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With the aid of an interpreter, Vietnamese resident Mrs. Dang Hong Nhut blamed Agent Orange for her five miscarriages and the birth defects which ended her sixth pregnancy.
She and her husband were exposed to the defoliant during the 1960's. He died of metastatic cancer in 1999. "In 2002 I had a tumor in my intestine so I had to have an operation to have it taken out and then in 2003 I had another operation in my thyroid," said Dang Hong Nhut.
Twenty-one year old Vietnamese college student Tran Thi Hoan said she is lucky compared to some of the other Agent Orange victims she knows, even though she was born with no legs and only one hand.
She lives at a facility called Peace Village II in Ho Chi Minh City which is dedicated to their treatment "Some children, they can go to school, can study, and all of them cannot work, can only lie in the bed and cannot think," said Ms. Tran Thi Hoan.
The women are plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against U.S. chemical companies which made Agent Orange and its lethal byproduct dioxin. "Dioxin is the most toxic chemical, man-made chemical ever created and it persists in the environment essentially forever," said John E Norris.
Norris is one of the Birmingham attorneys working on the class action lawsuit which would require U.S. companies to clean up contaminated parts of Vietnam and compensate millions of Agent Orange victims.
"If the case goes forward and the case right now is pending in the Supreme Court on the question of whether it will go forward, it will involve 2.5 million victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam and yes it will be a very precedent setting case in international law and it will be a very important case involving literally trillions of dollars and millions of victims of Agent Orange," said Norris.
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