 Aloha, welcome to another edition of Military in Hawaii. I'm the host Calvin, Calvin Griffin. And for those of you who haven't seen the program in the past, here in the program we talk about military and veterans issues anyhow. One other thing I wanted to reiterate is that here in the program we're going to be talking about a lot of different issues and we want to make sure that the information is informative and correct. Some of the things that we'll be talking about today may make a few people uncomfortable, but the thing is we need to discuss certain things in an open and honest environment anyhow. The other thing is the rule I have here, if you hear me or my guests, anything that you think is an error, please give us a call here and feel free to express yourself. Like I said, just come with the facts and we'll deal with that. Today my guest is going to be Mr. Mark McCabe, who's with the Vietnam Veterans of America. And we're going to be talking about an issue that really doesn't get that much attention while not in the mainstream press. And this is about the effects, birth defects in the military and veterans community. And again this is one of the things that I think there needs to be more discussion on because it can affect several generations. So right now at this moment I'd like to introduce Mr. Mark McCabe to the program. Mark are you there? I am here. Thank you. Good. Thank you. So can you use a little bit about yourself and your connection with the Veterans of Vietnam? Yes, I'm the bureau chief for Vietnam Veterans of America and our organization is the only congressional chartered service organization to represent veterans and their families and their children in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs and to get them really compensated. Okay. And my background is I am a Vietnam combat veteran, I grew up in a military family and I did my tours in Vietnam and then I came back. Okay. Good. Currently you're living in Florida? I'm living in Southwest Florida. That's correct. Good. This issue, like in the winter discussing these, of course the health issues, there's a lot of things that go on within the community that are not publicly discussed, you know. And one of the things as far as this issue about birth defects, I know that you're very close to that issue. Did you inform our viewers, you know, what the current situation is right now as far as addressing this and some of the problems that are wrote as a risen, you know, within the community? So, Vietnam Veterans of America, what we do is we have town hall meetings where we travel around the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to bring attention to the public, the veteran community, the active duty military community, about the effects of the toxic substance in time of war. In the past it was referred to as exposure to age and orange for the people in Vietnam. But because of the mass production of the pre-Iranium in Iraq during the OEF-OIF conflict, the burn pits, they've changed it to reflect the toxic effects on children and the veteran from the duration of war. And some of those issues are very important to the family members, because not only the family members, you get these horrendous cancers and heart conditions and skin conditions. They're also the children. The children are born with spina bifida, which is a crippling disease. And the VA currently, you know, they compensate the children on different levels based on the disability effects that they have. So they have a level one, a level two, and a level three. And a level three is normally when the child is in a wheelchair for the rest of their life. So we have children that are, we call them children, but they're 40 and 48 years of age and some of them are younger in the 30s. But we do have a lot of children that are confined to a wheelchair for the rest of their life. And that's from the spina bifida. We have, there's 17 other presumptive illnesses for people that served in Vietnam. They were exposed to the contaminated deoxam, which was from the Agent Orange herbicide, it was a herbicide. They called it Agent Orange because it had an orange band around the barrels that they brought over to Vietnam to spray and kill the, it was a defoilient to kick back the weeds and the undercover so that the Vietnamese could sneak up on the bases. But now we have the contaminated water issue that's affected thousands of children from the Camp Lejeune contaminated water. And they are also coming down with the same illnesses, cancers, spinal defects, neurological defects. So there's a lot of, there's a, altogether there's like 35 different presumptive illnesses for both of those sets of families. Okay. Well, these effects, this is not only confined to the first generation, but also possibly the second generation that come up with genetic defects. Yeah, we have, we have actually seen it in, in the United States, three generations. Three. We, three generations. But the thing is the government, our government, the United States government only recognizes it into the first generational issue. Just recently in the last session of the Bipartisan House that ended in December of 2016, they passed the new Children's Act. And in that act, it's dictating the VA to start to the studies to see if it is a generational issue and how does it pass down to the second and third generation. It is, we've seen it in Vietnam where it's been passed down to the fourth generation. But again, in Vietnam, because we dumped 11 million gallons of this contaminated herbicide into their water supply, into their food chain, it's still affecting their children today, they'll be born 50 years