UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL LIBRARY

INTERVIEW OF

DR. ALVIN YOUNG

CONDUCTED BY

PATRI IA MURPHY
and
LYNN STEWART

April 27, 2001'

United States Department of Agriculture
14 Independence Avenue
Washington, D.C.

TAPE TRANS CRI PTION

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

Nouoano?) 9mm 

 

'r



:1 

 

MS. MURPHY: This is Patricia Murphy, and I'm
here with Stewart and Dr. Alvin Young.

MS. STEWART: This is Stewart. We are
all here this morning at the National Agricultural
Library, doing an informal interview with Dr. Alvin
Young. And we are delighted to have Dr. Young with us
this morning, agreeing to answer a few questions and
he'll help us fill in on background on his collection
on the herbicide, Agent Orange, and associated
herbicides.

Good morning, Dr. Young.

DR. YOUNG: Good morning. This is Alvin
Young. The day is Friday, April 27, 19 -- 2001.
Excuse me, 2001.

MS. MURPHY: We?ve been talking about the
past.

DR. YOUNG: Yes, we've been talking about the
past. It?s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for
setting this up today.

MS. MURPHY: Thank you for coming, Dr. Young.
We'll start with our first question. How did you

Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

become involved in the study of Agent Orange and its

effects on veterans? How does your educational

background relate to that?

DR. YOUNG: Well, I was raised in Wyoming.
outside of Laramie. And my family, long history Of
being in the Wyoming area. And I went to work early
with the Department of Plant Science, University of
Wyoming, as a freshman at the University of Wyoming.
And one of the things that we were involved in was the
work on sagebrush.

And over those few years of undergraduate
work, I was involved in a lot of activity that assessed
vegetation analyses after the spraying of 
herbicide or herbicide. That triggered in me an
interest to get into the use of herbicides and
vegetation control and the use of herbicides in terms
of some of the ecological impacts on sites.

As a consequence, in 1965, I did a Master's
Degree in the area of Plant Physiology. The Vietnam
War had now just begun and I contacted the Department
of Air Force because, like all ROTC graduates, I was

expected to soon go into Service.

Diversi?ed Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

,had heard, because of my interest in
herbicides, I had heard of Operation Ranch Hand and the
work that was going on by the Department of Air Force
and the Department of Army in Vietnam on the use of
Agent Orange well, at that time, just beginning
Agent Orange but a couple of the other materials. And
since Agent Orange was a mixture of and 
this was right down my area of interest.

I requested from the Air Force permission to
go to graduate school with the intent of completing

graduate school with a and going right into the

 

program to assist them then in the operation of the use
of herbicides in Vietnam. I was accepted at Kansas
State University in 1965 and for three years there at
Kansas State, I worked on Tordon (phonetic) 101, and
Tordon 101 was eventually called Agent White.

I was very fortunate to be one of the very
first graduate students to receive radio-tagged 
radioactive tagged material, so that I could have a
better understanding of what happened in the

environment.

At the same time, it was becoming apparent

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 



 

 

5

1 that the issues related to were beginning to

2 surface. There was concern over some of the toxicity

3 issues in Vietnam. And so I began putting together.

4 that early, various articles, publications, news

5 clippings, on the use of herbicides in Vietnam.

6 In 1968, when I completed my degree, my wife

7 and I were assigned at Eglin Air Force Base in

8 Northwest Florida to begin working on the projects

9 associated with Operation Ranch Hand. My first real
10 assignment was to work with the Department on some of
11 the tests and evaluations of the spray equipment.

12 We were having real concerns in the 1968 time
13 period over the need for high performance aircraft 
14 this is jet aircraft -- to deliver insecticides as well
15 as herbicides. The issues at hand at the time very
16 classified but later unclassified was the proposed
17 invasion of Cambodia.
18 And for that invasion, we needed a high
19 performance aircraft that could come in at 300 or 400
20 miles an hour, quickly disseminate both the herbicide
21 and then subsequently material -- aircraft that would
22 disseminate insecticides. The reason for the

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 4678200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

um I DNHOA 

 

 

herbicides was, of course, we were looking for
something that would be rapid for defoliation.

And I worked on a formulation that allowed us
to Spray Agent Blue with a particulating agent in it at
high performance. And I will turn those slides over to
YOU to show you the beautiful wall of blue coming down
from a jet aircraft going 500 miles an hour.

MS. STEWART: Is it actually blue when it?s
particulated?

DR. YOUNG: We actually put a dye in it.

MS. STEWART: So you dyed it blue? Okay.

DR. YOUNG: We dyed it blue so that we could
see it and photograph it as it was being disseminated.

MS. STEWART: Right, but normally, it wasn't
blue.

DR. YOUNG: No, no. The Agent Blue, Agent
White, and Agent Orange were clear with a light brown
color in them. They weren't White and they certainly
weren't Orange.

MS. STEWART: And they were labeled according

to the drums, you labeled them in colors?

DR. YOUNG: That's right. In those years, we

Diversified Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

were at that time in Eglin Air Force Base using the
active material and the drums were color?coded as they
were for Vietnam. Everything was color-coded. That
way, we knew to be careful about mixing them. When you
mixed them, you caused a participate to be formed-

By 1969 and early 1970, it became very
apparent that one of the resources that we were going
to need to follow up on was the fact that the test area
in Florida, Test Area C52A, had received almost 400,000
pounds of active ingredient in the time period from
The last mission on that test area had
occurred in 1970. When that test area closed from the
use of testing and evaluation on herbicides, I put a
written request in to the base commander that got up
eventually to the general commanding officer and,
surprisingly enough, all the way to Washington.

And my request was that this site be turned
into an ecological investigation. And of course, my
intent was to be the principal investigator. And the
commanding general of the Air Force Armament Laboratory
asked me to accompany him and we met with the Secretary

Dlverslfied Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

mm 1 DNHOA "1 



 

 

8

1 of Air Force.

2 And over the next few months, in the early

3 19708, we secured permission to put the Eglin Site
4 into a research program. And from 1970 to 1983, I

5 continued to work heavily in the actual in

6 ecological investigations on that test area a $10

7 million research program over those years.

8 And literally, about 30 technical reports we

9 published, and I noticed you had many of them in the

10 collection but I'll provide remaining ones because I do
11 have a complete set of all of the reports that we

12 prepared over the years. And the more than 100

13 scientific publications that came out of that,

14 including a couple books that we did on our work.

15 So we did a huge effort to try to document

16 what happened to the dioxin that was in the Agent

17 Orange that was sprayed on the site, the arsenical that
18 was in cacodylic acid, and of course, the picloram that
19 was in Agent White. So we had developed the

20 methodologies, the analytical tools. We were the
21 first, really, to develop tools to get to the dioxin in
22 parts per trillion.

Diversi?ed Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




into our program

We hired and later brough

ebraska,
Wright State University, the UniverSity of 

it
Utah State University, Oregon State Univers y,

ns
University of Florida. All of those 

- 'n
became part of the program with their expertise helpl 

to focus on not only analytical but toxicological

issues. The Air Force Institute of Pathology.

We brought, each summer, beginning in about
1970 through '77, we brought anywhere from 15 to 25
people per summer there to do the work in the

ecological investigations, including many, many cadets.
I transferred from Eglin in 1970 to the Air Force
Academy and became an Associate Professor of Biological
Science there.

My was in the area of Herbicide
Toxicology Environmental Fate. But as you?ve noticed
from the records, I was in the Department of Agronomy
at Kansas State, so you'll see a in Agronomy or
you'll see Physiology, depending on the Air Force and
the military shred outs that they would offer. They
didn?t have a category called Herbicide Physiology or
Toxicology.

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 


1 0

1 So when a certain forum would come close as you can be to what your

3 background was, that's why you saw in your records the
4 different material.

5 MS. MURPHY: They were all over the map

6 because they didn't have a slot for that.

7 DR. YOUNG: Right. What was interesting is as
8 I began the study in 1969 and '70 of the test site, we

9 still had a lot of men coming from Operation Ranch Hand
10 and flying aircraft at Eglin to continue to recalibrate
11 the spray equipment.

