NEW AGENT ORANGE PRESUMPTIONS RESOLUTION

WHEREAS:  it has been well researched by U.S. National Institute of Sciences medical research that America’s Vietnam Veterans who served in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN)have experienced illnesses (i.e. Diabetes mellitus, chloracne, ischemic heart disease ETC)that are so medically and statistically obvious a result of environmental exposures in the RVN and,

WHEREAS:  it took the Department of Veterans Affairs took more than ten years to accept previous medical research findings and recommendations, while it continued counting and comparing Vietnam Veterans who were sick and dying, to their non-Vietnam veteran counterparts, finally accepting the obvious, declaring those same conditions officially “presumptive”/service connected for VA medical care, and

WHEREAS:  The U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) on February 2018 issued its tenth and final directed Congressional Research Report to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, again finding that there is significant evidence to show that five additional medical conditions, hypothyroidism, bladder cancer, stroke hypertension and Parkinson-like conditions have been determined to meet the rigorous standards of probability and causation due to environmental exposures in the Republic of Vietnam, and

WHEREAS:  The Veterans Administration Secretary promised to make a decision by the end of Summer 2016, and

WHEREAS:  The majority of surviving Vietnam Veterans are now in their sixties and seventies and beyond, and now have limited remaining lifetime for mitigation, now therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED:  That the American GI Forum of the U.S. petition the U.S. Congress to urge expeditious government adoption and implementation of the IOM recommendations, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:  That the American GI Forum of the U.S. petition the Veterans Administration Secretary to expeditiously adopt the IOM recommendations and incorporate them into the standing guidelines, rules and regulations of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VHA & VBA), to the benefit of veterans and their surviving dependents. 

This resolution was adopted at the Annual Conference of the American GI Forum of the U.S. in Albuquerque, NM on July 20-22, 2017