VA Expands List Of Agent Orange Ailments

VA Expands List Of Agent Orange Ailments

"There is no possibility of proving on an individual basis what the exposure was," says Trude Bennett, a public health researcher at the University of North Carolina who studies dioxin exposure. "Even if you could measure the body burden of the chemicals in someone's body now, it would have dissipated from the time of the original exposure.

"So there's also no way to prove with absolute certainty a causal effect between the exposure and the medical condition."

The VA estimates the tab for treating these newly added diseases at about $40 billion over the next decade.

"We are in a very bad time economically, so suddenly there's been tremendous resistance to implementing this process," he says.

The new VA rules need congressional approval, but some members of Congress have balked at the price and the spiraling costs of disability claims stemming from Agent Orange. Many vets and their advocates, though, see paying for their health care as part of the cost of war.

Congress has until the end of October to decide whether the new rules will stand and whether Wade and thousands of other veterans will have their treatment covered by the VA.