later, they'll be born with these horrendous illnesses and birth defects. All right. Yeah. Well, you know, it's something of this magnitude. It doesn't seem to be that, you know, a lot of the information doesn't seem to be showing up in the mainstream press. And over time and time, if something does happen, it comes and it fades. Is there more of a awareness that's going on or is there more of a cry for, you know, the government to, you know, accept responsibility and certain areas for these situations? I think what happens is that the Department of Veterans Affairs, who's basically in charge of taking care of the veterans out when they transition from active duty to veteran status, you know, they don't do a lot of outreach. They're not just like the current warriors we have from the OEF-OIF conflict, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Samaria, Syria, and Iraq, you know, they're not being told of what these illnesses are and they're not being, so they're not doing outreach programs. So it leads it up to these individual service organizations to make the public aware of it. So that's why the Vietnam veterans, when we were officially chartered by Congress, one of our, one of our model was never again should one generation of veterans leave another generation behind. So we started doing outreach programs in town hall meetings at our own expense, traveling around the United States in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or basically wherever someone, an interested party invites us to do these presentations, we go in there with a panel of expert people that have the knowledge of either the exact illness, the disease, the process of how to get compensated, the process of how to take care of the children and be, you know, have the bills paid for. So we do that on a regular basis every month. We're traveling on that last two months. I did in Texas and Florida, we did a seven day presentation through seven different counties. So we make people aware of it and we not just make them aware of it and then leave, we give them the information so that they can process the aspect of how to do the claim, how to file a claim with the government and if they get denied, we will represent them pro bono up to the Court of Appeals at the Board of Veterans Appeals. So they have competent, all of our people are trained in the legal aspects and we have four attorneys at the board that represents the children and the veteran, like I said, pro bono, there's no charge to the people. With the number of female personnel in the military now, what you mentioned is what 32 different problems have been identified so far or more? Well, yeah, there's, I mean, there's a, well, you know, like in cancers, there's so many different cancers under the one contention of cancer because, you know, skin cancers, there's myelomas, multiple myelomas, there's non-Hochkins lymphoma, there's adult leukemia. But there's all these cancers that are linked to the carcinogenic from the contaminated dioxin that was in these herbicides. So they have multiple birth defects, they have multiple miscarriages, stillborn babies, so, you know, and it's all been tied to this. So we're trying to get that awareness out to everybody so if they know, because then the veteran feels bad that they passed it on to their children, so they have this feeling that, well, you know, it was my fault. Well, they weren't, they didn't have to be sprayed by these herbicides and they weren't asked to be exposed to the deputed uranium in Iraq. So, you know, that's why we have to do this awareness and make people aware of what's going on. Yeah, because when somebody says when it seems like it develops, it's like the onus has put on the service members to prove, you know, what they have to do, of course, is extensive research and everything else. But I don't like to say it just boggles the mind sometimes how, you know, the bureaucracy drags your feet when it's far as compensation, you know, for a legitimate problem that arose from your, you know, your service to your country. But not, yeah, not only just the concept of the exposure to the toxic substance, but just in general, when a veteran military person transitions to the civilian world, it'll take them sometimes maybe a year or two years before he gets his case completed and is compensated. And sometimes because they don't have the right documentation, maybe because when people came up, for instance, when people came home from Vietnam, especially the Army guys, they transitioned to Oakland Army Center and they just came in there. They're there for one day and they are processed out. So they didn't put on their paperwork that they have this metal for being in Vietnam, so they didn't have the evidence to prove that they had boots on the ground. And in the early part of the years, you had to prove exactly which core that you had served in Vietnam, because we have four, four different geographical areas that we call I core, two core, three core, something like that. But if you didn't have that verification, they said you weren't exposed to enough of the contaminant to have this disability. Then we, the Vietnam Veterans of America, along with several other organizations sued the Department of Veterans Affairs and basically the United States of America saying that that's not right. They should be granted presumptive illnesses if they have boots on the ground. But then they finally said, OK, yeah, that's true. So they changed that rule in the 80s saying that as long as you have boots on the ground, that's all we care about. If you can prove you have boots on the ground. So that's always been a stumbling