12 We were always trying to refine better spray
13 equipment, helicopters, fixed wing. The C-123 was our
14 major aircraft. It was called the Provider. It was

15 ideal for what we were trying to do. The AA45Y1 Tank
16 was there. But what was interesting for me was the

17 opportunity to meet and begin to develop relationships
18 not only with many of the Ranch Handers but with the

19 scientific community that had supported this program.
20 Dr. Fred Shirley (phonetic), at USDA, here in
21 Washington, at Beltsville; Dr. Charlie Mineric
22 (phonetic), at Fort Detrick; and Bob Darryl (phonetic)

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467?9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and Jay Huyfrank (phonetic); all of the men who were
in the development of the equipment and
mnivrinln, themselves, the test evaluation. Rod
Rodney Bovey, from Texas who was

Hf 'hv world leaders in the area of and
for brush control, and had been asked by the
of Army and USDA to set up trials in Puerto
Rico, for example.

So as you look at those years of the testing
and vvaluation, I got to meet almost everyone that had
been involved. I was young at that point and very
excited about what was going on. And most of these
gentlemen gave me their records. They would turn over
reports. I would collect their reports. And as we
began to see the controversy, it became even more
important to do clippings from newspapers. So we began
to nearch newspaper clippings.

I met and became friends with many of the men
who had been involved in Chico, the program there for
looking at lessons learned in Vietnam. I did not go to
Vietnam. I was not a Vietnam veteran. I was a
scientist that became interested in this from the

Dlvenl?ed Reporting Servlces, Inc.
I l0] Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

M?l I RNA-IV

 

 

 

 

 


1

 

scientific point of view. And my goal has always been

to be very objective about what happened-

I, like you, I found that interviewing a lot
Of the men and scientists that served in Vietnam began

sight into what had happened. I

to give me a better in
as a goal to try to collect every record that I
could possibly collect. As we did the spraying, I

everything that I

would put the manuals for spraying.

could find became, I thought, important.
It was apparent that a lot of stuff wasn't

being kept. And the slides that we began to
photograph, I've got huge numbers. I mentioned to you

yesterday, I have a huge number of slides of every

uld get involved in, or I was

operation that I co

involved in.
I went up there to

Even at Fort Detrick, when

look at the testing and spraying of some of the test

And all of the

materials. I would photograph those.

photographs at Eglin of all the work that we did over

those years.

In 1972, it became apparent that the

Department of Air Force was going to be responsible for

Diversified Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202)4619200



 

disposing of the remaining herbicide stocks. We had
been watching Project Pacer Ivy in Vietnam and I had
been collecting records and interviewing the

environmental engineers who had been involved in

Project Pacer Ivy.

This was the preparation of the herbicide to

be moved from Vietnam to a storage site where, in time,

it would be destroyed. We had no idea what the final

method of disposition

was going to be. But because of

my involvement in the herbicide issues, the Department

of Air Force, the Air Force Logistics Command, invited

me to be a principal investigator in the disposition of

Agent Orange.

So our team at the Air Force Academy,

veterinarians, physicians, toxicologists, ecologists,

really became the center group for the Department of
Air Force as we began to look at how we were going to
do studies on the environmental fate. Obviously, the
work we had been doing for the previous years on the

fate of TCDD and and gave us really the

expertise to continue this.

It?s not often one gets to do that,

Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036

 

(202) 467-9200

13

 

 

 



          

  

7-5? -

 

    
   

.K?ngu-uvw 

 

particularly in the military, in the Department of
Defense. I was very fortunate in that our reputation
for good work and thorough investigations really was
brought to the attention of the Air Staff and we got
the support and the financial support to continue the
studies on the disposition.

Our team really began to look at soil
biodegradation. We looked at the opportunity of
spraying the material in places like Oregon. We
actually even had discussions with the Brazilian
government to spray the herbicide as a surplus material
in the Amazon. We evaluated almost every proposal that
came in from people or suggestions.

And as the time went by, we found ourselves,
of course, being forced more and more into the
direction of at?sea incineration of the material. The
studies we did on the environmental fate, the soil

biodegradation studies in Utah, Kansas, Florida,

 

Oregon. all contributed to our continued understanding
of the environmental fate of this material but in the
end, it didn't make a difference in terms of the or
disposition.

Diversi?ed Reporting Services. inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Finer

Washington, DC 20036 
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




I?ln- l?ux l?totvct ton nuuwd 
Ithl In thi .I. lilht? .Ix?cnd Lig??l .


11qu um- llun' mun! drutl w.uz th.? .tH ?own! Ozandv

luv In 14.1 man on lunnd 

.mm, .nud tln- dm-tntou wan utmh' 1n Whvu Hm!

w.m umdr?. all ol tho :ttockn o1 Adt?ni Oranqc?
w- IN lu' \?Hlltu?lr?ti, vvon It??t?dlx?ll 

Jo wv :wnt hunun out avrmm tho country to

mom up At dittm'c-ut univornit ion. drunm and cam: and
[null lt?rl nl Aqu-nl and brought .111 together
4  Hullpoll, Mlnninnippi, at the Naval Uonntruction
Inn t?malm', whore- we had at that time about
-nuu,nun qal loun ot Agent. Orange.

'l'hin wan material that had never been shipped
In Wu had done .1 dioxin analysis of it . It
mm alum! .1 and .01 parts per million TODD,
whlu'h turmnl that it wan high purity product . And there)
wan no It?dtinll why it should have been deatroyed other
Ilmn 11 had the connotation, Agvnt Orange, to it.
?l?lnn wan .: rc-nout'cn oi millions and millions ot
dulluln wur'lh LII llt'l?hit'idt'.

'l'lmt him had brought trom Vietnam,
Diva-"lad Reporting Services. Inc.
1 HH Sula-nth Snot-t. NW Second I?loor

Washington, DC 2.0036
202) 46! 9200

 

.4

 

 

 

 

   

study on the diOxin content and we found
that, indeed, the concentration varied from the .01 all
the way to 40 parts per million. And when we looked at
the 40 part per million drum, we found that it was not

Agent Orange that had been re?drummed, but Agent

Purple. And it gave us the first indication 

well, I should say that it had been Purple that had not

been used in Vietnam. We were aware of the

concentrations in Purple because at Eglin Air Force

Base, in the last years of testing and evaluation, we

collected samples of materials that had been used on

the test area and we had samples of Agent Purple. And

when we did the analysis of them, the mean

concentration came out about 32 parts per million.

And of course, this began to tell us that it

was the early men, the early people, who sprayed

herbicide in Vietnam, the Ranch Hand crews of 1962 to

1964, that had been at greatest risk. This became an

important consideration as we then designed the health

studies in subsequent years.

We started the design of the Ranch Hand study

in 1979, at Brooks Air Force Base,

but we knew that the

Diversl?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 



 


1 7

1 men who had been involved in the '62 to '64 period were
2 our most important people because they had been exposed
3 to the highest concentrations of Purple and to the

4 development of equipment at that time that was Still

5 experimental so there had been lots of problems With

6 it, and leaking inside.

7 MS. MURPHY: You hadn't worked out the

8 procedures.

9 DR. YOUNG: We hadn?t worked out all the

10 procedures, that?s right. But you can see how this

11 became very important to us because it also said that

12 if cancer was going to be part of our end point, that

13 we should plan for a latency up to 40 years.

14 Now, the 40?year concept came out because of

15 asbestos. There is a long latency from the first

16 exposure to asbestos to the actual onset of

17 mesothelioma. And having guessed this, we didn't know
18 that mesothelioma might be an end point; as a matter of
19 fact, it wasn?t. But knowing that this was a cancer
20 that had a long time to develop, we wanted to be sure
21 that if there was something associated with exposure to
22 Agent Orange or dioxin, we would have a health study

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

that would go long enough.

So we took the time period from ?62 to 2002.

So the Air Force Health Study,

served in Vietnam in Operation Ranch Hand and their

matched controls, was designed to be that 40-year

window.

That?s what we did what we did on it. Many

people don't understand why was the study to be this
long and then terminated in 2002.

MS. MURPHY: That was such a science on

asbestos.

