MEMPHIS, Tenn. — As the Mid-South gets ready to honor those who served this country, many Vietnam veterans are still fighting a war for health benefits.
Last May, WREG told you about another group looking for help, their children and grandchildren. They believe Agent Orange got passed on to them through their genes.
One Mid-South man traveled thousands of miles away to make the connection and confront a ghost of the Vietnam war.
“I was born missing my arms and my leg. They weren’t sure why I was born like this,” said Josh Kelly, whose father served in Vietnam.
Kelly made headlines when he was born without complete arms and only one leg.
There’s no proof why, but Kelly suspects his unusual birth defect comes from his father’s exposure to the infamous herbicide known as Agent Orange. The young marine sprayed barrels of it while in the jungles of Vietnam to kill off the trees and thick brush the enemy used for cover.
“Never in my whole family history has anybody had any birth defect like this, and my dad was the only one that went to Vietnam and was exposed to Agent Orange,” Kelly said.
In 1996 the VA admitted some illnesses caused by Agent Orange could be passed down and awarded some vets’ children benefits for life. However, it only recognizes spina bifida as an illness a man can pass to his children.
Kelly is convinced there are more. So he and a group of others traveled to Vietnam this summer to find out for themselves.
“I just really wanted to go to learn all that different stuff to make sure that it wasn’t just something I was assuming,” Kelly said. “I wanted to go and find out for myself.”
What Kelly saw confirmed his suspicions. He saw a mirror image of himself working at a gift shop in Vietnam.
“His arms were exactly like mine. It was almost like watching myself do stuff, like the Vietnamese version of myself, because everything that I do, the way I hold a soda, the way I pick up a pencil, he did exactly like I do.”
The group toured hospitals and an orphanage where babies are still being born with horrific birth defects. The pictures are heartbreaking and too disturbing to show. The Vietnamese blame Agent Orange.
“Some of them are beyond, you can’t even tell they’re human beings. Some of them have two heads. Some of them have arms growing out of their face. Some of them have, like, no heads,” Kelly said.
Kelly and other children of Vietnam veterans believe they were exposed through what’s called epigenetics.
WREG went to UT Health Science Center to talk to a professor who’s done research in that field.
“I can say there is an ongoing investigation by the National Institutes of Health,” UT Health Science professor Dr. Ronald Laribee said.
Laribee hasn’t studied the particulars of Agent Orange, but he does study and teach how the environment can change a man’s genes and how illnesses are passed down from one generation to the next.
“We’re beginning to understand better that changes in the father’s reproductive system, changes in sperm quality, can lead to transmission,” Laribee said.
Congress approved a bill last year to continue studying generational exposure of Agent Orange. The Children of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance, of which Kelly is a member, fought for it.
“I’m convinced that Agent Orange is what caused my birth defect,” Kelly said.
A VA spokesperson said if research proves more conditions are a direct result of a veteran’s Agent Orange exposure, it’s possible the VA and federal law may extend benefits to those people.
As we said, the VA only recognizes spina bifida as an illness that a male vet can pass on to his children. However, the VA recognizes almost 20 different illnesses if the Vietnam or Korean War veteran is female. Only about 7,500 women served in that war compared to 2.5 million men.
