that day. :p

 

Not to mention the Brits and Yanks that got stood up on islands in the South Pacific to watch the nuclear bomb blasts! A friend told me he is rated at 100% disability just for having been exposed. :banghead:

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The US Chemical Co (I think Dow) had an agent orange factory in little ol' NZ. I remember the fuss when in the '80s the ground had to be dug up and incinerated to get rid of the dioxins...

 

Correct, it was a JV between Ivon Watkins - DOW Chemicals now just called DOW Agrosciences .

 

http://www.bhopal.net/worldmap/new_zealand_more.html

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DOW has always given me sort of a creepy feeling.

 

I have a friend whose MD brother did his internship in the Army in chemical and biological warfare because his wife didn't like the alternative of being stationed in Puerto Rico. (WTF? Puerto Rico is a great place.) Anyway, the bro couldn't say much but he did mention working on developing all sorts of nasty "biological weapons" - of course, only to be used if the "other side" did so first. (Yeah,right.) He said they had bugs that could wipe out mankind globally, if they ever got out. Lots of sick minds in government service, Josef Mengele wasn't the only one.

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Flash,

 

My concerns about DOW are from an Engineering perspective and not an Ecological one, even though their environmental record is the worst in the industry.

 

Why is that DOW have all these issues and incidents where as other petrochemical companies don't? I have my own feelings but I keep them to myself and just turn down any work offered to me that involves DOW.

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I took these a few years ago when i was invited to visit a clinic in HCM. These kids had been abandoned as parents were not equiped to deal with their special needs. Very common for kids to be born with both cleft palates and club feet.....which itself is very unusual. Severe deformaties which I didn't want to photograph and lots of mentally disabled. They got very little assistance apart from private donors.

 

post-6949-0-84182100-1378960115_thumb.jpg post-6949-0-31080900-1378960149_thumb.jpg

 

post-6949-0-71915800-1378960201_thumb.jpg post-6949-0-04265700-1378960223_thumb.jpg

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I first heard about this maybe 10 years ago from a colleague from Vietnam. I wonder how many people in the US even know about it.

 

The US government is ultimately responsible for it, and the kids could be treated for a fraction of what is spent on senseless wars. On the other hand, why the hell isn't Hanoi doing more itself? :(

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What really annoyed me frash was that the big NGOs got all the money and wasted most of it. We were taken to their compound by one of the staff showing me around the clinic I visited and he showed me the 4 or 5 new buses sitting doing nothing. One of the obstacles facing him was a lack of transport to collect and deliver patients. This was one of the issues they were facing which limited the number of kids they could assist.

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