Document 91GEDyQQNKL2meD6ejEzE4kr7

Monsanto ( -O! l. } *TE ir~T TO D R Ris hop - A 3N B March 19, 1980 AAR 2 0 1980 Mr. R. T. Berendt - E2ND Mr. J. E. McKee - A3NB Mr. J. T. Nolan - D1A Mr. M. C. Throdahl - DID Dr. C. F. Callis - B2SA Dr. VL. R. Gaffey - C2SH Mr. F. J. Holzapfel - B2SC Dr. W. J. McCarville - A3NC Dr. F. C. Meyer - C2SH Mr. P. S. Park - E2NE Mr. R. M. Scott - 1670 Dr. E. Tillman - A2SB Mr. B. J. Wander - C2SA Mr. P. R. Wilkins - 1650 - F.Y.I., enclosed is an approved copy of Monsanto's official position on the "Agent Orange" issue. This material will be the subject of a broad i n t e m a l / e x t e m a l communications effort over the next several weeks. I've also enclosed a major three-part feature on Agent Orange from The (Baltimore) Evening S u n . Don't let its length deter you from reading it". I t ks well worth the effort and easily the most balanced, fair, comprehensive treatment of the subject I've ever seen in the news media. Indeed, it says things and makes points that I've suspected for a long time to be truly motivating factors, but for obvious reasons couldn't very well say in a Monsanto statement. I do intend' to include this series in packets of information we supply on request to interested parties, including other news media sources. D R B :ec Enclosures * "Dan R. Bishop CG4495 SUBJECT TO PROTECTIVE ORDER. I IMORE, MARYLAND WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20,. 1980 Vietnam veterans' fear, rage focus on 'deadly fog' Did Agent Orange, the Vietnam W ar herbicide, leave a legacy of sick v eteran s and deformed children? Thousands of angry V ietnam v eteran s claim it did, and during the last few years th eir bitter charges have grown into a m ajo r n ational controversy. The Agent Orange question is highly em otional, but are there facts behind the feelings? In a three-part series beginning today, The Evening Sun e ja m in e s the issue and the scientific efforts to determine 'whether the veterans' fears are real or imagined. By J on Franklin and Alan Doelp 'hree years ago, Maude de Victor sent the V ret waves of fear rippling through the na tion's 2.5 million Vietnam War veterans who may have been,exposed to Agent Orange. Ms. de Victbr was a Veterans Administra tion bureaucrat in Chicago who processed disa bility claims from Vietnam veterans. She thought she saw a pattern in the veterans' symptoms. The claims that moved across her desk spoke of cancer, deformed children, numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, skin rashes, liver disease, loss of sex drive, radical mood changes and generalized weakness. She associ ated those symptoms with poisoning by chlo rinated hydrocarbons. Agent Orange, the defoliant used on the Vietnamesejungle. was contaminated with one of the deadliest of those hydrocarbons. 2,3,7,8-tet- rachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin or. as it later came to be known, dioxin. Ms. de Victor took her suspicions to veter ans' groups in Chicago, and they talked to a local television newsman. The result was a CBS network documentary, "Agent Orange: Vietnam's Deadly Fog." That documentary, and others that followed, hit the veterans' community like a uomb. Many Vietnam veterans were still angry over the handling of the war and the cold welcome they received when they returned home, and the pa rade of sick and dying veterans across the tele vision screen revived the old bitterness. Soon veterans with a wide range of illnesses began contacting the Veterans Administration. Government agencies, veterans groups and law firms started compiling lists of men who con sidered themselves victims ofAgent Orange. By last December the Veterans Administra tion reported that about 5,000 veterans had ap peared a t VA hospitals to file Agent Orange claims. From the first the issue was emotionally charged, and Agent Orange became an outlet for the accumulated frustrations of the exservicemen. The controversy grew into a na tional furor despite an almost total lack of evi dence that the herbicide ever posed a danger to American soldiers. One of the first veterans to seize the issue was Paul Reutersham. A colon cancer patient, he blamed his illness on exposure to Agent Orange. Despite bis terminal illness he founded Agent Orange Victims International, the first [Continued, Page A 4, Cel. 1) [Continued from Page A 1] advocacy group to focus on the controversy, and filed a lawsuit against the chemical companies that manufac tured the herbicide. Before he died in 1978 he summed up his dilemma in a declaration that be came the veterans' battle cry. "I'm a living nightmare that won't go .away," he said. "I died in Vietnam and didn't even know it." `-- The publicity, coupled with active or ganizing efforts launched by Mr. Reut ersham and others, attracted many vet erans with tragic stories. In 1967, for instance, John Woods re turned from Vietnam with a severe rash that wouldn't go away. A Veterans Ad ministration doctor diagnosed it as "jungle rot" and placed him on 60 per cent disability. After returning to the United States. Mr. Woods steadily lost weight. In 1973 his