Agent Orange and Cancer

Abstract

The health effects of Agent Orange exposure remain a contentious scientific, political and ethical issue more than 50 years after the military use of it in the Vietnam war. Agent Orange, a potent herbicide that contained dioxin as a contaminant, was used by the United States’ Military, initially to hinder the Viet Cong’s guerilla force’s ability to move easily under plant cover and then later to strike at food supplies of the opposition. The deployment of herbicides in battle were much discussed at the time and the debate continued to swirl as US soldiers who had served later began to complain of illnesses they ascribed to the exposure, as well as Vietnamese claims of multiple damaging health effects on their population. While the decision by the Veterans Administration to cover certain diagnoses related to Agent Orange exposure remains contentious, there has been emerging date to strengthen the explanation of the role of dioxins in the development of a number of human malignancies. This review will look at the data implicating environmental exposure to AO in malignant and nonmalignant disease and then look at the implications of the difficult history of agent orange as a model to learn how to gauge fault of environmental exposures to cancer causation.