block. And of course, with with these children's illnesses, the claims are only processed in one center. We have 56 regional offices within the Department of Veterans Affairs. And the only regional office that does this processing is in Denver, Colorado. And they're so secretive of how many claims have come in, how many claims have gone out. And it's hard to get a true feeling of exactly what has gone on with these claims. You know, we're we're they I mean, we've made the assumption that they kept them always, but they haven't. We've made the assumption that they were going to store for data rights of these second generation children. We knew they were not going to pay them, but we wanted to show the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Institute of Medicine that, hey, all these second generations are having the same issues that the first generation children have. And we know that that's a contaminated diacinth that resides in a fatty tissue and it can transmit to the seminal process when you have them reproduction cycles. So it's out there. It's known. It's just that we have to fight it all the time to get the grant for the children and for the better themselves. Right. What in the case? Because I know sometimes where, you know, a child may be put up for adoption, you know, by another, of course, adopted by another family. If there's someone out there that their biological parent did serve and it was passed on, is there any options for them as far as actually some resource where they can go back and they're trying to make a get a claim or compensation for their disabilities? And we actually have a case like that right now before the Board of Veterans Appeals that child was adopted. So her biological dad is not the dad that she's living with. She's living with a new set of parents. Neither one of them served in a service. So they had to get the service members records because the first thing we do or the first action that the VA does, first thing the VA does to verify all the stuff is you have a duty to 14 did you serve in Vietnam? Then we need the birth certificate and the marriage certificate to prove that the child was an offspring of the veteran that actually served in Vietnam. So that's one of the cases we have before the court right now. So that's a very good point because we see that a lot. And to be honest with you, the Vietnam veteran who came home, a majority of them, they had more than one marriage because the post-max stress issue kicked in. And you know, they weren't we weren't welcome when we came home. OK, we not like the current veterans that come home from Iraq and Afghanistan because, you know, the past president said they were the next generation of the greatest heroes and Vietnam veteran wasn't looked like that. So they had multiple marriages. And so we know we find some children that had these illnesses and never got taken care of because the new set of parents didn't know that the dad served in Vietnam. So what we're asking when we do these town hall meetings, we ask the local medical facilities, you know, when you're doing an intake of a veteran, if you know he's a veteran, ask him where he served. If you served in Vietnam, there's a list of questions we'd like for you to ask them. We have never been ill. Have you ever had one of these 17 presumptive illnesses? Did you have children? Were your children born with any type of a disability? And because there's two things that come into play for the children. And a lot of people don't realize that if your child was born and before they would come to age of 18, if they were totally disabled, the VA will pay the parents compensation. Take care of that child the rest of his or her life. But they don't go out and tell you that. But that's the law, that's the 38 CFR, which is the Code of Federal Regulation. So those are other issues that we find out when we go do these town hall meetings. Well, I didn't know that I could have my child taken care of. You know, I had to put him in a state nursing home. So these are things that we really need to get out there and be aware of for the veterans and their family members. Yeah, it seems a little bit frustrating because I see when a problem comes up, you have our legislators who they pass these laws or to put something out there, but then they're slow to implement them as far as where it's going to have a positive effect, a short term anyhow. But are there more? What about in Washington? I mean, is there a move of what they go ahead and try to correct some of these things at the speed of the process? Because you mentioned that the only the center in Denver is the only one that's processing the papers now. Yeah, I mean, it just seems with all the resources that our government has that they could be now at least one on each coast or whatever, you know, but, you know, it just boggles the mind, like saying, is the lack of response in a lot of the areas, you know. I think that's been one of the biggest issues we've seen in the past 10 years is the lack of accountability and expediting claims for veterans and their family members who have terminal illnesses. Yeah, they just sit out there and it could be two or three years. And it's not lack of people. They have the people they just they just don't have. There's not accountability within the VA system. Yeah, she hopes I'm accountable for their jobs. Well, we need to do that. I think, Mark, we're going to take a short break and then we'll come back. We'll continue our conversation here. I think like Hawaii military in Hawaii. Hello, I'm Dean Nelson, host of Planet of the Courageous. From a Tibetan point of view, we chose to be on this