orange giving the silent spring is next. the dow chemical company in midland michigan. seventy two million liters of defoliants sprayed by the u.s. military over south vietnam beginning in one nine hundred sixty one were manufactured and sold by american chemical companies including tao monsanto and diamond shamrock. at that time vietnam was divided into no i then south the us supported the

government of south vietnam and military intervention intensified after nine hundred sixty five. but the us made strong resistance from guerrilla forces who used dense jungle as their base of operations. defoliant spraying was begun in an effort to deny coverage to the guerrillas by eliminating the jungle falling which. as the war escalated the spraying of deval eons increased dramatically and much of the land in south vietnam was contaminated and left barren. the defoliant known as agent orange was made from the same chemical substances as herbicides used in the us but it was twenty five times more potent. agent orange also contained dioxin the most toxic chemical ever produced. dioxin remains in the environment for many decades and causes a variety of health problems. several million vietnamese

and american soldiers who fought in vietnam. were affected by agent orange. their children and grandchildren continue to suffer the effects. of. dioxin remains in the soil of vietnam today and the land has yet to recover. from the tween one nine hundred sixty six and sixty eight a lot of chemical was sprayed into aung sun mountains and along the border with laos. they might get it for them the hills were covered with large trees. yeah. thank.

you after the chemicals were sprayed all the trees died from truong song to quelling tree. we used to have many precious animals in this area. you know. there were elephants and tigers bears and lions i. got no idea they were precious birds including peacocks. they were all destroyed by the war not only by bombs but by chemicals. her in vietnam agent orange was only sprayed in the south but there are many victims in the north

as well thought they were exposed in the jungles of the south while fighting in the north vietnamese army. after serving in the war these veterans began to develop cancer diabetes and other illnesses. many of their children are born with health problems and the effects have carried over into the third generation. i have six sons in a daughter. my daughter has trouble with her eyes. she has six fingers. this is the youngest son he is mentally disabled. right.

one of the grandsons has problems with nerves and breathing. the other grandson has skin disease. way i did when i fought in the south i saw chemicals being sprayed from airplanes overhead. i became blind when i was two. since then my life has been very hard. i am now twenty eight and life is dark and difficult. i hope that the society will take care of me and that i will be able to say again. the midwestern town of canfield ohio.

had their bounds and the daughter of a vietnam veteran lives in this small town with her husband aaron and two sons. my father bill morris was in vietnam in one nine hundred sixty eight through one nine hundred sixty nine he was in long binh. and he would also go out on convoy i was born in one nine hundred seventy two. my mother actually had two miscarriages prior to me my birth experience was pretty traumatic for her because i was born with multiple problems. i was missing my leg and my fingers and my big toe on my right foot and my mother said that there was a gasp everyone was shocked and all she saw was the. oxygen mask or

whatever to kind of knock her out my parents really truly honestly believe that what had happened was as a result of my father's exposure to agent orange in vietnam and so that's when my parents started pushing and trying to get the word out so i was interviewed for local newspapers and. i would be photographed and our story would be told in newspapers primarily once when i was a teen in the band because it was big news i mean you her a girl with one leg marching in a high school competitive band in a very small town i mean it was news i was born without my my fingers on my left hand and on my right hand. my hands really honestly never really stood in the way for me except for an outward sign to other people that i wasn't the same i use my hands

a lot in my artwork i find myself drawing my hands quite a bit. because to me. they're my hands you know just as if anyone would. but they do tell a story they tell a story of. that oxen. if. in october two thousand and ten heather and visited vietnam for the first time for their first stop was with the family. in kwan named coffins. i don't wonder if. they're coming back from cleaning up our make up of the hot. food.