DR. YOUNG: It really, it was on the

possibility that there might be a long latency period

as we had experienced with asbestos. So we knew that

if you wanted to have a long latency period, you had

better plan for 40 years from the time of exposure-

MS. STEWART: So during the first spraying

operations, the earlier spraying operations in Vietnam,

approximately from '62, as you said, to '64, the

herbicides being used included Agent Purple, which has

a much higher 

DR. YOUNG: Right. Purple, Pink, and Green

were all materials used. And the Pink and Green were

Diversified Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

the study of the men who

18

 

 

 

 

 

just simply different formulations of Purple
was a mixture of and It was a mixture
that we called the isobutyl. And regular Orange, which
came in 1965, was the normal butyl ester of the
herbicide.

Now, many people think that the material was
diluted in kerosene or gasoline or was solvent?based.
It wasn?t. It was the pure material. The normal butyl
ester of and is a liquid at normal
temperatures. As a consequence, it was a concentrated
material, 8.6 pounds of active ingredient per gallon.

MS. STEWART: Very concentrated.

DR. YOUNG: Yes, and the reason I was looking
yesterday I told you about the report by Kline
(phonetic), I was looking at the report by Kline, is
because one of the issues was always what was the basis
for the spray rate in Vietnam. And the basis for that
was the amount of acreage we could spray with a minimum
biologically effective dose of herbicide.

That biologically active dose of herbicide
turned out the be one gallon, or 8.6 pounds. And this
would be that which would be deposited from the

Diversl?ed Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

?7

 

 

 

aircraft spraying at the rate of about 346 acres
sprayed in the 1,000 gallon tank.

So when you see the photographs, the goal here
was to have a swath of about 260 feet wide and 7,000
feet long, more than a mile. And so you would have
various configurations of aircraft in Vietnam, as many
as 12 aircraft that flew, for example, over War Zone D.
We have the photographs of the 12 aircraft just laying
down herbicide, wing tip to wing tip, literally.

And the reason they were doing that was
because we were then trying to widen that. But there
was another issue here and that was because of the
multiple canopy jungle, we found that to get that rate
of one gallon per acre, that 8.6 pounds, that, indeed,
we really needed to be spraying it at the rate of about
3 gallons per acre in Vietnam.

And so I showed you that document yesterday

 

that showed the graph? Okay, that upper peak area was
the more heavily concentrated, and that came out of the
vortex from the wings as it was moving, so that the

herbicide was doing like this. It was circling.

The particle side was about 350 microns, which

Diversi?ed Services. Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467?9200



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 

1 meant that it wasn't as big as a heavy raindrop but as
2 it came out of the back of the aircraft, it would come
3 around, kind of make a little whirl, and then-drop

4 down.

5 MS. STEWART: So these are sort of mist-size
6 particles?

7 DR. YOUNG: Well, they were larger the mist.

8 Mist would be less than 100 microns. This was a very
9 important set of studies that we were looking at.

10 MS. STEWART: Yeah, I've seen a lot of those
11 droplets.

12 DR. YOUNG: And why this is important is

13 because we had aircraft that were very carefully

14 calibrated. We kept those spray tubes open. The check
15 valves were constantly being cleaned and replaced. And
16 this was important to us because we wanted to have that
17 minimum dose, that minimum concentration Sprayed, that
18 biologically effective concentration or deposition, and
19 yet, at the same time, minimize the small particles

20 that would drift away.
21 And so if you take a look at the data, the
22 spray swath of 267 feet accounted for more than 90

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
i101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

percent. As a matter of fact, in most cases, we 

show that only about 1.5 percent of it was less than

100 microns. This is important as one begins to 33k

the question of exposure to veterans.

One of the things that has often happened in
subsequent years about the controversy is that veterans
could be they try to plot where the veteran was with

regard to where the Ranch Hands were and they would

say, "Okay, we're going to give them so many points for

being a quarter of a mile away, a half a mile away, or

a mile away."

Well, to those of us who say the data, it
doesn't matter. They weren't exposed to any degree at

all. Only those that would have been directly under

the flight would have been exposed. And because of the

extreme the extensive procedure for approving an

actual spray operation, with Spotter aircraft and
fighter aircraft accompanying the Air Force 
providers that were spraying the Ranch Hand aircraft,
the likelihood of our troops being sprayed was very,

very low.

Yet, when you look at the data from the

Diversified Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200



 

 

 

 

Veterans Administration, one sees very interesting

comments on self?reporting. Fifty percent of them said

they were directly underneath the flights, were

Sprayed. This was incongruent. This doesn?t fit. It

doesn't fit the data. But what it does do is it fits

the observation that, indeed, they saw a C-123 spraying

and every seven days, the major bases of Vietnam were

sprayed with malathion from a silver spraying a

cloud of malathion.

And every veteran who served in Vietnam

probably saw those spray burns, whether they were

directly under it, early in the morning or in the late

evening, when the spraying took place. One doesn't

even dispute that. They should have seen that spraying

because malathion was used to control the malaria?

carrying mosquitos. And we had huge problems with

malaria.

So when a veteran reports that, saw the

spray," yes, it was probably true but it was highly

unlikely that it was Agent Orange, or Blue, or White.

What it was 

MS. STEWART: They were doing a very intensive

Reporting Services. Inc.
1 10] Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

over-base spraying, specifically because they're
targeting the true concentrations.
DR. YOUNG: You got it, absolutely.

MS. STEWART: To control the mosquito?malaria

issue.

DR. YOUNG: This is why the record are so
good. The records show not only the concentrations and
what we actually sprayed, it goes into we have all

those records on the insecticides and how they were
sprayed and the time that they were used. And that's
what isn't being reported.

The veteran doesn?t know that story. All we
hear is, "Well, I was exposed to Agent Orange." But
the truth of the matter is, the likelihood of that was
very low.

Now, one also has to at the same time say,
"Were there trOOps down underneath the area where we
were spraying?" Well, yes, there were but they weren't
our troops.

(End side A, tape 1.)

MS. STEWART: Okay, this is side 2 of tape 1,
the interview with Dr. Alvin Young, and it's April 27,

Dlversl?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

2001.
Dr. Young, we ended on side 1 of the tape
talking about the troop exposure to spraying in
Vietnam. I know you did a lot of consulting work with

civilian exposure to dioxin and other types of
accidents. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about
that?

DR. YOUNG: In 1968, late 1968 into 1969, the
toxicological work on began to indicate that
there was a contaminate present. And of course, we now
know that it was the 2378 tetrachlorobidenzo~p?dioxin,
the TCDD.

And those of us that had been following over
the previous years about what had been going on with
regard to the herbicides had become aware of the
studies of Nitro, West Virginia, from the late 1940s,
and other industrial accidents in the early ?503 that
indicated that in the production of trichlorophenol, it
was possible for some sort of a contaminate that caused
chloracne in the workers when there was either an
accident or handling unnecessarily of some of the
material, cleaning out, for example, of the 

Dlverslfied Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

 

units.

So
we began to have this understanding that

there 
as a material that was a chloractnegin

hon 
eth), that caused chloracne, a condition that

begins in the (inaudible) area around the face, moves
into the spacious glands all over the body. In the
most severe form, a stermatological (phonetic)
condition.

So when the chemical companies were trying to
improve the quality of this, they used what they called
the Rabbit Ear Test. I did a book on the phenoxy
(phonetic) herbicides with Rod Bovey (phonetic). We
began that book in the mid??TOS. And Rod and I
collected thousands of articles on all of the
information we could find on the phenoxy herbicides.

And because he was Department of Agriculture,
he had access to the National Agricultural Library and
to other international sources of material. And that
collection of much of those articles then I also had
copies of because I wrote half of the number of

chapters and Rod wrote the other half a number. And

those chapters that I wrote, including the chapter on

Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036

(202) 467-9200 

26

 

 

 

 

 

2'7

dioxin, I entered all those into the collection,

itself.

And that's why you saw so many articles in
there about these things on environmental fate, on
dioxin, on human exposures. Well, while we were doing
that, of course, we were involved in looking at ways
for the deposition of herbicide, Orange. We were still
doing the tests at Eglin on looking at the whole idea
of the environmental fate and persistence.

It was a natural that we began to be the
international experts on TCDD. So in 1976, when the
Servaso (phonetic) accident happened, for example, our
team from the Eglin research studies, assembled in
Colorado at the Air Force Academy and three of the
Italians came from Italy to work with us, to pick our
brains, to have us make recommendations to them on the
environmental fate and the human issues that were
taking place as we were talking, literally, in Servaso,
Italy, after that terrible industrial accident in July
of '76.

