History of the Vietnam war for people with attention deficit disorder

[August]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Does it really matter what it was designed to do? I mean, Zyklon B wasn't
designed to kill people either.

Yeah I'd say it does.

Look fellas. My father died from cancer and other medical problems the government has determined was caused by exposure to Agent Orange during his tour of duty in Vietnam so I have far more reason than any of you to abhor the stuff but the fact of the matter is it wasn't employed to kill people and if we knew then what we know now about the stuff we wouldn't have used it.

You can't say that about the Germans use of Zyklon B or the Soviets use of Yellow Rain in Afghanistan.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by August

[...]if we knew then what we know now about the stuff we wouldn't have used it.

I must confess, my knowledge about Agent Orange is very limited, so I had to
resort to some research. But, it seems that while the effects weren't known
completely, there were suspicions and even a note to the US government from
the company that manufactured 2,4,5-T in 1952 that if overheated during the
manufacturing process it would produce TCDD i.e. the really bad stuff. Today
we know that TCDD was the stuff that caused most of the health issues and
deaths, so for whatever reason said note was ignored or someone balls'd up.

In 1969 it was told to the public that 2,4,5-T indeed had that really bad stuff in it,
yet the sprayings continued for two more years.

Now, I do agree with you that it can't be directly compared to the intentional
gassings by Soviets, but someone made the decision to use AO on not only
forests but farmlands which usually are pretty near to villages and such.
And by doing so, caused some pretty severe problems to the local population
in the form of famine, which even was the desired effect of the sprayings
(to deny VC from possibly food supply and force locals out of the area).

So, the bottomline is that eventho AO wasn't mean't to kill anyone, it did.
And trying to justify it by saying "we didn't know" isn't entirely correct. Even
if you forget TCDD for a moment, "there was already a large body of
scientific evidence linking 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D to serious negative
health effects and ecological damage."

Now if you'll excuse me, I go and get wasted.