...especially when they treat us like guinea pigs!

http://healthandfitness.sympatico.msn.ca/News/ContentPosting.aspx?contentid=e...

Federal officials unsure how many affected by Agent Orange tests in N.B.
17/05/2005 4:58:00 PM

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FREDERICTON (CP) - Federal officials say they have no idea how many people may have been affected by the testing of the herbicide Agent Orange at a Canadian military base in New Brunswick 40 years ago.


Janice Summerby, spokeswoman for the Veterans' Affairs Department, said Tuesday that since 2000 the department has considered 21 applications for disability pensions, but only two have been granted.

She said most of those applications were from people who were at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in 1966 when Agent Orange, now known to be hazardous to human health, was tested by the U.S. military on the base's forests.

Summerby said she didn't know whether other applicants came forward for the tax-free pensions because no records were kept before April 2000.

"We have no idea how many were at Gagetown (when it was sprayed) or where they are now," Summerby said, adding that news media coverage may help alert people.

The fact that Agent Orange was sprayed at CFB Gagetown in the 1960s has been a matter of public record since the early 1980s. In 1981, the military gave journalists an aerial tour of the areas sprayed, all of which had long since grown over with foliage.

Summerby said most of the applications the department has received for compensation were disallowed because the applicants could not prove exposure to Agent Orange or a medical cause for their symptoms.

"With diseases like cancer, it can be difficult to draw that link," she said.

Agent Orange was used to defoliate jungles during the Vietnam War.

Thousands of people in Vietnam and in the United States are believed to be suffering from exposure to the key ingredient, dioxin.

The medical community has been careful not to make a firm link between exposure to Agent Orange and diseases.

However, Agent Orange exposure is associated with a higher risk for certain cancers, such as leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

In the 1960s, CFB Gagetown served as an ideal location for testing herbicides because of heavy forestation.

"At Gagetown they tested the herbicides over 116 small plots," said Maj. Laurie Kannegiesser, a Defence Department spokeswoman.

"They were testing the herbicides to see which one worked best."

She said the tests were conducted by U.S. military personnel from a base in Maryland.

Herb Crowe, a retired artillery soldier who was stationed at CFB Gagetown in the 1960s, said he was involved in several herbicide spraying tests after the 1966 Agent Orange tests.

Crowe said in an interview from his home in Burton, N.B., he doesn't know what he was sprayed with, but he said whatever it was, it quickly defoliated the trees.

"They gave us overalls and respirators and we were standing under the trees while they did the spraying," Crowe said. "They never told us what it was about."

Crowe, who is in good health, said five of his friends from the experiment have since died of cancer.

He said he thinks he and his fellow soldiers were guinea pigs to test the human impact of powerful herbicides.