wife, Mildred, had a miscarriage and discovered that the aborted fetus was missing half its face. She soon became pregnant again, and this time carried the child to term. It was born with a noncancerous tumor of the face. : Mr. Woods blames Agent Orange for the rash, the miscarriage and the tumor. Another ex-serviceman. Ron DeBoer, 31, returned from Vietnam, married, and fathered a normal child before his right testicle began to swell. A doctor diagnosed testicular cancer Surgeons removed a highly malignant L . .. I'm a living nightmare that w on'tg o away, died in Vietnam and didn 'f even know it. . . f -- Paul Reutenham tumor and treated Mr DeBoer with co balt therapy Mr DeBoer helievo nt ("range Caused the ra n re r *1 Sidney Norris, 34, came back with a rash that never disappeared. He fathered two children, both of whom developed weak leg and arm muscles that keep them wobbly and off ;>alance. Now the oldest is losing his E yesight and the family's doctors, puz zled, say nothing can be done. The family blames Agent Orange. Though the growing roster of alleged Agent Orange victims lists a number of cancer cases and birth defects, most complaints focus on less dramatic ail ments. Jerry Wilson, for instance, isn't dying and doesn't have deformed children. But the 30-year-old ex-serviceman says his persistent back pain is so bad that he can't sit up straight in a chair. Periodi cally, skin lesions flare up and cover his body, leaving scars larger than a quar ter- in 1978 he spent nine weeks in the Lakeside VA hospital, undergoing 133 blood tests and 66 X-rays. The doctors .say he has an unknown virus. He says he was poisoned by Agent Orange. Other veterans hold the herbicide re sponsible for ailments including numb ness in the extremities, psychological problems and rashes, and at least one believes Agent Orange, causes him to abuse his wife and children. Science lent a t least an initial cre dence to the claims. In animals, chlorin ated hydrocarbons can cause cancer and birth defects, and human victims of poisonous hydrocarbons, such as kepone, often develop nerve damage, skin rashes and less easily documentable problems like nervousness and impotency The Agent Orange issue became even more credible when preliminary scien tific studies began to indicate that diox* in, the hydrocarbon that contaminated the wartime herbicide, was in fact ex tremely dangerous--perhaps the most deadly chemical ever manufactured by man. Dr. Jam es R. Allen, a prim ate re searcher at the University of Wisconsin, fed a diet containing half a part per bil lion of dioxin to eight monkeys. Though half a part per billion is an incredibly tiny quantity, five of Dr. Allen's eight monkeys were dead in nine months. Preliminary studies by another scientist, Dr. Jeanne Stellman, raised the spectre of a cancer epidemic among Vietnam veterans. Working under the auspices of the ational Health Foundation, a private - B.oup in New York, Dr. Stellman sent forms to a number of veterans. Of the 570 respondents, 35 had cancer The malignancies included one of the lung, three of the kidney and several cases of testicular cancer. Chlorinated hydrocarbons tend to collect in fat tissue, so another group of scientists took biopsies of fat tissue from 33 men, 22 of whom had served in Vietnam. Of the samples so far ana lyzed. about half are thought to contain dioxin. As such information circulated among sick and worried Vietnam veter ans. it was augmented by rumors that the Veterans Administration was giving the claimants short shrift. There were charges that VA doctors were diagnos ing liver-damaged men as alcoholics, refusing to examine the deformed chil dren of Vietnam veterans and generally denying claims and services related to Agent Orange. The rumors, the television and the newspapers united the veterans. Neil Burke, an Annapolis policeman who served in the defoliated areas of Vietnam, is typical of the worried veter an. The issue provokes unwanted memo ries. and he speaks bitterly of his ex perience in Asia and the hostile reaction of his friends on his return. Many of his friends wouldn't speak to him and the phrase "baby-killer" became his per sonal symbol of the ingratitude of a self ish society. Such bitterness, he believes, lends po litical force to the Agent Orange issue. The country's most prestigious scien tific journal, Science, reached a similar conclusion. "The diffuse rage of the veterans has now become attached to Agent Orange," the journal said. "Agent Orange has be come a complex symbol for the per verse nature of the war, a sym bol. . . that our enemy was ourselves." Vietnam veterans generally consider themselves unwelcome in the tradi tional veterans' groups, like the Vet- i . . . Why do I think it was Agent Orange? To be honest. . . because of the news m edia.. .9 --Robert Jullano erans of Foreign Wars and the Amer ican Legion. As the controversy grew, Vietnam veterans began to organize their own political action units. Frank McCarthy, who claims to be an Agent Orange victim, took over Agent Orange Victims International after Reutersham died. Ron DeYoung, a Chicago veteran, formed