Others back home used to torment her by saying her ailment made her like an animal. When you talk to just about anybody in Vietnam they accept it as fact that children like these are victims of Agent Orange. But American researchers say the issue's more complicated. Dioxin has probably caused serious health problems in Vietnam, but so far no one has identified the right victims, according to Arnold Schecter, a public health researcher at the University of Texas. Schecter has been studying the dioxin problem in Vietnam for years.
Scientists know that dioxin is one of the most toxic chemicals ever studied.
And research in laboratory animals and humans suggest that, dioxin can cause diabetes, cancer, and specific kinds of birth defects. But Schecter says most of the dramatic birth defects that the Vietnamese cite have never shown up in the research. Most of the children in the Peace Villages, he says, are probably victims of old-fashioned plagues, like polio and cerebral palsy. Schecter says scientists need to do major, long-term studies to figure out who's really been affected by dioxin in Vietnam, and how. So many have died.