planet because we enrolled in a sort of graduate school for courage. Just that we may have chosen this adventure is a leap of logic. The question is, how do we spend and make sense of this precious human life? We are, as a species, extraordinarily successful, dominating the planet and now with planetary size problems that our existence itself has created. It takes courage to face not only the uncertainty of life, but also the challenges sustaining this gift of life for future generation. Join us every Monday at 3 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. Aloha. OK, you're back with the military in Hawaii and again, I'm your host, Calvin. And right now, my guest, born by phone, is Mr. Mark McCables, with the Vietnam Veterans of America. And our subject matter today is the birth defects or different health issues within the military community. Mark, before we took a break, you mentioned that the VA. There's been a lot of issues, of course, you know, that seems to constantly be developing, you know. And is there any way, I mean, we hear that there's changes being made. But do you think that there's anything, I mean, that they could be speeded up a little bit more because we do have veterans who are literally dying, you know, waiting for benefits. And again, not to mention, like, say, this subject matter with the their spouse, I mean, they're offspring anyhow. But do you see anything that is really gelling that's going to correct the system? Well, I think, you know, Dr. Shulkin, who's been named a new secretary of the VA, he's relatively new in that position in less than 100 days. And I've already seen, I mean, I work at a regional office in St. Petersburg, which is the largest regional, one of the largest regional offices in all of all 56. And we have, like, 1,400 employees at our building. And Dr. Shulkin has already made, I think, some good inroads. He's made some promises and we're seeing some positive forces. We just recently at our regional office got a new director who I think is outstanding in terms of her professionalism and her empathy towards the veteran, unlike the previous administration we had. So I see it's coming around. It's just it's not going to go overnight. And I think that's the sad part, because we need to do the it needs to be done quickly and in an expeditious way, because too many veterans are dying before their benefits are paid out. And if they die before they're paid out, you know, the VA doesn't always tell the little that, oh, by the way, if you had a claim pending for either your husband or your child, you can do a substitution, a claimant. So you can actually be the stand in and then you would receive the crude benefits as well as DIC, which is like a widow's dependent and demoted compensation. So we'll compensate you for the rest of your life to take care of you, because after all, so they would have Lincoln said to take care of the where the orphans and children and the wives. Yeah, because it seems like when they when things are not implemented or there's a lag in the compensation and a lot of people, you know, it's just this is something that people earn, you know, not that they're looking for a freebie or anything like that, you know. But it just seems that, you know, because one thing we talked about this in the past, and when the system, the federal system doesn't take care of the veterans, then in a roundabout way that falls on the local communities as far as putting the strain on the different services that's available to the rest of the civilian population. But I don't know what response with the different organizations I know with the organization you're with, but the other major major organizations are they really putting the full court press on our legislators to bring some changes about? They are. We have what's called a big six meeting. And that big six meeting is the big, the top six veterans service organizations, more, which is members of the Purple Heart, more of the members of the officers Association of America, American Legion, the disabled veterans, paralyzed veterans of America. So we do meet once a month and try to be collectively put the pressure on to the VA to do the right thing for the better. And because, as you said, and I think what happens is, because we have so many civilians working with inside the Department of Veterans Affairs, they don't understand the acronyms, let alone what these members have gone through to give them their freedom. So they think it's a handout. We know it's an earned benefit. We are in this benefit, but it's taken sometimes years. If not, for instance, to come to Puerto Rico, I have a case that's been pending since 1991 because it's bounced back and forth from the board to local jurisdiction back to the board. The veteran is sitting out there with a disabled child because she was a female member in the army. She got a rubella shot. The child was born premature and he is now 38 years old, but he is totally handicapped, totally incapacitated. So she had to quit her job to take care of her son. And like you said, because she didn't get her compensation, the local community has to pick up the slack there. And it's not that they shouldn't, they should, but we should be able to take care of that child so that the child gets his due benefits to be taken care of. And because that's one extra slack that someone else could use because, you know, you only have so many debts. Sometimes it is skilled nursing facility. And if you use them all up, it needs to be taken care of and done on a more quicker basis. Yeah. The other thing I want to bring up, not only with Agent Orange, but I know that there has been