the National Veterans' Task Force on Agent Orange. In the meantime, Agent Orange be came a principal focus of existing or ganizations, including the National As sociation of Concerned Veterans, Viet nam Veterans of America, and the Na tional Veterans' Law Center at Wash ington's American University. Though Mr. Reutersham is dead of cancer, the suit he filed against the chemical companies is alive and pros pering. Now a class action suit repre senting a growing list of alleged Agent Orange victims, it's being pressed by some of the country's most high-pow ered environmental lawyers. Victor J. Yannacone Jr., the attorney credited with getting the DDT ban a decade ago, is in charge of the legal ac tion. He says the case is shaping up as the largest class action product liability suit in the nation's history. A favorable judgment could mean tens of billions of dollars for the veterans.. That prospect has further encour aged the development of local Vietnam veterans groups. Baltimore veterans joined the movement on Feb. 8, when about 250 men, many accompanied by their wives, held an organizational meeting in East Baltimore. One of the first actions the Baltimore veterans took was to vote overwhelm ingly to add their names to Mr. Yannacone's class action su it After the meeting, several veterans began organizing subsidiary groups in the outlying counties. One such veteran was Robert Juliano, who expects to form an Agent Orange unit in Harford county. One of Mr. Juliano's children, a 7 year-old, was conceived soon after he returned from Vietnam. The boy has learning disabilities, eye problems and a malformed foot Mr. Juliano blames Agent Orange. "Why do I think it was Agent Orange? To be honest I, oh, w e ll. . . be cause of the news media." Tomorrow:. Dead monkeys and frightened men. oribTIMOREi MARYLAND Prrx H THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1980 ,Dangers of dioxin are proven but not Vietnam vets' charges Did Agent Orange, die Viet nam W ar herbicide, leave a leg acy of sick veterans and de formed children? Thousands of angry Vietnam veterans claim it did, and during the last few years their bitter charges have grown into a major n aiian ai controver sy. The Agent Orange question is highly emotional, but are there facts behind the feelings? In the second of three articles. The Eve ning Sun continues to examine the issue and the scientific efforts to erm ine whether the veterans' irs a re real or imagined. By Jon Franklin and Alan Doelp In 1976, eight healthy female monkeys lived in spotless cages at the University ofWisconsin. sels burst in their mouths, their fin gernails and toenails thickened. Finally the monkeys began to die, first one. then another,* then another. Each went to the autopsy room for dissection. Samples of the dead mon key flesh were mounted on slides and centered under the objective lenses of high-powered microscopes. The cells were clearly abmormal. Dr. James R. Allen had adulter ated the monkey food withdioxin, the substance that contaminated the Agent Orange defoliant used in Viet nam. The purpose was to establish dioxin's effect on primates, a cate gory that includes both monkeys and humans. After five of the monkeys had died, Dr. Allen, the project's chief scientist, halted the research. Former servicemen who believe [Coatinned, Page A 4, Col. 1] | [Continued from Page A 1] But, as the weeks passed and they ate the Purina Monkey Chow put be fore them, they grew thin and list less. Their lashes fell out and their eyelids swelled. Their immune systems lost the, ability to fight disease and their hornone balances skewed wildly across the scientist's graph paper. Their liver function decreased, blood ves they were poisoned by Agent Orange say Dr. Allen proved their point When the experiment was described in scien tific journals published in 1977, the Agent Orange controversy moved into high gear. But does the fate of the monkeys apply to what the Vietnam veterans say is happening to them? In at least one aspect, the answer is yes. Dr. Allen added only one part of rijoxin for every two billion parts of Monkey Chow, demonstrating that the compound is deadly at one-half of one part per billion. That makes dioxin one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest, sub stance ever manufactured. That is consistent with earlier re search performed on lesser animals. In mice, rats, rabbits and hamsters, tiny doses of dioxin cause liver malfunction, skin rashes, enzyme changes, anemia, immune system failure, cancer and birth defects. It might dp the same things to guinea pigs too, but they die too quickly to tell. And as many as 2.5 million U.S. serv icemen may have been exposed to dioxin while serving in Vietnam. Now hundred!; of veterans are ap pear: ng VA hrspiusls and lawyers' of fice. ciiTig tf.s rdmal research and claiming ihai the country owes them treatment ad disability pensions for a variety of diseases that they attribute to Agent Orange I But the very research upon which they base their claims may ultimately prove them wrong. j The veterans contend they were per manently damaged by dioxin