(Newswire.net — September 9, 2015) –Just in case you needed another reason to hate Monsanto, you know the company that brought us Saccharin, DDT, Agent Orange, Roundup and lets not forget my favorite GMO’s. A new study demonstrates that Vietnam veterans exposed to Monsanto’s, Agent Orange have a more than twice the risk of developing cancer. The researchers found that American veterans who did aerial herbicide spray missions of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War had a 2.4 x increased risk of developing the blood disease known as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), which is a prerequisite for developing multiple myeloma. Just because a patient has MGUS, it does not mean they will get develop multiple myeloma, but everyone who has myeloma first had MGUS.
About 30 percent of people with MGUS will develop multiple myeloma within 3 decades of life. Agent Orange is a Monsanto herbicide sprayed during the Vietnam War to kill off trees and vegetation to find enemies that were hiding.
The military sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange which was produced by Monsanto and Dow Chemical, during the Vietnam war. It was sprayed by aircraft in a code-named “Operation Ranch Hand,” which ran almost ten years starting in November of 1961.
Agent Orange contained herbicides that produced a dioxin called TCDD according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. TCDD is the most toxic of all the dioxins. It is even classified as a known carcinogen by the U.S. EPA.
We all have exposure to one of the toxins in Agent Orange
We are all exposed to Dioxin and pesticides as well as other toxins. The difficulty for researchers is finding sorting thru all the disease states caused by pollutants and toxins. Some reports indicate that we are exposed to as many as 600 different toxic substances every day. I have been researching this problem for decades. We are researching a new way around this problem by oxidative stress testing, metabolic and inflammation tests, and intracellular analysis. The bottom line is combating damage to cells with anti-oxidants, stopping inflammation and metabolic balancing. To do this requires individualized tests and treatment protocols and the use of new kinds of diagnostic testing that is currently not being used. The potential benefits are many: prevention of diseases like cancer and diabetes. A lot more research is needed.
Seven Percent
About seven percent of Operation Ranch Hand veterans had developed MGUS. This is gammopathy in which plasma cells produce an abnormal protein in the body. This is much higher than the three percent of unexposed veterans who developed MGUS.
The testing in this study showed that these Operation Ranch Hand veterans were more likely to have higher levels of TCDD in their blood, and hence the risk of MGUS increased as their TCDD levels increased. The amount of exposure is related to the risk of cancer which is known as a dose-response relationship.
Research on prostate cancer and herbicides
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences concluded in its 1996 report Veterans and Agent Orange. There is limited/suggestive evidence of a positive association between prostate cancer and exposure to herbicides used in Vietnam.
A 2013 study conducted at the Portland VA Medical Center and Oregon Health and Science University found that Veterans exposed to Agent Orange are not only at higher risk for prostate cancer, but they are more likely to have aggressive forms of the disease. You can read the abstract here
Diabetes and Agent Orange
In 2000, the VA added type 2 diabetes to the list of “presumptive diseases associated with herbicide exposure.” That action followed a report from the National Academy of Sciences that found limited and suggestive evidence of an association between the chemicals used in herbicides during the Vietnam War, such as Agent Orange, and type 2 diabetes. The evidence of a link between exposure to Agent Orange or dioxin is modest. Veterans are eligible for disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs and based on their presumed exposure to Agent Orange or other herbicides.
Most of the association between Agent Orange and diabetes comes from studies of people who lived near or those that worked at manufacturing plants that produced Agent Orange with toxic dioxin. In those cases, there appears to be some relationship between Agent Orange exposure and increased insulin resistance, which is due to the body’s inability to respond to and use the insulin it produces.
Other diseases and Agent Orange
In addition, Insulin resistance may be linked to cancer, inflammatory diseases, obesity, hypertension, and high levels of fatty acids in the blood. This occurs in those with type 2 diabetes and people with type 1 diabetes can also have insulin resistance, too.
In a report from the Institute of Medicine said there is evidence of an association between exposure to Agent Orange and illnesses including soft-tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma and chloracne.
The report recommended further research to determine if there could be a link between Agent Orange exposure and other illnesses such as emphysema, tonsil cancer, melanoma, Alzheimer’s disease, and other medical problems.
This is a difficult situation due to the long-term health care costs for veterans of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, which is over a $1 trillion dollars. In the next ten years, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is expected to shell out $50 billion for health care compensation for just ischemic heart disease alone. This kind of heart disease is related to vascular disease and obstruction of flow to the heart muscle, and it is one of the more than one dozen diseases the VA says is associated with Agent Orange exposure. Last year, ischemic heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and B-cell leukemia were added to the list of diseases the VA associates with Agent Orange exposure. That added over $236 million in 2010 and $165 million this year in compensation costs, and there could be more hidden diseases related to Agent Orange that we are not yet aware.
About the Author
Chris Ryan is an investigative journalist and 8 Time #1 Bestselling Author. he can be reached at www.linkedin.com/in/cancer/