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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33 No. 14. 1970

Defoliant Deforms Unborn Babies

Defoliant Deforms Unborn Babies

Despite My Lai, saturation bombing raids, and search-and-destroy missions, the greatest crime against the children of Vietnam may be a subtle atrocity that was fully known and yet seldom made a headline. "Subtle" because the crime was the relatively innocuous dumping of massive amounts of chemical defoliants on the Vietnamese countryside..."atrocity" because recent reports by a leading U.S. biologist and a private research laboratroy state that a defoliant widely used in Vietnam can cause gross birth defects similar to those produced by thalidomide.

A research report prepared for the National Cancer Institute by Bionetics Research Laboratories Inc. of Bethesda, Maryland, describes the defoliant 2, R 5-5 as "probably dangerous" and 2, 4-D as "potentially dangerous" as teratogenic (deforming) agents. The chemicals were tested orally on two different strains of pregnant mice at two different dose levels and the resulting report stated that many of the baby mice had deformities such as cleft palates and serious eye defects.

While the report made no mention of possible effects on pregnant women, a prominent U.S. biologist, Professor E.W. Pfeiffer, has pointed out that humans proved to be more sensitive than rats to thalidomide. Because of the immense quantities of defoliant dumped on Vietnam (enough to more than cover the entire land surface of that country if evenly distributed), the eventual incidence of malformed births may be high.

Dr. Pfeiffer, who was in Vietnam last year, reported that the number of abnormal births has increased so drastically that the Saigon Health Ministry has classified the files on malformed babies as secret. Saigon newspapers have reported the birth of many deformed babies in the Vietnamese countryside.

Because of these reports, the Pentagon recently claimed that the defoliant 2, RN 5-T was being restricted to areas of Vietnam low in population. Observers in Vietnam, however, say that this order merely applies to region considered 'friendly' and that accidental dumpings over populous areas are daily occurrences. Dr. Pfeiffer says he personally witnessed two incidents in which entire batches of chemical defoliant were haphazardly jettisoned because of faulty spraying devices. In one case, 1000 gallons were dumped on one spot in the Mekong Delta, and in another a full load was jettisoned over the town of Ho Nai.

But everybody knows that life is cheap in Asia., and they haven't Proven that defoliants cause birth defects in humans...

From: Vancouver Free Press, January 14-21, 1970.