poisoning so slight that it produced few or no symptoms at the time. The three mon keys that survived Dr. Allen's killer doses of dioxin are now alive and appar ently well, and at least one of the three has produced a normal infant. | The conflict between the scientific findings and the veterans' interpreta tion of those findings is characteristic of the Agent Orange controversy.! At best the veterans' conclusions are prema ture. At worst they are contrary to fact To date, neither the veterans nor the scientists have furnished concrete evi dence that j Vietnam veterans, as a group, are less healthy than other Americans of equivalent age. Excessive illness among the veter ans, if if .vasts. car, be laid to Agent Orange. ; Dioxiu can cause serious delayed, as opposed to acute, health effects. Males exposed to dioxin have an abnormally high rale of defective chil dren. j Any compound, even dioxin, can cause some health effects In the quanti ties servicemen are likely to have been exposed to in Vietnam. The lack of evidence concerning the relative overall health of Vietnam War veterans is basic to the issue. The veterans' groups say the health problem is self-evident They point to the long rosters of former servicemen who are suffering from diseases that range from skin rashes to cancer, and to he large proportion of those men who ziave defective children. Compared to the 2.5 million men who went to Vietnam, however, the list of Agent Orange claimants is small. Epi demiologists say that in any population of 2.5 million men, hundreds would be expected 'o have rare cancers, unusual symptoms oi vague origin and children with birth rie irts. And '.he sickest of them would natu rally be expected to come forward in response to television reports and news paper stories about Agent Orange. Epidemiologists refer to such groups as "self-selected populations." Self-se lected groups generally include a dis proportionate number of sick people, so the alleged Agent Grange victims can not be considered representative of Vietnam War veterans. Scientists say that the best way to determine the veterans' relative health is by doing large-scale epidemiological studies. It is the only way to establish the incidence of cancer in that group. Bui even if studies eventually show that Vietnam veterans are experiencing relatively poor health, the cause is still - )t obvious. The servicemen were exposed to ngent Orange, but they were also ex posed to an assortment of viruses, bac teria, insects, drugs and foods not found in the United States. Viruses, for instance, unlike dioxin, are known to lie dormant in the human body before manifesting themselves and causing sickness and death 10 years after the initial infection. And' in ani mals. at least, viruses are known to cause cancer, nerve damage and de formed fetuses. The next important unanswered question pertains to the delayed effects of dioxin poisoning. While dioxin is an extremely deadly substance, experi mental animals who survive exposure don't seen to suffer any long-term ill nesses. Likewise, human beings exposed to dioxin as a result of industrial accidents appear to eventually recover their health. One such accident occurred a t a Monsanto chemical plant In Nitro, W.Va., in 1949. Of the workers exposed, 121 developed chloracne, a m b charac* ristic of acute dioxin poisoning. veral groups of scientists are now studying the surviving workers in an at* tempt to see if they are suffering the sort of delayed symptoms being claimed by Vietnam War veterans. The studies of the plant workers documented numerous short-term ef fects of dioxin exposure including chlo racne, nausea, headaches, blood disor ders, liver abnormalities and impaired nerve function. However, the studies also show that most of those symptoms diminished over a period of time and eventually disappeared altogether. Death certificates indicate that, three decades after the accident, the death rate among the Monsanto workers was completely normal--in fact, it was slightly lower than projected. The most spectacular civilian expo sure to dioxin occurred July 10, 1976 at Seveso, Italy, when a manufacturing ac cident caused huge quantities of the chemical to be sprayed into the air. Italian authorities estimated that as many as 250,000 persons potentially were exposed to the dioxin. In "Zone A," the most heavily exposed area, most livestock and domestic animals died within a few days. Many residents of Zone A developed the nausea, headaches and other imme diate symptoms of dioxin exposure. Several hundred cases of chloracne were reported, almost all of them in children. Lab tests documented some liver and blood abnormalities. Four years later, however, no wide spread health problems have been re ported in Seveso. The birth and birth de fect rates remain normal. The veterans' claim that dioxin expo sure is responsible for an epidemic of deformed children is, like the claim of excess cancer rates, undocumented. Since about one out of every thou sand live births produces a defective in fant, the several hundred cases of de formed children documented by veter ans' groups