Subsequently, I went in the fall, November, to
Italy, and for about ten years, I went back and forth

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

dispositi

occurred

dioxin.

know how

studies on what happens to the material as it gets into
animals and plants that it really became a repository
of knowledge. So when you look at the collection, you

see all those different studies that were done all

over .

destruction of Agent Orange, which occurred we
started that final phase of that at?sea incineration in
1977 1978, in the spring of '78, as we had just

finished the incineration of herbicide, I received a

call from

(phonetic).

working with the Italian government and the final

health studies, I participated in a lot of the

conferences. The Binghams (phonetic) Office Building

Beach incidences were occurring.

had the expertise, the area of specialty involving the

28

on and closure of the sites. I followed the

in just a few years after that. The Times

So we were involved in all of those because we

Not only were we the first teams to really

to do the analyses but we had such wonderful

when we finished Project Pacer Hoe, the

 

a VA employee by the name of Maude De Victor

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

. 2?

Subsequently, there was a film made about
Maude De Victor and Agent Orange, a mini?series for
t.v. And they mentioned some Air Force captain told
her it was Agent Orange that caused Sgt. Owens? health
problems. Actually, I didn?t say that. She called me
wanting to know if (inaudible) and Sgt. Owens, had they
been exposed to the arcinical (phonetic).

MS. MURPHY: Was she a reporter?

DR. YOUNG: No, she was a Veterans
Administration counseling person. That was her
responsibility at the VA in Chicago.

And I told Ms. De Victor that I would get back

with her because I didn't know who she was and the way
she was asking questions concerned me greatly because
it sounded like a reporter. So I contacted the
Veterans Administration and found out that,

yes, she

was a counselor at Chicago.

So I called her back and I said, "Okay, now,

what are you asking?" And she said, "Well, this

because he was spraying Agent Blue. He was a

helicopter pilot, spraying Agent Blue around base

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467?9200

 

 

 

perimeters."

And I said, "Well, I don't think we have any
evidence at all on cacodylic acid, which is the major
component in the phyter (phonetic) 560 Agent Blue.?
And she said, "Well, he said he also sprayed White."
And I said, "Well, yeah, okay, and this was Tordon
101." And she said, "Well, surely that was the
material?" And I said, "No 

(Interruption to tape.)

DR. YOUNG: I wanted you to hear this because
this was the start of the conflict over the veteran
issue. And I was right at the beginning of this in the
1978 time frame.

Now, when I was talking to Maude De Victor,
indeed, I did tell her, I said, "The only information
that we are unsure of in terms of toxicological and
environmental fate and human exposure is the dioxin
associated with the and in the Agent
Orange formulation."

That was our unknown. We did not have a great
deal of knowledge about the impact on the human. We

did know about the nature of it as a teratogen

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 10] Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202)4679200

30

 

 



 

 

 

(phonetic). We certainly had the work by Caceba
(phonetic).

MS. MURPHY: But that was an (inaudible),
right?

DR. YOUNG: This was an (inaudible). And we
had no evidence to say the Alcia, (phonetic) Oregon
controversy over Agent Orange was that women were being
exposed to in the force of Oregon, the State of
Oregon, a little community called Alcia, Oregon.

The studies of that found that these women

were, in fact they were a high frequency of
abortion. But when you looked at what happened, two
things were apparent. These were in a little commune,

women who were associated with a commune, not a

community.

These were isolated folks and they were
drinking water from wells that were down below where
the toilets were, outdoor toilets. And there was every
indication that not only were they being subjected 
and some of them came down with diphtheria, and we
hadn't seen diphtheria in this country for years.

This was a commune that had its own health

Diversified Reporting Services. Inc. 
101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

problems. And so the abortion issue, spontaneous
abortion, which everybody said, "Well, it was dioxin."
No, there wasn't that evidence. Those accusations had

been made in Vietnam.

had followed in Vietnam, made by our medical teams that
went over to Vietnam, those reports which are in the
collection, don't confirm that we saw evidence to show
increased spontaneous abortion that could have been

associated with Agent Orange.

the dilemma for Maude De Victor. I couldn?t tell her
convincingly so that there was no problem associated
with it. I?m a scientist. And I said, "The only
questions that we have really are not on White or Blue,

but are on Orange."

Not another word was said for two or three months. And
all of a sudden, Bill Curtis, WBBM Chicago, called me

and he said, "We're going to do a film on, 'Agent

Orange:



32

And the studies that had been done, that we

One can never prove a negative, and this was

MS. STEWART: Because of the dioxin component?

DR. YOUNG: Because of the dioxin component.

Vietnam's Deadly Fog.'"

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
?1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036

(202) 467-9200

 

 

MS. STEWART: We have that in the collection.
I've been meaning to look at it.

DR. YOUNG: And he said, want to interview
you on it because, obviously, you?re one of the players
and knows about these issues." It was an atrocious
film, atrocious from the scientific point of View. It
opens up in Globe, Arizona. We talked a little
yesterday about the Globe, Arizona incident where the
Forest Service had sprayed in a canyon outside
of Globe.

And McCussik (phonetic), one of the farmers,
one of the residents, collected freak animals and he
displayed these freak animals with slipped tendons and
all sorts of explainable deformities. And of course,
this is said that this all occurred as a consequence of
spraying the herbicide.

Well, that was not proven at all. As a matter
of fact, the studies showed that McCussik was this
guy was a collector of those kind of animals and the

basis for the the physicians in Globe saw no

increase in cancer, no increase in women coming in with

abortions. These are the family doctors. And they

Dlversl?ed Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

said, "There?s no basis for this."

But the press played it up huge, huge. And
therefore, this was where Bill Curtis started. Well,
okay, so we've got Alcia, Oregon. This is proof. And
then he went on to the different issues, different
episodes at the time. And then he came around to
interviewing me and I spent a lot of time with Bill
Curtis and his crew.

When you see the film, you?ll see that I'm in
there just for a couple seconds, a couple moments. And
he was able to catch the right words, you know, that we
don't know everything. Wonderful play, wonderful
editing by Bill Curtis and his team.

That became the trigger. Bill Curtis took
that to the Congress of the United States. There was a
special session one evening where hundreds of
Congressmen and Senators got to see Bill Curtis's,
"Agent Orange: Vietnam Deadly Fog."

And the next year, he followed with another
film. And by now, the community was beginning to gel,
the veteran community. They were all newspaper
articles and the collection of articles you?ll see,

Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

hundreds of articles began to come across the country,
"Veterans Exposed to Agent Orange, Veterans Dying of
Cancer, Veterans Having Children With Birth Defects."
It just didn?t stop.

Those of us at the Department of Air Force,
Brooks Air Force Base, where I was now assigned, said
the only way we can answer this kind of a question is
really to do a health study of the actual men who were
most likely to have been exposed, Ranch Hands. And so
that was the basis for why the Ranch Hand study began.

So we put together an incredibly complex
protocol. I flew along with the other principal
investigators back to Washington to brief the National
Academy of Sciences on it so that we could get their
support for the study. We briefed the members of
Congress. The Surgeon General and I went to the
Congress to present the Ranch Hand study. To give us a
good background, I prepared the 1978 technical report,
about one inch thick, that?s called, "Toxicology,
Environmental Fate, and Human Risk to Agent Orange."

MS. STEWART: Yes, we?ve seen many copies of

it.

Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 4678200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

36

1 DR. YOUNG: Yes, as a matter of fact, I forgot
2 exactly what the title was. But that document prepared
3 in ?78 was in preparation for the Ranch Hand

4 epidemiologic studies.

