UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of the editors.
APRIL 19,1979
An unhealthy mystery
The legacies of Vietnam seem to be without end.
And for an undetermined number of Vietnam veterans, their legacy from the jungles of Southeast Asia is an increasing number of health problems—from skin rashes and certain disorders to cancer and birth defects.
The common denominator in many cases is a herbicide used as a jungle defoliant in Vietnam called Agent Orange.
Veterans across the country say their health problems stem from exposure to the chemical and about a thousand have filed claims with the Veterans Administration for disability payments.
TO DATE, THE VA has resisted such disability requests, saying that there is no evidence to conclusively support the health-related charges against Agent Orange.
Indeed, the controversy surrounding the effects of the herbicide has produced a great deal of confusion, much of which centers on one of the herbicide's main chemical ingredients—2,4,5-T. That chemical has been temporarily banned from widespread use in agriculture and forestry by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Nevertheless, many scientists say
that 2,4,5-T, when used properly, is safe. For each victim of 2,4,5-T poisoning, its supporters seem to bring out a healthy lifetime user of the herbicide. The effects it conducted on the effects of the herbicide, but much remains in debate.
HOWEVER, A FEW facts are not in dispute:
*2, 4, 5-T contains a dioxin contaminant known as TCDD, one of the most lethal poisons known. TCDD causes birth defects and miscarriages in laboratory animals. No one is certain what it does to man.
- The EPA says some evidence indicates that “pure” 2,4,5-T – as free as possible from TCDD– may cause insects and miscarriages in lab animals.
- When a person is exposed to 2,4.5- T, he may suffer dizziness, nausea, headaches and a skin condition called chloracne. The long range effects, however, are not known.
That's the rub. No one knows. Several agencies, including the VA, are conducting investigations into the problem, but that's all.
A full congressional investigation into the use of Agent Orange and 2,4,5-T is needed. The mystery concerning its effects on Vietnam veterans and perhaps even their children must be resolved, and any necessary compensation must be paid.
save the federal government some money,
but found there were laws against that sort
of thing.
Overregulation plagues bureaucracy
Bhavas—a federal employee who, like most American workers, is aware of tax-cut impacts on their jobs and controls and the balanced budget movement—has a chance to help control
Unfortunately, Bavas discovered the federal bureaucracy dominated his life.
BAVAS HAD SERVED his time, and his supervisor, Louis Masotti, director of the NU Center for Urban Affairs, wrote HEW recommending the raise.
Then in November, Bavas found out he was due for a Civil Service step pay increase from HEW. As a federal employee, all he had to do to qualify for the raise was work a specified number of years and submit a supervisor saying his work was acceptable.
Bavas works for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare helping universities develop their urban affairs programs. Through promotions he has become an adviser for the Center of Urban Affairs at Northwestern University.
Bavas, who was to receive a $1,272 addition to his comfortable $40,000 salary, heard about the letter and decided to take action.
"I have lost a lot of friends at HEW over the years by going around saying we're all overpawed, which we are," he said. So he wrote HEW a letter.
So, he wrote HEW a letter.
But Christopher Cohen, regional director for HEW, did something that astounded Bavas. Cohen telephoned Bavas and said he had to accept the raise. Federal Civil Service Law does not permit a federal employee to turn down a pay increase. Cohen
"While (the raise) would be very nice, I would like to ask that you not authorize such a pay increase . . . it may well be that the money can be used more beneficially in some other way or simply not spent," Bavas wrote.
IN A FEB, 23 letter, Cohen wrote, "I
empathize with your desire to waive your
gift and your promise."
Amin's friends, enemies face exiles' judgements
By ERISA KIRONDE N.V. Times Feature
N. Y. Times Feature
NAIROBI, Kenya—For the first time since Uganda's long nightmare began in 1971, exiled Ugandans are due to hope
Many people are concerned about the period immediately following liberation.
That has happened before—on a large scale, most recently, in 1971 during President Idi Amin's takeover, when bitter tribesmen attacked and burned the property of those, like Omar Bashir, who had been living with the regime of Milton Obote, who was deposed as president.
Rumors of bitter reepalial attacks on Moslems, Rwandese and the other minority groups, often foreign, who formed the core of terror gangs have filtered through the news blackout. It would be hard to not touch to the ugly specter of revenge in the country said.
A FEAR of reinstating Obote, who most felt was most responsible for creating President Amin and all he had stood for, was the main factor against unity among the exiles. Meredith Crawford, a former member of the Uganda Lute, a respected academician, was elected chairman of the Uganda National Liberation Front's 11-man committee, which will run the country for two years after liberation, preparing the nation to face a new era.