issues in the past as far as with the anthrax shots and different inoculations that the troops have been receiving. And there's been some areas or some individuals or groups out there that claim there may be a correlation. I don't want to go too far out in the left field, but is that another issue that's being dealt with or talked about? It's talked about in this sense. The way the law was written, and let's say you got the anthrax shot, you did come down seriously or you came down with, you know, some type of deliberating illness that you can't work. And if you can get a medical opinion and the medical opinion says there's more than likely caused by this shot. And the doctor will put that in a medical opinion. Then that person has probably a 90 plus percent chance of getting a benefit. But if you don't have a link to the nexus, you know, then you're going to get denied. But there are cases. I mean, that's why a lot of people during the height of the war when they were all being forced to take the anthrax, people declined it because of the earlier days when they had those shots, people became seriously ill. Some of them got into muscle spasms of muscle paralysis and other illnesses of the musculoskeletal system. All right. OK. But what the time we have left anyhow, I want to bring up what are some of the organizations out there or contact points that people could contact to get more information? Because this, like I say, not only affects the people, I mean those in the military, but, you know, on the surveillance side, I mean, because we have to encourage the surveillance side to make sure that our representatives keep their promises to our troops, you know, and because these are the people out there that's fighting on our behalf. So for the children, there's always the birth defects registry. And if you can do that birth defects registry, the Shriners is a good source of information because the Shriners have always taken care of children. And now the hospital in Tennessee is a good one. Within the government side, I mean, Vietnam Veterans of America is one who led the initiative to get these presumptive illnesses for them. And they are also the ones who led the big push in the initiative to get the OEF, OIF veterans, the benefits they deserve because we know what happened to our veterans when they came home. We didn't want to see that happen to the modern day warriors. So that's a good source. American Legion is a good source for information. The other ones really deal with their site specific organizations like Morph, you know, you have to have a purple heart to be a member of Morph. Moa, you have to be an officer. And so there's other organizations out there and there's a lot of good information. There's and each state has like a leukemia society or a spina bifida society. But the main one, the ones that keeps all the track in the data to discuss with IOM, the Institute of Medicine, is the birth defects registry. And that's an excellent resource. And the Veterans of America is an excellent resource. I really have to say that because they've led the push ever since we came home. So we are the ones who help lead the push to get the Camp Lejeune contaminated water issued because there was two side effects to that. One was complicating the veteran for his benefits. But then we've got the law passed last two years ago, which is the Camp Lejeune Compassion Act, where the VA is supposed to take care of the family members who come down with the supposed to 17 presumptive illnesses from the contaminated waters of Camp Lejeune. But they're supposed to pay for their health care. But the VA doesn't go out and tell you all that. So, you know, that's why we try to do these town halls and do radio talk shows and get on the news as much as we can about it. OK, Mark, we're getting out of the wire. But anyhow, you know, what we'd like to do is follow up on this because this is a lot of very good information that you're putting out there and again here in Hawaii. I know there's not that many sources that I've seen that's been addressing the issue. But yeah, it affects all of us. I appreciate, you know, what you do in your organization. And I think I say keep up with work and we'll keep in touch. The one other thing I want to touch on real quick and I think we'll do a follow up program on this if you want. DD 214 is one issue that I want to talk about real brief is the fact that when you 214 as a code and there's been some discussion about what may be some of the coding how it could affect you. And like I said, in the future program, we'll be talking about that. Mark, you have anything final you want to say before we go? You mean on a spin code or just in general? On a point in general, I think we've got about 30 seconds. OK, I think the spin code is really important because it can stop a veteran from getting a good job if he has a bad spin code on there, just like the discharge type of discharge he has. Right. OK, I guess I know there's more than 100. But like I said, we'll talk about that in the future. But I do encourage people to be out there. Check out the spin codes in there. Yeah. All right, Mark, could you go ahead? Your number one more time before we go. Oh, you have a contact? My telephone number? Yeah. Oh, contact number would be 727 error code 319-5921. That rings in my office. Great. OK. And the National Office is 1301-585-4000. That's in Washington, D.C. OK, Mark, thanks a lot. Like I said, we'll be in touch. And again, thank you for taking it down to join us here on Military in Hawaii. And I want to thank you very much. OK, and thank you for tuning in. And we'll see you in the next couple of weeks.