5 In 1980, I think transferred at the request of
6 the Surgeon General to Washington, D.C., to work with

7 the Veterans Administration. And I helped organize the
8 Environmental Health Office at VA. Because we knew

9 that the concern by the veteran had to be addressed and
10 we began, then, our studies to help the veteran

11 community understand the issues related to Agent

12 Orange.

13 The difficulty has always been that it is so
14 hard as a scientist to say that something could not

15 occur. While at the Veterans Administration, we

16 thought carefully about how to approach the issue of

17 Agent Orange with the veteran. By that, I mean, we

18 knew it was important that we did not want to contest
19 the issue of exposure. And that was a very difficult
20 decision.
21 If you contest exposure, that says that the
22 veteran must prove that he or she was exposed to Agent

Diversi?ed Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200


 

 

 

3'7

   

 

 

 

 

1 Orange while on duty in Vietnam. You don?t want to put
. 2 your veteran in that position. And as I said, when you
3 looked at what they had told you, 50 percent of them
4 said they were right there underneath the spraying.
5 So that became a very difficult problem for
6 us. There was another thing that happened. In the
7 records, and the Chico Report on Lessons Learned,
8 talked about a major problem we had in '67 and ?68.
9 There were lots of accusations.
10 When I first started my work at Eglin, one of
11 the issues about the spray drift thing was the small
12 particles, were they responsible for moving miles away
13 and killing rubber plantations and wiping out the trees
14 around the cities where, you know, miles from where
15 spraying occurred? Why were those accusations being 
16 made? Because the major cities of Vietnam were losing
17 the leaves from their trees. Pleiku, Saigon, almost 
18 all of the major cities were losing the leaves along 
19 the major boulevards. 
20 And we couldn't figure out well, obviously, M-
21 we weren't spraying anywhere near those places. And 
22 the spray birds that were doing the insecticides, yes, 
Diversi?ed Reporting Services. Inc. 1:
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor 
Washington. DC 20036 a
(202) 467?9200

 

 

 

 

 

they were close, but they were spraying insecticides.
And insecticides could not be attributed the damage
could not be attributed to insecticides.

It was herbicide damage. I saw some of the
photographs. I absolutely concurred, it was. And
Mineric and Darryl, everybody who was involved said,
"Yeah, it?s herbicide damage. What in the world is
going on?"

Well, we found out that the drums, the 55-
gallon drums, were being drained at each of the three
major bases, the Ranch Hand bases, Bien Hoa, Phu Cat,
Da Nang, they were being drained. And the drained
material was being used for base perimeter spraying,
yes.

But what was happening was, about a gallon of
material would be left in the bottom of the drum and
the drums were being taken by the South Vietnamese
commanders, who had the responsibility, and they were
selling them to the civilians. The civilians were
putting gasoline in them and the gasoline was being
used in the mopeds. And they were fogging the cities
of Vietnam with mopeds.

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 4679200

 

 

 

when we saw 1 hat. report we knew that
to content exposure by our veterans would be foolish.
They Could have, any veteran who would have been there

in that time frame could well have been exposed simply
by being downtown Pleiku or downtown Saigon.

And so I wrote a memo, and I don?t know
whether the memo is in the collection. I think it is.
There should be a memo there that I wrote to the
Veterans Administration administrator, and my argument
to him was, we should not contest exposure.

MS. STEWART: I think it?s there.

DR. YOUNG: And the whole idea was because of
these lessons learned and because of what we knew that
had happened in Vietnam, we didn't want to put the
veteran at the -- to have to prove. Well, by saying
that, by saying we're not going to contest exposure, of
course, opens the door to say to everyone, ?Okay,
obviously, I must have been exposed or I could have
been exposed, so let's go ahead and sign up for the
Agent Orange examination."

That was the second part of our activity. We
designed a physical exam that would begin to help us

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
I 10] Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200



 

 

 

 

track all of the men and women who had been in Vietnam
who had claimed exposure. And they needed only come
in, Sign up for the exam; then they became part of our
registry.

And you will find over the years and the later
years, you'll find lots and lots of wonderful reports
and publications about what we began to see in the
registry and how the registry helped us then begin to
design some of the health studies.

MS. STEWART: So the registry actually
includes any veteran who can demonstrate that they were
physically in Vietnam during these years?

DR. YOUNG: During the window of when
herbicides were used in Vietnam.

MS. STEWART: Right. And then, the physical
exam would be something that would be fairly
comprehensive. It would not be looking specifically
for certain kinds of health?related problems but
generally. So you established a registry of all of
these people who came forward?

DR. YOUNG: Right. In the end the registry
is still going, by the way, and you are now up to, you

Diversi?ed Reporting Services. Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- i gymknow, almost 300,000, I think. Somewhere in there.

MS. MURPHY: Is that being handled by Brooks
Air Force Base? I

DR. YOUNG: No, the registry is being handled
by the Veterans Administration. There is an office at
VA that still, today, does this. And they also put out
a newsletter. They put out a little, very nice, little
"Agent Orange Review." Now, I helped start that
because it was important that we get that information
out to the veteran.

One of the reasons why I wrote the book in
1986 was, the book that I wrote on the Vietnam conflict
and the use of Agent Orange with Regiani (phonetic) 
Guisseppi (phonetic) Regiani, we wrote that because we
wanted to have a source of material for veterans to use
and to try to understand what had happened in Vietnam,
not trying to downplay it.As a matter of fact, some of
the chapters in there are excellent about what we were
trying to do and what we had gathered from the
industrial studies about the potential of these

materials.

We couldn't prove cancer. We knew chloracne

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 



was there. We knew that (phonetic) could be
caused by exposure to the materials, to chlorinated
materials. We knew that chloriphaneuropathy (phonetic)
was possible. But some of those were questionable
endpoints. The health studies that were done of
industrial workers were also workers who had been
exposed to many materials, not just the phenoxy
(phonetic) herbicides or dioxin.

So one could not have a clear understanding of
what was going on.

MS. MURPHY: So the industrial studies did not
give you clear answers?

DR. YOUNG: They could give us some general
ideas but they couldn't give us end points. That was
the major reason, then, why we actually recommended
that we start doing the health studies.

Now, understanding what was going on at the
time is important because once the veterans began this
process of becoming concerned to the point of going to
the Veterans Administration, the lawyers also began to
spot, "Boy, this is a great toxic tort case coming up,
folks."

Diversi?ed Reporting Servlces. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202)4679200

 

 

And there began to be class actions, I mean,
lawsuits against the chemical company, against the
federal government. It was a huge legal case beginning
to form, and you could see this. You could sense it at
the Veterans Administration. You could sense it in the
newspapers. This was coming. We all knew it was
coming. Because in the end, we figured this was going
to have to be settled in the courts or it was going to
be have to be settled in the Congress.

There was no easy way to see it being settled
scientifically. Agent Orange, and I wrote an article
that became very controversial, I called it, "Agent
Orange at the Crossroads Between Science and Social
Concern." And that's why I did that. It only became
apparent to those of us that were scientists involved
in this that no matter how good of science we
conducted, we probably weren't going to be the deciding
factor. There were too many social concerns.

MS. MURPHY: And you could look at the other
types of civilian exposure and see how those go, like
the Love Canal which did involve dioxin but it ended in
open water 

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a-rvr?

 

44

DR. YOUNG: Yes, and Times Beach, and
everYWhere we looked, with the exception of Servaso
(phonetic), which was probably the best case of where
the science was the driver. Much of Servaso was that
way. But in the United States, none of the cases were
clear at all and they all became toxic tort cases.

MS. STEWART: And in Australia, also?

DR. YOUNG: Well, because of what was
happening in the United States, it became obvious that
sooner or later, the Australian veterans who had served
in Vietnam were going to become part of the class
action. And we also foresaw that the third ally who
was with us, the Koreans, would sooner or later have to
face up to this in their own nation.

And that?s what?s happening today, of course.
It's taken a long time for the Korean veterans to step
up to this, much in part because the Koreans had such
great spree de corps in Vietnam. These were the very
best soldiers that Korea produced. These were the top
young men. These were men who provided themselves on
their physical fitness, their ability to engage
whatever the situation and prevail.

Reporting Services. Inc.
I 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

 

And they were outstanding. I mean, the Tiger
Squadron, the Blue Dragon Squadron units in Vietnam had
a wonderful record. I mean, they were just
outstanding. So this was a group of men that weren't
about to let themselves be convinced that what they had
done had injured them. And I think this huge sense of
pride that they had really was very important.

And of course, we don't know that they were
injured. We don't have any evidence, because we never
had evidence for our own men and women who served in
Vietnam. So as we started the health studies, if you
look at the studies by Kahn (phonetic) of the Veterans
Administration, and I've got a complete set of those
over the years, I?ll send those to you so they become
part of the collection.