The committee has appointed professional administrators for the liberated areas, a move that should bring relief to the countryside, which has been accustomed to illiterate lurkers in the caves and may layayas in the Sudan and Nubians in Kibera, just outside Nairobi.
These erstwhile arbiterists of life and death have been scurrying out of Uganda, illegally requiring cars to carry their loot.
UGANDANS INSIDE the country, after the long, fierce muzzling of the years of suppression, are taking more openly and using the telephone, taking advantage of the confusion and flight of members of the hated State Research Bureau, the most feared of Uganda's three secret security networks, which has killed thousands of the government's opponents.
On the diplomatic front, it will be very difficult to accept an Arabism in Uaanda, at least for some years.
Arab support for President Amin has seen to that, particularly the support given him by Libya, which has been overt during the war of liberation. Unfortunately Islam is identified closely with the Arabs. Moslems make up only 5 percent of Uganda's population. They had跌 discrimination against, particularly the lack of education in the colonial era (where were the Arabs?).
After Uganda's independence, no one was kept out of church
schools. Many of the Moslems who became educated were the very ones, so necessary to their community and the country, that Amin promoted so indiscriminately out of turn. Many may well end up victims of the liberation.
BRITAIN, THE midwife with Israel of the Amin nightmare, will be difficult to forgive. The "whiskey run" from an airport in London - the ferrying of luxury items to Amin's thugs - was a difficult task, and the relationship must continue and Britain's return will be tolerated.
Israel, the co-midwife, will be welcomed back if only for the brilliant Brentte Baedle, which boosted morale within the country.
This will spite the Arabs and, nearer to home, the Organization of African Union, which, in spite of President Amir's atrocious, conferred its highest award, the chairmanship, on him and which only last month would not condemn
Exiles are grateful to the United States for its vocal stand on human rights and for its official ban, despite the many difficulties.
KENYA, TOA, has given refuge to thousands of exiles, at a cost that strained its resources. Silence, though, must fall on the enemy, for KENYA is now one of them.
Ugandan exiles who that United Nations bodies have drawn up contingency plans for rehabilitation of the economy, plans that can be hawked around, preferably to the smaller countries in southern Africa, are best able to administer and implement plans in small nations.
Exiles also hope that help will be forthcoming immediately to our mortally damaged Makerere University, once one of Africa's best, from old-time stalwarts like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
HEALTH NEEDS, too, will be staggering, giving the World Health Organization an opportunity to introduce its new approach.
Manpower inside the country also has been demoralized by the hardiness of daily living and reduced to petty trading to make ends meet. Laborers will need to be retrained to nurse the sick, and there is a challenge to return home is accepted, but we shall need friends.
In the field of health, as in all, we will have a manpower problem. With thousands of our trained men on fixed-term contracts in so many other countries, it will not be easy for them to drop everything and filter back.
Erisa Kironde, who was the head of the Ugandan Electricity Board from 1962 to 1972 and was chairman of Uganda's Red Cross, was until recently a United Nations Children's Fund program officer for Nigeria and Ghana.
explained to you in our conversation, the law and its implementing regulations do not permit an employee to waive payment of an increase such as yours."
Jake
Thompson
"Can you believe it?" he asked. "Waste is so institutionally established's against the law to do this."
Bavas was dumbfounded.
Bavas found that his only recourse was to write a check to the federal government for the debt, but he didn't. He also discovered that no one in Chicago or Washington could remember a federal government debt.
Bavas' situation is an example of the absurd and discomforting efforts the
OVERREGULATION IS nothing new in the federal bureaucracy. It seems to exist as a result of the fact that the fog in Chicago, it "comes on little cafe" feet. That is why we need to be careful.
government has made to dominate lives. The money is not important. What is important is that Baviss could not exercise political power, a right one protected by the Constitution.
Unfortunately for Bavas, the government is not through with him. Without explanation, he has been informed that at the end of his NU assignment on April 30, he will be dropped to Philadelphia and that his Civil Service classification will be dropped from 15 to 13.
"I think the intent is to drive me out of the government," he said. "They want me out. I
Bavas said he thought the government wanted to remove him because he was a
conformist. The federal bureaucracy's are highly magnificent in the Bavaria situation.
BAVAS NOT ONLY is being denied the constitutional freedoms that should allow him to deny a raise, but he also is being discriminated against because of his efforts.
The lesson the government is trying to teach seems sinister—don't make waves.
It is absurd when one considers that our nation was founded on principles chosen by our founders. The makers in American history. And those principles have guided the nation for more than 200 years.