your eyes are red they are always like this if. you know. what is that mommy let's face it right here i don't know what. i don't. know how to do it if you don't why do you. think that i don't. feel like the daughter is twenty seven and the son is twenty five. who walk past she's in great pain when she has her period. that sometimes the pain is so bad she can't eat three days on martin night oh mommy

that her brother cannot see and needs to be sad. he. left me i would be there they all died and i entered the military in one nine hundred seventy three and was stationed undone. i'm not. going around i was building roads. you know when you ask him why he thought it was the problems with children when did you first understand that there were any way out when i came home from the war and the children were born i was shocked you get and i never imagined it was because of agent orange. that took us we thought an ancestor might have had a serious disease but again you go you know we checked the family histories and found nothing. good night oh good. i thought well why don't you and i got

a full plate as a mother it is painful to have children like this. but but they are so unfortunate compared to other children you paul. would call me don't you know no one is willing to accept our children. which we. they are as oats now and they would like to work. when he. is i think i. am going to know that no one will hire them. but. i don't know. that it is harder once behrendt be a parent of children like they. require what. oh. they probably didn't you know you.

know them well you never. can you ask her but you like to tell the children that page or america let's do it like that and you don't want. what is the value in that and to the date on that interval look our money lead the night. i feel sympathy no please be strong. i'm also trying hard to be happy. like you are your only. really really was a. question and. i'd run over.

heather and run an antique store on weekends. my father was alive when i got married he really really really loved. he was comfortable with there. i think that was the huge fear for him he was afraid that i wouldn't find anyone. and when he met aaron he knew that aaron loved me he got to walk me down the aisle and. very very. good memory for me when i was born and had all these issues and he blamed

himself and my mother didn't know when she was having miscarriages he dabbled in alcoholism for a while he was imprisoned by vietnam. and he didn't live his life because of that what a tragedy. i must've been about six or seven maybe eight years old maybe at the most and i remember hearing my parents fight and. it was typically you know they would carry on and then one of them would peel out the driveway in the car and you know out of anger and i remember my dad got quiet and i was in my room and i heard him go into the bedroom i was little and i remember i was in my night clothes and i went to the door and i saw him standing by his upright dresser with his heels on the dresser. and i look and he had

a pistol and he and. i was little i didn't know i didn't know that he was probably very close to suicide at that point in time and i went to him and i remember just be a little less the daddy if it doesn't work oh first try try again that was my eight year old wisdom at the time when you know you know. you turn around and you look at me and screw me up. try try again and you put the gun down father's death was really it was service connected they did connect it as exposure to agent orange he would always say i didn't realize i was taking my children. or he said. floored me if i hadn't known he said if i had known what would happen to you. i

would have dodged the draft and for my father to say that that was huge and to hear that come out of his mouth was shocking to me it was shocking but it just spoke to the guilt that he carried from the moment my father went into the draft our life always centered around vietnam always. of course there's been times fits and i would call in fits and spurts in my life believe it that i would become so impassioned over power and i have to do something about this agent orange stuff and it just still there and it's the unfair and i can't believe this one of the last times i found sharon perry on facebook believe it or not it was i had googled or something children of agent orange or children american veterans soldiers children you know and those kinds of things and asians i guess he was there and i was. occur

i you know i just cried and we laid there's other people because when you fight this first so long in our country is so large that you feel isolated . when my husband died everything that i base my life on my beliefs my value system

it was turned on his head he always told me from the time that i'm met him that you know we were going to get married that he he was going to die long before me and he died at fifty six it is it is my understanding that his death is. attributed to exposure to agent orange because he did serve in country and the brown water navy on the rivers and he had yes he had diabetes and perform a rocky other secondary illnesses. that started with agent orange legacy. after my husband passed away of course what the american people need to know that's that's who needs to know is that the families of vietnam veterans are on the brink

they are there they are devastated with the circumstances though they face today and that they've been living with for years with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder with illnesses and cancerous caused by agent orange their children are ill their grandchildren are ill in these families are devastated they're having to fight for any benefits that they get this straw in my family it killed my husband and that's enough to keep me going to live then i die and i get discouraged yes and then i meet somebody who says you help me and that gets me to the next day. she keith spends divorced soon after she was born. her father who she

