The Agent Orange was one of the most used and common herbicides and defoliants which is chemical the United States Military used in the Vietnam War from 1961 through 1971. "It was a 50/50 mixture of two herbicides: 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. It remained toxic for only days or weeks and then degraded, but it had a toxic contaminant, dioxin, that did not degrade as readily and is still causing health problems in Vietnam." (What is Agent Orange). They used this chemical to try to kill people over in Vietnam by spraying it on their fields, vegetation, and trees. There reasons for spraying it on the trees were so that it killed the plants so that the Vietnamese did not have any coverage. This chemical caused a lot of different effects too many people. By the United States using the Agent Orange chemical it was affected people’s health. This chemical could have just caused a short term effect like making people sick and being put on medicine to help them get better, or it could have caused long term effects. Agent Orange could have killed someone right away or it could have made them suffer by making them sick for the longest time until they die. Even though this chemical was very dangerous and deadly it was still used by our own United States military forces to help fight in the Vietnam War.
The United States military forces sprayed over 19 million gallons of herbicides and they sprayed it over 4.5 billion acres of land in Vietnam. The Agent Orange was the chemical dioxin that was the most commonly used and was the most effective herbicide. This chemical was used “to remove unwanted plant life and leaves which otherwise provided cover for enemy forces during the Vietnam Conflict.” (Benefits). They wanted to try to get rid of the forest so tha...
... middle of paper ...
... Some people had died right away or it affected their life until they passed away and it caused many different other effects. Not only did it affect their life, but it had also affected their families as well. It affected families severely because they had to go through and see someone that got exposed to it knowing they are family and they might not have a chance to survive, these families also might have been around it because of being around the men serving. This Chemical is highly toxic, it is very sad to know how many animals, plants, children, adults, and families were affected by the chemical. Even though our military forces thought they were doing something so good it ended up turning against us in a bad way by hurting our military and pretty much everyone around them suffering, but they all had to deal with what the Agent Orange chemical caused for everyone.
There have been many books published solely on philosophy, and many more than that solely written about human nature, but very infrequently will a book be published that weaves these fields together as well as A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. In this Book Burgess speculated on the fact “the significance of maturing by choice is to gain moral values and freedoms.” He achieved this task by pushing his angsty teenaged character, Alex, through situations that challenge the moral values of himself and his friends. In the novel, A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, Alex himself, must choose good over evil in order to gain moral values which will allow him to mature into a “man” in the latter of his two transformations.
The Vietnam War was, mentally and physically, one of the most brutal the United States has ever participated in. Our soldiers had to undergo daily miseries and sufferings which wore on them in body and mind. Dysentery was a common cause of physical wasting. Other diseases combined with the continuous rain and mud caused flesh to rot and made daily life that much more insufferable. Long periods of boredom would be broken by unexpected guerilla attacks or booby traps. The enemy rarely materialized long enough to be actively fought or even identified. Equally uncertain as who they were fighting was the answer to the question of what purpose they were fighting and dying for.
These applications include pesticide, herbicide, defoliating agent such as Agent Orange, cleaning agent and electrical insulation. Consequently, human exposure to dioxin is not a recent phenomenon and the dangers of dioxin are not unknown. Only in recent years, especially after the Vietnam War, has the media concentrated on the dangers and impact of dioxin. The physical effect of exposure to dioxin was first seen in skin diseases developed by chemical plant workers in 1895. Exposure to dioxin results in a type of skin disease like acne called "chloroacne," since its cause was initially and incorrectly linked to chlorine gas.
In the article, “A Legacy of Illness: The Healing Process Is Far From Done” by Amanda Spake, the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War is shown to be detrimental to Vietnam War veterans’ mental and physical health. The aftermath and effects of the agent did not and still does not receive the acknowledgment it deserves. The depth of the mental and physical distress of Vietnam veterans exposed to the agent is dismissed by the Veteran Administration, Department of Veteran Affairs and the general public. It is from this lack of awareness for the hardships of the veterans of the Vietnam War endangered by Agent Orange that their psychological and physical struggles stem.
On April 12, 1961, the first application of the chemical nicknamed Agent Orange was sprayed on Vietnamese foliage in an attempt to stop guerilla warfare, launching a herbicidal disaster ("Herbicidal Warfare"). The consequences of agent orange, unbeknownst to the former government officials, led to a series of catastrophic effects including, but not limited to neurobehavioral and physical anomalies of the human body. As a result of the lacking knowledge of Agent Orange, the United States and Vietnam are still cleaning up the herbicidal mess that could have been avoided (Magnuson). Decades later, scientific evidence proved that the use of the dioxin herbicide Agent Orange was linked to many physical and neurobehavior disorders (Poremba).
Why has the use of Agent Orange become so controversial? The Americans dropped the atomic bomb to end World War II and did not have the backlash that it had, and still has, with Agent Orange. The ver...
The soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War had to endure many incredibly horrifying experiences. It was these events that led to great human emotions. It was those feelings that were the things they carried. Everything they carried affected them, whether it was physical or mental. Everything they carry could in one way or another cause them to emotionally or physically break down.
"Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam." Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam. N.p., 1994. Web. 3 Apr. 2011. .
...ments and desensitized of their civilian mentality, making them walking, breathing killing machines. During war, this became apparent with the countless war crimes committed by soldiers; they were trained to not have any apprehension in regards to killing the Vietnamese, because they were “gooks” and of lesser form than a human. These violent events have scarred and traumatized some soldiers for the rest of their lives. Some soldiers have developed mental illnesses, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression. Some veterans will always live their lives damaged and in fear. Some have already taken their own life because the burden of knowing and reliving what they went through during the Vietnam War was too much to bear. The only goal of the war was to gain a victory, another notch on America’s belt, regardless of how many lives it cost, including American.
Fries, A. A., & West, C. J. (1921). Chemical warfare,. New York [etc.: McGraw-Hill book company, inc..
Who: between 10,000 and 20,000 war veterans and their families (one 11 month old baby and 2 people were killed, one 8 year old boy was blinded by gas)
and N-Butyl Ester 2,4,5,-T, Agent Orange made many Vietnam soldiers go insane (Vietnam Veterans, 11-10-2000). This atrocious chemical lead and still today leads to death, deformation, and diabetes. Dr. Joel E. Michalek, who deals with statistics for the air force, was the first to notice a link between Agent Orange and diabetes. But the federal government was not willing “...to spend millions of dollars on such studies”.
The weapons that were used in the Vietnam War included: assault rifles, mortars, light weight machine guns, tanks, jets, helicopters, land mines, booby traps and poison gases that were meant to kill the plant life in the area. However, the poisonous gases lead to serious health problems. The weapons of the Vietnam War were lightweight and had further shooting range than weapons in previous wars. The United States and Vietnam both used extremely deadly weapons that caused tons of damage to the land and cost both countries many human casualties.
Health effects are prominent in Vietnam veterans but denied by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. As reported in the American Legion Magazine, “The defoliant also is believed to have poisoned many people who handled it or passed through sprayed locations. After the war, a conspicuous percentage of veterans contracted various cancers or diabetes, and birth defects occurred at high rate among their children, VA compensation and care were denied (Carroll).” Denial of these severe diseases and unnatural occurrences by the VA could be construed as a cover-up for the government’s mistake or a truthful disconnect of Agent Orange and the diseases. Research has shown, “Dioxin has been found to be a carcinogen associated with Parkinson’s disease,
The impact of the war was soon to leave a mark in history. The use of chemical weapons adversel...