are not statistically signifi cant Female animals exposed to dioxin, or one of many other chlorinated hydro carbons, often produce defective off spring. There is also some evidence, still controversial, that pregnant women ex posed to dioxin experience a high num ber of spontaneous abortions. There is considerable doubt among biologists, however, that men poisoned by dioxin could incur sperm damage leading to the birth of a deformed baby several years later. The skepticism centers on a key dif ference between the male and female reproductive systems. The eggs of a fe male are formed at birth and if they are damaged by a chemical that damage persists and can express itself many years later. The male, however, produces sperm continuously throughout life. If a male is exposed to a chemical like dioxin, the damaged sperm is cleared and replaced in a m atter of months. If Agent Orange did affect the sperm of Vietnam veterans, and if that sperm did cause the conception of a defective fetus five or 10 years later, the docu mentation of that fact would set a medi cal precedent Finally, many scientists have serious doubts that any chemical, no m atter how poisonous, could have serious ef fects at the levels of exposure believed to have existed in Vietnam. Seme authorities say the levels of dioxin contamination in Agent Orange ran as high as 47 parts per million. While that is a relatively high concen tration, its strength would have been considerably diluted as it drifted through the air and mixed with soil and water. Few if any soldiers are believed to have been exposed to chronic doses of dioxin anywhere near as high as the monkeys in Wisconsin. THE EVENING SUN, F riday, February 22. 1980 Anxious Vietnam veterans wait as scientists study dioxin dangei Did Agent Orange, the Viet nam War herbicide, leave Ia leg acy of sick veterans and de formed children? Thousands of angry Vietnam veterans claim it did, and during the last few years their bitter charges have grown into a major national controver sy. The Agent Orange question is highly emotional, but are there facts behind the feelings? In the fast of three articles, The Evening Sun concludes its examination of the issue and the scientific efforts to determine whether the veter ans'fears are real or imagined. By Jon Franklin and Alan Doelp In the mid-1960s Operation Ranch and flew daily missions over the Vi..namese jungle, laying down a fog of Agent Orange herbicide. Back at Da Nang air base Maj. Charles Hubbs, the Ranch Hand detachment commander, took the h eat The mosquitoes were bad, the food was worse but the reporters, he says, were awful. In the U.S., a coalition of environ mentalists and anti-war activists were opposing the spraying opera tion, claiming it violated the Geneva accords. The reporters came around often, with their lenses and notebooks and unfriendly questions about the poisons. "Some of 'em were a real pais in the b u tt They insisted it was chemi cal warfare and a few of them got re ally pushy," recalls former major Hub!, who now works for the Na tional Transportation Safety Board and lives in Camp Springs. Major Hubbs told them over and over that Agent Orange wasn't dan gerous and that its effects lasted, at worst, six months. "But some of 'em just wouldn't lis; m," he said. "When yon got one like m a t the way to shut 'em up was to walk over to a drum of the stuff, dip your finger in it and take a slurp of it" Sometimes, when the reporter was extra nasty, Major Hubbs was extra demonstrative Then he poured some Agent Orange into a cup and downed it. "That usually fixed 'em," he remembers.' Now the question is whether it [Cwtireed, Page A 4, CoL 1] One of the most important studies in volves dvilian factory workers who were exposed to dioxin as a result of an explosion a t a Monsanto plant In Nitre, W.Va.,inl949. Following that acddent 122 workers developed chloracne, a skin disorder that Is the only documented effect of dioxin poisoning. Doctors and health scientists are now examining those peo [Costinxd from Page A 1] ple and their medical records to deter mine whether they suffered any unusual also fixed Major Hubbs. If Agent O r ailments during the intervening -SO ange was as dangerous as Vietnam vet years. erans now charge that it was, a survey A variety of studies center on the of former Ranch Hand members could Monsanto workers at Nitre. Tbe first prove their point. The men on the flight line ignored the official safety regula tions. They were constantly exposed to the chemical in the orange-striped drums; frequently they were drenched with I t The Ranch Handers are an epidemi ologist's dream. Most of the men are in the same age group and they are easy to locate through the Ranch Hand Associa tion, founded by Major Hubbs after his return to the United States. The associa one, financed by Monsanto, is being con ducted by a University of Cincinnati oc cupational health specialist A prelimi nary report published early this year showed that the death rate of tbe ex posed workers was about normal over three decades. A parallel study of Nitre plant work ers was commissioned by the