CAM TUYEN, Vietnam | Her children are 21 and 16 years old, but they still cry through the night, tossing and turning in pain, sucking their thumbs for comfort.
Tran Thi Gai, who rarely gets any sleep herself, sings them a mournful lullaby. “Can you feel my love for you? Can you feel my sorrow for you? Please don’t cry.”
Ms. Gai’s children - both with twisted limbs and confined to wheelchairs - were born in a village that was drenched with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. She says their health problems were caused by dioxin, a highly toxic chemical in the herbicide, which U.S. troops used to strip communist forces of ground cover and food.
Thirty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, its most contentious remaining legacy is Agent Orange. Eighty-two percent of Vietnamese surveyed in a recent Associated Press-GfK Poll said the United States should be doing more to help people suffering from illnesses associated with the herbicide, including children born with birth defects.
After President George W. Bush pledged to work on the issue on a Hanoi visit in 2006, Congress has approved $9 million mostly to address environmental cleanup of Agent Orange. But while the U.S. has provided assistance to Vietnamese with disabilities - regardless of their cause - it maintains that there is no clear link between Agent Orange and health problems.
Vietnamese officials say the U.S. needs to make a much bigger financial commitment - $6 million has been allocated so far - to adequately address the environmental and health problems unleashed by Agent Orange.
“Six million dollars is nothing compared to the consequences left behind by Agent Orange,” said Le Ke Son, deputy general administrator of Vietnam’s Environmental Administration. “How much does one Tomahawk missile cost?”
Tran Van Tram and Tran Thi Dan are desperate for help. Their four grown children crawl around the family home on all fours, rumps in the air. They have trouble standing up straight and can take no more than a few steps at a time with a walker.
Each of his children appeared healthy at birth, said Mr. Tram, 61. But after a year or so, they could not roll over. They never learned to talk.
Mr. Tram remembers watching U.S. planes dump Agent Orange several times daily over his village in Quang Tri Province, near the former demilitarized zone that once divided North Vietnam and South Vietnam. He used to fish in nearby lakes and streams every day.
Now he and his aging wife spend virtually all their time caring for the children.
They shower the children outdoors, an ordeal for all concerned. Hoang, 26, sat on the patio recently after his father hosed him down, and waited for his mother to pull his pants on. His spine is bent and he has a large lump on his back.
“I have no time for myself,” said Mrs. Dan, 59. “Even when I die, I will have no peace. I will always be worried about my children. Who will take care of them when we are gone?”
Mrs. Dan says she can’t believe it’s a coincidence that many of her neighbors started having children with birth defects after the war ended.
“It’s not just my family,” she said. “Many families here are suffering the same problems. I’d like to see the United States government do more to help ease the pain of the war.”
Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed roughly 11 million gallons of Agent Orange across large swaths of southern Vietnam. Dioxin stays in soil and the sediment at the bottom of lakes and rivers for generations. It can enter the food supply through the fat of fish and other animals.
Vietnam says as many as 4 million of its citizens were exposed to the herbicide and as many as 3 million have suffered illnesses caused by it - including the children of people who were exposed during the war.
The U.S. government says the actual number of people affected is much lower and that Vietnamese are too quick to blame Agent Orange for birth defects that can be caused by malnutrition or other environmental factors.
“Scientists around the world have done a lot of research on dioxin and its possible health effects,” said Michael Michalak, the U.S. ambassador in Hanoi. “There is disagreement as to what’s real and what isn’t, about what the possible connections are.”
That position frustrates many Vietnamese, who point out that the U.S. government banned commercial use of the herbicide long ago and provides benefits to American veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam.
The U.S. Veterans Administration covers the medical treatment of American servicemen who were exposed to Agent Orange and subsequently developed one of 17 illnesses associated with dioxin. Children of exposed servicemen who were born with spina bifida also receive a medical benefit.
“American and Vietnamese Agent Orange victims haven’t been treated the same way, and it’s not fair,” said Tran Xuan Thu, secretary general of the Vietnam Agent Orange Victims Association, whose suit against the U.S. manufacturers of Agent Orange in 2005 was rejected by a U.S. court. “It’s not in keeping with the humanitarian traditions of the United States. I hope the American people will raise their voices and ask their government and the chemical companies to take responsibility.”
U.S. officials point out that an “association” has been established between Agent Orange and the illnesses on the list, but that the scientific evidence has not been high enough to establish a causal relationship.
“We don’t know if there’s any linkage or not, but we believe in trying to do our best to take care of our veterans,” Mr. Michalak said. “If Vietnam wants to take care of its veterans, then we think that is a very worthy cause.”
The U.S. spends just a small sliver of its budget in Vietnam on Agent Orange. Last year, it allocated more than $80 million for the fight against HIV/AIDS in Vietnam, where the epidemic is relatively mild, but just $3 million for Agent Orange work.
A coalition of nonprofit groups led by the Ford Foundation, which has been trying to draw attention to the herbicide’s toxic legacy, spent more than the U.S. government.
Tests conducted by Hatfield Associates, a Canadian environmental firm, have shown that dioxin is within safe levels across most of Vietnam. But it is well beyond acceptable levels at a number of “hot spots” where U.S. soldiers used to mix, store and load Agent Orange onto planes.
According to one estimate, cleaning up the three biggest hot spots - at former airbases in Danang, Phu Cat and Bien Hoa - could cost as much as $40 million.
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