Overregulation is indeed a quiet disease in the federal bureaucracy. The Bavas case demonstrates that the American public must be on guard against its influences. The public must also find ways to reverse the trend toward more regulation.
Andrew Bavas should be awarded, not punished, for his actions.
Sending veterans back to war unfair
It seems painfully trivial when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was about to present one of its highest awards to a film about the American experience in Vietnam, the Pentagon was changed. The notion of recalling challenged Vietnamese veterans in the event of war and sending them into combat ahead of new recruits.
The film is "The Deer Hunter," a powerfully moving drama about Vietnam and the experiences shared by three soldiers from Pennsylvania.
But aside from that, it is a needed reminder of some of the unpleasant postwar reflections of a country morally battered by a war it never quite understood.
Pentagon officials argue that the volunteer army is not providing them with enough manpower. So to make up the difference, they must first in the event of war and sent into combat.
Vernon Smith.
YET IT APPEARS as if Pentagon officials are already forbidden Vietnam and what it means to American Americans. Recent actions indicate that the Pentagon is eager to go about the business
"We don't see any other solution in the short range," said John Brinkerhoff, a defense manpower official, at a Senate services manpower subcommittee hearing.
The major asset of this plan, officials say, is that the veterans would need only 3 to 4 weeks of training before going into combat, against 12 weeks for new drafts.
BRUNKERHOFF SAID the plan would be used only in a declared war or if the nation
Pentagon officials told Congress that the new plan had not been approved by Defense Secretary Harold Brown, but that he wanted the idea was being drafted for his review.
On the surface, it would appear that the new plan might be a trial balloon of sorts. But the problem is more complicated.
and what congressman in his right mind would support such a plan.
At the heart of this issue is the discussion that military might is determined by the number of bodies at one's disposal and that the volunteer system is not working. But depending on the source of information, such a discussion quickly becomes moot.
HEADLINES HERALDING the "failure of the volunteer armed forces" blossomed until Rep. Les Aspin, D-Wis, using the same statistics as everyone else, pointed out that the number of people in uniform, which is a true measurement of military might, was more than 2,000 greater at the end of the year than the number the military services had undergoing. The recruits had been more than made up by an excess of re-enlistments.
Has the United States ever been ready for war? "That is a difficult question to answer because of the unreasonable for Uncle Sam to call the Vietnam veteran first and put him through the hell of yet another senseless war while the country gets ready. It just wouldn't be right."
Kansan's nuclear stand hypocritical
To the editor:
In reference to your editorial of April 9, "Stop Wolf Creek Now," you and many others have reacted to a previous bias rather than to the facts.
The exposure to people outside the plant to radiation was less than that airline employees, pilots and cabin attendants receive in a year and is comparable to additional radiation received by those living in Denver rather than Harrisburg.
No study has shown that living at high altitudes, with their increase in low level radiation exposure, has led to increased cancer. Even living and working in masonry rather than wood frame enclosures leads to an increase in exposure to low level radiation.
The radiation received by several plant employees was more serious, about that allowable for any three month period for workers in the nuclear industry. But, even at this level, there is no evidence of danger to mature non- pregnant persons.
What has been overlooked by most commentaries such as yours is that we have seen in this accident what has been feared to be a failure, a failure to coolant accident, and almost all the resulting release of radioactivity was confined, as designed, to the interior of the car.
I find it hypocritical that you and other media ignore the problems of other energy
In spite of the multiplicity of human error and at least one unexplained mechanical malfunction, the control systems functioned correctly, shutting down the reactor and opening the emergency cooling system. The only unexpected effect is the release of the hydrogen bubble, and this is now known to have been a result of an incorrect response by an operator.
We have learned about at least two things from this accident: the possibility of such a bubble forming, and the safety of commercial nuclear power reactors.
sources. What are you going to advocate when a liquid Natural Gas ship blows up in Boston or New York harbor? You are aware that the burning of coal releases significant quantities of radioactivity into the atmosphere? Did you know that even "clean," renewable solar energy should it prove more effective? It would cause an increase in the average temperature because of the necessary decrease in the Earth's albedo? What about
In conclusion, I ask you ton consider some of the alternatives: black lung disease, the sulphur oxide suffocation of smog, economic subjection to OPEC nations, the environmental disaster of rapid strip mining, the economic disruption that would occur if we stopped carbon capture and a substantial shock in per capita energy utilization and the status of the Third World while we wait for the possible development of alternative energy sources.
the more major oil spills, on the Arctic
and offshore waters; half of Alaska other
offshore drilling rigs.
Francis W. Prosser Professor of Physics and Astronomy
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