Date published: Tuesday, August 24, 2004
By Scott Beveridge, Staff writer

HANOI, Vietnam – The physician will be at ground zero once the battle is won over how to proceed with a controversial Agent Orange study in Vietnam.

Dr. Mark Rapoport, a former deputy New York health commissioner now living in Hanoi, plans to test the blood of select mothers where the herbicide was used in the Vietnam War as part of a comparative study on birth defects.

"We're 98 percent sure (the project) is within days of being approved," said Rapoport, 57, at his home on July 2.

Within weeks, however, the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Washington, D.C., delivers the news that the politically charged study is postponed yet again, this time for six months.

The committee of Vietnamese and U.S. health officials is still at the table, trying to resolve their differences, said Dr. Anne Sassaman, who heads the NIEHS panel from Washington, D.C. She said both sides are "proceeding cautiously" and cannot agree on human test subjects and research.

The $3 million study was announced in March 2002 when the former enemies agreed to talks at a landmark Agent Orange conference in Hanoi.

Millions of gallons of defoliants were sprayed by U.S. planes, helicopters, tanks and troops with backpacks during the war to destroy forests where Communist forces were thought to be hiding or clear land for military compounds.

In the three decades since, the Vietnamese government has claimed the herbicide laced with cancer-causing dioxin led to tens of thousands of birth defects and other medical problems.

There have been allegations Vietnam might discredit the study if it did not support the country's position that there are 2 million Agent Orange victims in the country, said Kenneth J. Herrmann, a New York professor and humanitarian in Danang, Vietnam. He said there also have been claims that Vietnam would not permit ecological studies that might show soil contamination and deliver a blow to its agricultural industries.

Herrmann said Vietnam has been extremely open to Agent Orange issues and that he doubts the allegations.

He is an advocate for Vietnamese who claim to have medical problems because of Agent Orange exposure, having collected 3,000 letters from victims to press for humanitarian relief.

His campaign is under way at the same time three Vietnamese are seeking damages in federal court in New York against 10 U.S. chemical companies, claiming they were sickened by Agent Orange exposure.

The NIEHS suspects poor nutrition, the lack of folic acid in the diets of pregnant women and other environmental concerns are among the causes of many birth defects in Vietnam.

"It's their country. I am not going to force science down their throat," Christopher Portier, NIEHS director of environmental toxicology, said in late June.

Like many humanitarians in Vietnam, Herrmann said there is more of a pressing need for federal support to help the victims, rather than spending time and money on research.

"Our refusal to admit this and to both help the victims and to clean up the mess we left in Vietnam are acts of barbarism," Herrmann said.

"Danang, that whole area was heavily defoliated," added Vietnam veteran George D'Angelo of Eighty Four.

"War is hell, but you have to look at the aftereffects," said D'Angelo, whose organization, the Friends of Danang of McMurray, raises money to help children who are victims of many legacies of the war.

Rapoport, meanwhile, faces other challenges in the developing country because it lacks modern medical laboratory testing equipment. The blood, if it is ever drawn, will need to be sent to a lab in another country.

"The (Vietnam) health system is not up to standards," said Rapoport, whose wife, Jane, manages grants here for Population Council, a nonprofit organization that promotes reproductive health.