It?s a very important set of studies because
Han Dr. Kahn found very, very few things that could
be tied to Vietnam and he found essentially nothing, no
cases of chloracne. We did not find cases, issues, I
mean, health problems that we could tie to causation by
Agent Orange or dioxin.

MS. MURPHY: And you almost always see

Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

chloracne with dioxin?

DR. YOUNG: It?s the hallmark of exposure in

the industrial setting, in Servaso. It didn't occur in

the population of Times Beach but it occurred in the
women at the horse arena outside of Times Beach
where the same material that had been sprayed on the

ground in Times Beach had been sprayed in the horse

arena to keep the dust down.

So Times Beach was important because of the

incident before Times Beach, which was a horse arena

event that was followed up by the Center for Disease

Control. The CDC was called in to look at this episode

outside of St. Louis where horses, 65 horses, died.

And these young girls came down with chloracne. And
CDC was just completely puzzled. What was it?

Well, they found out that a chemical company
was disposing of the still bottoms by providing them to
a person who was then mixing them with oil and spraying
it on roads.

And this was not a very good operation,

obviously, a very sloppy activity. Lawsuits all came

out of all of this.

But this guy had these waste oils and he had a

Diversified Reporting Services. Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

 

spraying waste oils on horse arenas were horses
were performing to keep the dust down. Well, he
sprayed this one horse arena with still bottoms that
were just loaded with dioxin and pheurons (phonetic).

It affected everything. The birds started
dying inside the arena. The young girls who were
riding the horses who were the children of the owners
of the horse arena. And the horses all died. The
girls did not, but they came down with chloracne. So
there was our episode that led us to say, "Yes, dioxin
exposure, the hallmark is chloracne."

The health of those young women were followed
for many years. Again, where you have very good
populations where we've followed, we haven't seen long?
term health effects but again, one says, okay, those
occurred in Servaso in '76. We have to have 40 years
out there. We're not anywhere near there yet, but
we?re getting close.

MS. MURPHY: But in Servaso, you had the
chloracne?

DR. YOUNG: You had the chloracne as the
hallmark of exposure, indeed.

Dlversi?ed Reporting Services. Inc.
1 10! Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

Well, the Australian veterans and now the
Korean veterans are all part 

(End side B, tape 1.)

MS. MURPHY: This is the National Agricultural
Library Special Collections interview with Alvin L.
Young, conducted by Pat Murphy and Stewart on
April 27, 2001, in the reading room of Special
Collections. And this is tape 2, side A.

MS. STEWART: You were beginning to discuss
the relationship of the Australian veterans to concerns
about veteran exposure and how the Australians became
involved, perhaps?

DR. YOUNG: Right.

MS. STEWART: In the issue. Was this
subsequent to American veterans' concerns or did it
precede that?

DR. YOUNG: I went over to the Veterans let
me back up just a little bit to bring this together in
terms of my own personal involvement. I moved from San
Antonio in ?80 to Washington to take over a
responsibility to help put the VA health studies
together.

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

was assigned to the Chief Medical
Director, Dr. Custis (phonetic), and worked very
closely with Dr. Barkeley Shepphard (phonetic), an
excellent physician, very, very concerned about the
veterans, served in Vietnam. He was a physician that
served off of one of the ships in Vietnam.

And his team, Lane Drash (phonetic) and Larry
Stockmoe (phonetic), were Vietnam veterans who had seen
action in Vietnam and understood a lot of these issues.
I was the non-veteran, non-Vietnam veteran, and I was
on active duty, however. And I started at the VA as a
major and I left the Veterans Administration two years
later as a lieutenant colonel.

When I went from the Veterans Administration,
I went to the White House Science Office, OSTP, and
that came about because of a testimony that I had given
at one of the Senate hearings on the Veteran Affairs.
The administrator asked me, since I was responsible for
putting together a lot of the issues here, asked me to
testify in front of the Congress. Senator Cranston
from California was chairing the hearing.

And Senator Cranston asked the question, "Why

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

need all these health studies? Why can't we just
go ahead and give compensation? It was obvious that we
were guilty, that the United States had damaged our

veteran by the use of Agent Orange."

And my argument to this Senator was that

wasn't true at all. We had no evidence to show that we

were responsible for the health effects. That doesn?t

say that we should not take responsibility for our

veterans, but the issue of causation was the issue at

hand. Do we presume that the Agent Orange was guilty
and, hence, compensation be given on the basis of that?
Or do we wait and really find the answer of what was
causing the veteran health problems.

If, in fact, it was real, that there was
something that was causing all the veterans to be ill,
should we not try to find out what that really was?
Well, the issue of presumptive compensation just was a
livid issue with Senator Cranston and he was very
dissatisfied with me and made very loud remarks and
expressed his total frustration with the Veterans
Administration because we just did not cow tow to
throwing our science away and assuming presumptive

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

compensation, as he wished we would.

For those of us involved, we knew that the
answer sooner or later would be that Congress would
take action. They would only wait so long until they
had the information. Of course, at that time, it was
Congressman Daschle. Kerry (phonetic) had also served

in Vietnam. So they were very, very pro?veteran, as

they should have been.

But we weren?t against the veteran and, yet,

51

we were portrayed as people who didn?t care. Our issue

was, let's find out what is really happening. Let's
get to the bottom of what these health issues are.
Maybe there was something we could do that we should
know about. If we knew what the causation was, maybe
there was action we could take to help veterans try to
address their health problems.

The problem was that the studies kept coming
back essentially negative. And that was the
frustration for everyone. So Senator Cranston was not
happy at all. I kept saying what the role of science
was. Well, that night, Senator Cranston really was
upset. He had called the administrator and the word

Diversi?ed Servlces, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

.
u? 

 

 

 

2
1 got to the White House that I had not necessarily
2 misbehaved but I was certainly not considered to be the
3 most friendly person that was testifying that day.
4 And I was called over to the White House
Science Office to meet with a man by the name of Jay
6 Keyworth (phonetic). He was the President's Science
7 Advisor. So I went over the next morning to meet with
8 Dr. Keyworth, and Dr. Keyworth asked me if I really
9 believed all those messages that I was trying to
10 deliver about the importance of science?
11 And I said, "Well, yes, Dr. Keyworth, I do. I
12 think it's important that we show that science can
13 prove or disprove the problems that were going on with
14 the veterans." 'And Dr. Keyworth said, "Well, I?m glad
15 you said that. I'm going to recommend that you be a
16 part of my staff." 80 I moved from the Veterans
17 Administration within a week to join Dr. Keyworth.
18 And he asked me at that time then to step in
19 and take charge of working with the Agent Orange
20 working group, helping to set up the Agent Orange
21 working group and to begin to concentrate the efforts
22 of our federal agencies, not just the Veterans
Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200 

 

 

Administration, but the efforts of our federal agencies

in looking at the problems that the veterans were
having.

So the Reagan Administration made a real
commitment. And if you look at the records, you'll see
I tried to put a lot of the records into the files.
We began to support the continuation of the Air Force
Health Study. We asked the Air Force Health Study to
move into looking at the children. That came out of
our activity at the White House Science Office.

We gave a huge effort to financing what the
Veterans Administration was doing to make sure that
those health studies were on track, that the counseling
centers were moving forward to be established so that
there was counseling centers for all the veterans, that
every one of the 172 hospitals had environmental
physicians.

I mean, it was a real effort by all of us to
ensure that what we were doing was going to help the

veteran. The dilemma, of course, was we couldn't prove

that there was truly a health problem. You had a self?

reported population coming in. The 200,000 who signed

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

 


54

1 up for the Agent Orange exam were individuals who were
2 concerned with their health.

3 Those that served in Vietnam, who never went
4 in to see an Agent Orange physician, we don?t know

5 whether they were ill, or whether they just didn't

6 care, or whether they were perfectly healthy. 80 you

7 had a huge segment of the veteran population that did

8 not express concern in the same way that those who had
9 gone to the VA hospitals.

10 Now, maybe that was because they were

11 frustrated with the VA hospitals. I don?t know. But
12 it was that problem that has never gone awaybringing closure because the health studies
14 didn?t give us the answer, in particularly, didn't give
15 the answer that many Congress persons wanted, or many
16 veteran groups wanted.It certainly didn?t give us the
1? answer that the lawyers wanted that were trying to sue
18 on behalf of all these veterans.