reconnected with when she was twenty six was a vietnam veteran who carry deep scars from the war he died of cancer in two thousand and nine i was more or less an accident. they got married long enough so that i would not be considered illegitimate so that i would have my father's name by the time i was two i think i'd been to. four or five different doctors about it and it to a dermatologist diagnosed me with alopecia universalities in my in my case which means i don't have anybody here really anywhere also when i was almost sixteen i had not started my period yet so my mom took me to the doctor to just kind of you know see what was going on and the first doctor the we went to took a look and said i need to refer you to a specialist and she didn't really explain what she saw or anything to us she decided she wanted to go over here to the specialist so he went to go see

a doctor at the university of alabama in birmingham. not remembering his name just right now and he did a pelvic examination and then they did an ultrasound and some others hess i believe they even may have done a crown was on check to make sure it was really supposed to be a girl but what they found out was that i didn't have a uterus and that my vagina was only about you know that big it wasn't normal everything looked normal from the outside but on the inside nothing was right and they said you're not going to have a normal sex life you're not going to have children. and that was really hard you know in your early teens in your late teens early twenty's at college most of your peers are having sex so to not even be able to and to try to go on a date with someone and of course you date them long enough they're going to expect something to happen and nothing happens or you actually have to look at them and

say i can't explain it i mean that's that's really hard. to have two such remotely small things happen to one person seems like statistically speaking there has to be a cause and maybe it's a similar cause how you know why would two such unique things happen without having some. pot you know at least possibly same cause you know i don't know if i'm phrasing that right but how can that be how i feel about not being able to have children at this point in my life at forty i'm probably as ok with it as i can be it was i've had two different men in my life who have chosen not to have a long term relationship with me because i can't have kids and that hurts

in fact the man i'm married to now at one point i told him that i would not marry him because i couldn't give him children and he was like oh you have a kid i don't even know you time but yeah i've missed out on things i've had things taken away from me and i'm angry i've come to terms with it but it's not fair what i've found over the last year or so becoming involved with agent orange is you know there's there's so much stigma associated with saying i have a problem by reproductive system i think there are fewer people that are willing to talk about it now now that i've opened up and said this is what it is. it is hard to talk about it's embarrassing i'm not precisely thrilled that everyone will do this and get find out that i don't have a uterus but at the same time i think it's important for people to know and i don't think it's something to be ashamed of but that has taken me probably twenty years to get around to to say i have nothing to be ashamed of i mean all those years of

dealing with p.t.s.d. in vietnam an agent one of you nominated or is that's what it's like all those years you know america's moved on left us stuck in time how dare they. we're going to come out and we're going to we're going to take over where the veteran voice has has been stopped has been discontinued they think that that's all that was necessary to hide their lives but they're wrong because they forgot about the widow this is a piece they did after my daughter danielle and i had the diagnosis with her spine are in the process of getting the diagnosis this is. agent orange is evil and. my has been bud and six very much like like he did and my youngest daughter

lizbeth says she's in prison and by everything that's happened to us plus her as asperger's and the alcohol and drug abuse as a result of his p.t.s.d. and other illnesses in this all came about because of danielle spine problems you access to that vertebrates putting a part. president

vladimir putin has made his first foreign tour after his recent inauguration meeting europe's top heavyweights germany and france headed to russia e.u. summit in st petersburg. as rebels and government forces in syria traded accusations of a real massacre in which at least one hundred eight people died the u.n. investigation to find out who's really responsible. rock bottom for ousted egyptian president hosni mubarak begins a knife sentence handed down for his part in the killing of hundreds of protesters last year demonstrations for the current crowds angry he's not to be executed. time running out for during a song with less than two weeks left for his legal team to follow in the deal of the whistleblower losing his battle against extradition to sweden in britain

supreme court. you're watching artie's weekly news review welcome to the program the russian e.u. summit kicks off later today in cent petersburg putin has already met some of europe's main players this week on a trip taking in germany and france he talked tough on expansion u.s. missile defense shield and moscow's stance on the ongoing violence in syria ortiz we're going to has the details now. but what's in spurs stop what was in minsk which many saw as an indication that russia's foreign policy now will focus more on its closest neighbors and the c.i.s. countries many observers also saw this visit as the beginning of the same.