union, which represents tbe employees. That study should provide more detailed find ings and is expected to be released this tion counts 968 of the 1,200 former Ranch Handers as members. One has prostate cancer and blames Agent Orange. Tbe 967 others say they are healthy and express a profound skepticism about tbe controversy, Mr. Hubbs said. They .generally view it as just one more crazy wrinkle in a crazy war that won't go away, he said. But the opinion that's Important is the one yet to be formed by Air Force dentists who will eventually be as signed to study the health of Ranch Hand veterans. The Ranch Hand study, now in the planning stage, Is one of several at tempts to survey the health of people who are known to have been exposed to large quantities of Agent Orange or summer. In the meantime, scientists with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences are trying to determine If male mice, when exposed to dioxin, father deformed offspring. That project addresses the question of whether Vietnam veterans, or other males exposed to dioxin, need worry about deformed children. Most research on chemically-induced birth defects are carried out on female animals, since they are considered to be two to three times as sensitive to such effects as males. Tbe study of male mice is expected to be completed by late summer or arty autumn. If deformed offipring are produced, dioxin, the highly poisonous chemical the report will be a boon to the veter that contaminated the defoliant ans' cause. But if the studies are nega Other studies aim at answering perti tive they will be less meaningful be nent questions about the overall health cause tbe human reproductive system i of the veterans who fought in Vietnam. quite different from that of mice and, in Some of tbe research projects are some ways, Is considered more sensi relatively limited and should be com tive. pleted quickly, while others will take years. As the results are analyzed and published, the truth about Agent Orange and dioxin should emerge. Veterans, environm entalists, chem ists and Veterans Administration bu reaucrats are also keeping an eye oo the steady stream of scientific reports owing oat of a 1971 explode in Sere- Italy. That explosion, like the one is Nitre, occurred In a chem ical factory. It sprayed dioxin into the air and may fa m contaminated as many as ISO,000 person. Since the explosion, S e r e residents have become som e of the best-studied citizens in the world. Numerous inde pendent and government-funded' scien tists. are watching the victim s carefully for signs of long-term health problems. So far no such ailm ents have been found, but the exposure is still so recent that delayed effects of the sort the Viet nam veterans claim to have suffered might not yet have appeared. Positive reports of delayed dioxin reactions from Severe could immeasurably aid the veterans' causa la the meantime, the dioxin question has led to the development of sophisti cated analytical techniques for detect ing the chem ical in quantities as sm all as ooe part per trilUoo. Such tests are being applied in a se ries of Environmental Protection Agency studies conducted in areas ayed with 2,4,5-T, a dom estic herbljethat contains dioxin. The federal dentists are attempting to determine whether dioxin-containing substances should be banned in the United States. Since Vfetnam-era Agent Orange contained much more dioxin than dom estic 2,4,5-T, the EPA findings could have direct application to the veterans'claim s. In one study, analytical chem ists looked for dioxin in the m ilk of nursing mothers along the Northwest coast of the United States, where 2,4,S-T was used until recently by com m ercial fo r esters. No dioxin was fafod. Another study, this on e pending, In volves the analysis of fat biopsy sam ples from a captive herd of deer and elk in Oregon. Still another involves the analysis of mud sam pler from forest watershed areas. Farther south, where 2,4,5-T to used to combat weeds in Louisiana. rice fields, scientists w ill test for dioxin In catfish and crayfish. Alleged Agent Orange victim s who didn't serve in actively defoliated areas of Vietnam have claim ed that they were >ooed to the chem ical by eating local d. If the environmental studies are negative, the veterans' claim s w ill be difficult to support. By far the most important studies, however, are those being designed to find out whether men who served in Vietnam have health problems that are more frequent, or more serious, than the men who stayed home. The principal such study was man dated by Congress as a response to lob bying efforts by veterans who say they a n victim s of Agent Orange. th a t investigation, which Is still in the design stage, should document any serious health problems peculiar to Vietnam veterans, whether or not those problems are caused by Agent Orange. , Such full-ccale epidem iological in vestigations offer the cleanest and m ost reliable answers to the Agent Orange problem, but they also take the most tim e to com plete. Scientists say prelim inary results from the survey are proba bly years away.