19 Well, the Australians then became equally
20 concerned. But the Australian process was a different
21 process. It involved a Queen?s Counselor, it involved
22 a whole different legal procedure. So early in that

Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

time frame that the Australians became concerned, I was

invited to go to Australia as an expert to assist the

Australian government.

And I presented all sorts of presentations in

Australia to groups, including lawyers, the Queen's

Counselor, and the presiding officers, about what we

knew about Agent Orange and about dioxin and about the
use of herbicides and insecticides in Vietnam, and
where we were with our own studies. And a couple of
the studies that were being done in Australia in fact

came out exactly what we had seen in the United States.

They couldn?t support cause and effect.

That has been very interesting because as we

were unable to show cause and effect, more and more,

the Congress decided they needed to do something. So
the Congress decided to ask the National Academy of

Sciences to now get into this argument or this

controversy. And the Academy specifically asked the

Institute of Medicine to set up a panel of physicians
or scientists who could objectively review what was

going on of all the science.

And I was asked to be an expert to that group

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202)4679200

 

 

 

the Academy. So when the first meeting of that took
place in I think about ?94, by then, I had left the
White House Science Office and had gone to work for the
Department of Agriculture. I went to the Department of
Agriculture after I retired. I had obtained the rank
of colonel and retired to pick a position at USDA to
run biotechnology.

MS. STEWART: When did you leave the Air
Force?

DR. YOUNG: I left the Air Force on June 
of 1989. I had gotten out of the Agent Orange issue
and I had done so very specifically. It was becoming
too much of a pressure point on me and my family. I
had gone down to North Carolina to brief a group of
veterans. They had invited me to come down and give
them an overview.

I had gone down in uniform and in the middle
of my presentation, two veterans jumped up and beat me
up on the stage.

MS. STEWART: Where were you?

DR. YOUNG: Pardon?

MS. STEWART: Where were you in North

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

Carolina?

DR. YOUNG: I was in the little town of Salem.
The veterans were completely emotionally caught up. I
was in uniform, I was a perfect target. And I was
receiving threats to my family, threats to me, and it
became just too much to continue. I continued to stay
active in collecting the literature and following it,
but I shifted gears, moved away from the White House
and the involvement of Agent Orange and went into
agricultural biotechnology because my background in
genetics and toxicology let it -- a perfect opportunity
to move away.

But when the Veterans Administration set up
the contract with the Institute of Medicine, they
invited me to come back and help set up a series of
presentations. And I made recommendations to them on
who they should listen to. And I presented to them,
and when you look at the book, that first book, you'll
find that the chapter on the military was essentially
all my material that I provided them. And of course,
it came out of the Agent Orange collection.

So the wonderful documentation paid off for

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

raw :the Institute of Medicine. As a matter of fact, much

of what was used by them were the references and

everything that we had recommended.

The problem that I saw immediately was

twofold. And this has come back to haunt us now as a

nation on this issue. The first was, the Institute of

Medicine brought together a group of young scientists,
physicians, who had come out of a time period. They,

themselveS, had never served in Vietnam. Only one Of

them was even old enough to actually have served in

Vietnam. That was the chair.

Most of these people came out of a time period
where the Vietnam War had been an evil thing and Agent
Orange had been an evil thing. And although they "were

considered non-biased," the bias they showed was the

worst kind of bias. And that was a dislike from their

own background of the military.

The very first question asked in my
presentation was, "Why the hell and that was the
way the person put it, "Why the hell were in Vietnam in
the first place?? This was a physician asking this
question who was supposed to be objective. And that

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

   

 

day turned out to be just a disaster, in my point of
view, of the Institutes of Medicine.

These people not only did not understand, they
weren?t even willing to understand what had happened in
Vietnam. To them, we were wrong in the first place
ever using defoliants in Vietnam and we were wrong in
engaging in the war in Vietnam. And at the break, some
of these people came up to me and engaged me, and I was
just frankly taken back by it.

I was a scientist. I didn't understand if we
were going to have an Institute of Medicine look at
this. The second problem was, they were not asked to
address the issue of causation. They were asked to
come up with a formula and a rating system on
association.

And this began to put us in a path that I knew
was going to be a path in which we were eventually
going to have to deal with the association of a lot of
things that occurred in Vietnam, nothing to do with
Agent Orange, but certainly smoking, drugs, all the
things that happened in Vietnam.

And we've gone down that route. A dozen

Reporting Services. Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

FWT I .

 

 

 

6 

1 different things have been declared to be associated

2 with Agent Orange exposure. And of course, the reality
3 is, we could not measure the exposure nor do the

4 approaches taken by the Institute of Medicine ask the

5 Question, are there excess cases of this in the

6 veterans population.

7 These are not scientific questions being

8 asked. What the Institute of Medicine is, if there is

9 a study from industry or if there is a study out there
10 by a veteran group, or whatever, if there is any

11 indication that there might be an issue here associated
12 with Agent Orange and the Vietnam veteran, then the

13 benefit is always given to the veteran. That isn't

14 bad, but it establishes a very terrible precedent, I

15 think, in the way it's heading.

16 Science certainly isn't playing the lead role
17 here, in my opinion. There will be those who certainly
18 will disagree. We have seen this now, of course, with
19 the Gulf War veteran. The same issue will be
20 presumptive compensation. And I?m convinced that
21 that?s the route we will go.
22 In the end, the settling of the Agent Orange

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

issue is at hand because it is presumptive

compensation. Science has long since lost the battle.

Agent Orange is not going to disappear in my lifetime,

in your lifetime. The last veteran of the Vietnam War

will die up, but we are giving compensation to the
Children now. So there is no end to this.

The public truly believes that Agent Orange is
guilty. The veterans have come to believe that. There
isn't any other way out. I mean, when you read Science
and Social Concerns, the Crossroads of Science and
Social Concerns, I wrote 20 years ago, I said the
outcome will be settled by the Congress. And it was
clear that was not a science issue. It would always be
a social issue and would have to be dealt with as a
social issue.

And despite the wonderful work by the Veterans
Administration to provide the care, to provide the
wonderful studies that Dr. Kahn is doing, the Air Force
Ranch Hand Study, all to go for not, really, because
the answer is not science. The answer is something
different.

So in the collection, you will see the move I

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 10] Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington. DC 20036
(202)4679200

 

 

 

began to make talking about the social issues.

MS. MURPHY: Yes, and you do talk about the
media quite a bit.

DR. YOUNG: And I talk about the role of the
media. I do this through my articles but also from
the other articles that I found in the clippings and in
journals. I thought it was important that the
collection in the end would Show the broad spectrum of
activity that occurred in those years. So you can see
it from the beginning, in the late when the first
articles were put in the collection, that I gathered
for the collection, up through to the last that you
will receive soon.

MS. MURPHY: Thank you very much, Dr. Young.

MS. STEWART: It?s been very, very helpful.

DR. YOUNG: That's an interesting story.

MS. STEWART: Yes, it is.

DR. YOUNG: But it's one person's story.

MS. STEWART: And it's also interesting to
bring it up to date for us because the collection ended
at a certain point. So now we know your viewpoint
today.

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

DR. YOUNG: And when I finish turning over all
the photographs of the different issues from Servaso,
Times Beach, the work on the Koreans and the
Australians, and all those slides will go over to you
and the destruction of Agent Orange, it will help put
the picture together, I think, photographically.

MS. STEWART: Yes.

MS. MURPHY: Yes.

DR. YOUNG: I've always wanted to go back and
have a photographic history of all of this together.
Perhaps one day, this might be possible now.

MS. STEWART: Thank you.

MS. MURPHY: Thank you. Let me ask one more
question that just occurred to me. In spite of your
concerns about the lack of usefulness to some extent of
the scientific studies, the health studies, such as the
Ranch Hand study and the Veterans Administration
Vietnam Veterans Registry, do you feel that those
health studies, in and of themselves, in terms of the
basic science that they are developing, the basic
information that they are developing, are or can be
useful to us as a general resource?

Diversified Reporting Services. Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467?9200

 

 

 

 

DR. YOUNG: Oh, yes.
MS. MURPHY: And as a resource for other kinds
of issues?

