GOVERNMENT MISDEEDS & SCANDALS ARE NEVERENDING

I have been posting numerous articles on the Elmira Advocate Blog regarding Ontario's use and abuse of Agent Orange throughout the province from 1949 until 1979. The extent of the wanton disregard and apparent contempt for Ontario citizens has completely blown me away. I believe that all of one other province (British Columbia) used 2,4,5-T on their forests and possibly highway shoulders. New Brunswick was of course treated to U.S. experimentation with Agent Orange at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown prior to the U.S. military using it in Vietnam. The story was it was to reduce tree and leaf cover for the invading Viet Cong. The reality was that it was also used bigtime to destroy food crops and starve both the insurgents and the local rural South Vietnamese who may or may not have been supplying some of their food to the North Vietnamese Army.

To date I have read a number of rebuttals by Ontario Hydro of scientific studies describing Dioxin health effects. I have also seen rebuttals from chemical industry lobby groups. The first warning actually came about in 1952 when Monsanto advised the U.S. government that they had found Dioxins in their 2,4,5-T herbicide. There were further warnings in 1957 from manufacturer Boehringer and yet it appears that neither governments nor other herbicide manufacturers paid much attention. Profits seemed to be the order of the day. Lest we forget it was Rachel Carson in 1962 who published "Silent Spring". Her warnings were prophetic and yet they too were attacked by the chemical industry and their syncophants in government.

The U.S. government are finally assisting Vietnam to cleanup some of the former highly contaminated U.S. bases. The U.S. government have treated their own veterans shamefully again running interference for industry for decades. A $180 million settlement did occur in 1984 but it paid precious little to the thousands of U.S. servicemen and women who suferred ill health. The overall pain and sufferring in Vietnam, Canada, United States and other countries who have used Dioxin contaminated 2,4,5-T is overwhelming. The costs of health care are also disasterous. All it would have taken is a few governments with backbones to have shut production down in the early 60's as the evidence of the human carnage mounted.