Terrifying study shows jungle parasite from Southeast Asia may be killing American veterans decades after end of the war
Troops of the Ninth division wade through swamps and rivers south of Saigon in the summer of 1969, in the Delta area
Half a century after serving in Vietnam, test results show some men may have been infected by a slow-killing parasite while fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
The Department of Veterans Affairs this spring commissioned a small pilot study to look into the link between liver flukes ingested through raw or undercooked fish and a rare bile duct cancer.
It can take decades for symptoms to appear.
By then, patients are often in tremendous pain, with just a few months to live.
‘It was surprising,’ he said, stressing the preliminary results could include false positives and that the research is ongoing.
Of the 50 blood samples submitted, more than 20 percent came back positive or bordering positive for liver fluke antibodies, said Sung-Tae Hong, the tropical medicine specialist who carried out the tests at Seoul National University in South Korea. Continue reading
Some months ago I and a dozen other local veterans attended a screening at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta – preview of a new documentary on The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick” The screening was a one hour summation of this 10-part documentary, 18 hours long.
The VA made the mistake more than 4,000 times within the last half-decade due to employee errors and inaccurate cross-checking of information by the department’s computers, among other issues. The VA modified its procedures to tackle the problem, but it is not yet known if the new system works.