DR. YOUNG: Understanding my generation of

people. I mean, it is my generation that served in
Vietnam. It?s my generation that was involved in much
of the studies afterwards. So yes, this is a wonderful

database in my generation, the generation that was
raised and came of age at the time of Vietnam. Those
health studies are wonderful because it does tell us
and it helps plan a preventive program.

I mean, the examination of the Ranch Hands has
allowed them to, in a way, anticipate and be prepared
to address problems as they grow older. So it?s been a
very good thing. One thing I didn't bring up was one
of the controversies that came out of the White House
was the fact that the Veterans Administration
cancelled, at the request of the White House, really,
the major study that was anticipated by the veteran
community of the large ground troop populations in
Vietnam.

MS. STEWART: Oh, when did that occur?

Diversi?ed Services, Inc.
I 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

DR. YOUNG: That study was to begin for many years. And this was a
study that was going to be based on the exposure
scenarios that we thought possible, maybe. How far
were they from spray lines, this sort of information.
The GAO had said this was possible. The Stillman Group
out of Columbia said, "Oh, yeah, this was absolutely
possible."

But I brought together a group of records
experts and I chaired the committee to take a look at
can we document exposure to the point where we could
prevent misclassification? If you misclassify, you say

that somebody was exposed and they were not or you say

that somebody wasn?t exposed and they were. Then the
conduct of the health study becomes you're not going
to find anything. You?re going to wash out any effect,
basically.

So if you're going to conduct a good
epidemiologic study, you have to have a population
where you have known exposure. We had that for the
Ranch Hands. We have that for the Army Chemical Corps.
But we didn't have that for the veteran group. And the

Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

question was, could we develop a large population of

veterans who were exposed and a large population of
veterans who were elsewhere in Vietnam but not exposed?

The answer from the records experts and from
our paneled critical review, and we anguished over
this, was no, you could not conduct it. And therefore,
we made our recommendation to the President and to the
Agent Orange working group and then to the President
that it could not be conducted.

You could do it but the likelihood of
answering the question was not there. It was unlikely
that you would answer the question. So that study did
not go forward. And there has been a huge amount of
articles published over that anguish, even in the last
not long ago, Mother Earth published an article on
Agent Orange and they criticized me specifically for
having Chaired that and made that decision.

And if you read the book, Wages of War,
published a few years back, they devote a whole chapter
to damning me over these kinds of decisions they felt I
had made. Well, I had made recommendations. They
weren't my decisions. In the end, those decisions

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.

1 101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036

(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

67

rested with the political people.

2 But we did make the recommendation to the

3 President and the Agent Orange Working Group not to

4 proceed because we felt the scientific evidence was not

5 there. Could you do a dioxin analyses of those

6 thousands and thousands and thousands of men that would

7 be involved in the study? The answer is, yes, you

8 could have but we had already shown that the likelihood

9 of any dioxin in any of these folks of any significant
10 concentration was minimal, as it was.

11 My own dioxin level was taken.

12 MS. MURPHY: I found those records.

13 DR. YOUNG: And I had 8 parts per trillion in
14 my fat. And yet, I had handled Agent Orange for 25

15 years, both as a liquid and the soils and animals that
16 were contaminated. But I was a scientist. I was being
17 careful, of course. So despite that, my concentrations
18 were nil.

19 MS. MURPHY: And you couldn't pinpoint the
20 exposure to Vietnam?
21 DR. YOUNG: No, we couldn?t pinpoint a
22 concentration that would say that the veteran had been

Diversified Reporting Services. inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

exposed in Vietnam, no.

MS. STEWART: So you didn't have the data in
order to make the association between individual
service members and exposure while they were in
Vietnam?

DR. YOUNG: The records show that at the most
critical stage, that is, down at the patrol level, you
could not confirm that that veteran was where they had
said the veteran was going to be. That was the
argument. Could you say that John Doe was present at
7:30 in the morning or 6:30 in the morning on June 22,
1967, at Bien Hoa, outside of Bien Hoa, or somewhere
else at a particular point where spraying was going to
take place? Out in War Zone We couldn?t do that.

We could say, yes, we knew that the company
was located over here, but the company wasn't exposed.
We had no evidence to show that the company was
sprayed. It was the argument, well, yes, it was
patrols, it probably would have been sprayed.

But remember, there was a process in which we
contacted company commanders, they were given

notifications. As a matter of fact, in the first years

Reporting Services. Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200

 

 

 

 

 

 

the conflict of spraying Agent Orange, we actually

put out literature, dropped literature.

MS. MURPHY: Dropped leaflets?

DR. YOUNG: Leaflets, yeah, about missions.
And our goal was not to spray people. Our goal was to
try to clear the line of fire, clear away the
vegetation so that we had a clear view of the line of
fire so if the enemy tried to come in, we would know
that.

MS. STEWART: So you can't establish a record
based on what information we now have? Not who was
exactly where, when?

DR. YOUNG: Even more difficult was the fact
that we never even had a record of actually who went to
Vietnam. We have constructed that after the fact.

MS. STEWART: That doesn?t surprise me,
knowing what little I do about military records. On
the other hand, what you are also saying was that you
couldn't base this kind of exposure information on
dioxin testing on the veterans, themselves.

DR. YOUNG: No, we couldn't.

MS. STEWART: Because the studies that you had

Diversi?ed Reporting Services. Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington. DC 20036
(202) 467?9200

 

 

 

 

 

'70
done did not give you any kind of correlation you could
find between the amount of dioxin contained in the
veteran and the amount of exposure that you knew the
person had?

DR. YOUNG: The only relationship we could
find between exposure and the dioxin concentration were
those had been Chemical Corps Sprayers and those who
had been a Ranch Hand.

MS. STEWART: And in those cases 

DR. YOUNG: In those cases, we were able to
use the dioxin analyses. But our general analyses of
Army personnel or Marine personnel did not give us an
indication of any significant exposure on the kind of
background one sees in an industrialized societypart per trillion is what one expects
to see in all of us. And this was the kind of thing we
were seeing.

There would be outliers but when you would
check the outlier, you would find they were a Chemical
officer or Chemical Corps staff member or a Ranch
Hander. So there's always justifications for those
outliers that we found, basically.

Diversified Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

MS. STEWART: But you did find that with the
Ranch Hand and the Chemical Corps officers, the dioxin
levels did go up?

DR. YOUNG: Yes.

MS. STEWART: So that you could make a
correlation, usually, between intensive exposure and
increased dioxin levels?

DR. YOUNG: Well, the dilemma has been that
the actual concentrations in the Ranch Handers and the
Chemical Corps people were no where near those of the
industrial setting so we never had chloracne found in
Ranch Handers. And to my knowledge, we never found
chloracne in 

MS. MURPHY: So the industrial accidents would
really be much, much higher concentrations?

DR. YOUNG: Yes, right. And of course, this
comes back and says to you that if you don?t have a
base of cause and effect in the industrial society
where the concentrations in the blood exceeded a part
per billion, hundreds of times greater than anything
we've seen in Vietnam, if you don?t have a health
problem there other than chloracne, for example, and

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor

Washington, DC 20036
(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

 


'you don't find chloracne in your veteran population.
then are you expecting to see a lot of health effects?
And the answer was no, we weren't.

The studies that we have done confirm
basically what as a scientist I would have predicted.
Knowing now what the dioxin levels were and what we
actually found in our veterans, it made sense. That?s
not been a good answer to many people. To the veteran
community, it?s not a good answer. But the reality is,
as a scientist, it holds. And that?s all, in the end,
one can really base what we did on and what we have in
our records is what we were able to gather and make an
assessment of.

Well, that was the last piece we hadn't talked
about. It's clearly been one of the rubs that has gone
on for many years. In the end, why didn?t you do this
great big study and put an answer to this? You would
have an answer and it would all be over. No, it
wouldn't have given us an answer. We would have spent
hundreds of millions of dollars and we wouldn't have

had an answer.

But a lot of people would disagree with me.

Diversi?ed Reporting Services, Inc.
1 101 Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036

(202) 467-9200

 

 

 

 

Thank

Young.

 

you.

 

MS. MURPHY: Again, thank you very much, Dr.

MS. STEWART: Thank you very much.

(The interview was concluded.)

1' ?k

Diversified Reporting Services. inc.
1 [Oi Sixteenth Street. NW Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036
(202)4619200