Vietnamese Feel U.S. Spraying Caused Defects

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, April 30, 2005 — -- Today's 30th anniversary of the fall of this city -- formerly Saigon -- to communist forces is a day of enormous pride for the aging veterans who led Vietnam to victory, and a day of celebration for a generation that's never known war.

But there's one legacy of the conflict that continues to haunt this country -- a legacy that evokes much anger and fear. It is an epidemic of birth defects, brain damage and rare cancers still affecting hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese today.

For more than 10 years, the U.S. military dumped tons of defoliants on Vietnam to destroy the jungle sanctuaries of the communist forces. Agent Orange was the most effective.

But the defoliants also contained the highly toxic chemical dioxin -- which, the Vietnamese say, seeped into their soil and, over the years, entered the food chain.

At a rehabilitation center in Dong Nai province, there's no debate among the mothers about who's responsible for the suffering of their children. One says her village was called the "place of smoke and fire" because of all the Agent Orange sprayed by the Americans. Her son was born with irreversible brain damage.

Before Agent Orange, none of them had ever seen or heard about anything like the problems they have now. And there are now so many with such devastating afflictions.

Thirteen-year-old Anh Tu has deformed bones that grow out of control in his body a disease seen in laboratory animals exposed to dioxin.

Though they have long suffered in silence, a group of Vietnamese victims took their case to an American court this year, demanding compensation from the U.S. chemical firms that made the defoliants. A federal judge threw the case out.

U.S. government scientists still do not officially accept the link between Agent Orange and Vietnamese health problems.

But American GIs also were exposed during the war, and they finally received compensation for diseases associated with Agent Orange, including a $180 million out-of-court settlement by the chemical companies.

At Tu Du hospital, where children with the most severe deformities are treated, doctors were dismayed by the dismissal of the Vietnamese suit.

"How will the victims of Agent Orange ever find justice," asked Dr. Nguyen Thi Thuy, "if those who used the defoliant won't accept moral responsibility?"

ABC News' Mark Litke originally reported this story for "World News Tonight" on April 30, 2005.