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Hopkins' suffering typified a number of major problems complicating relations between the Government and Viet Nam veterans. First, the Reagan Administration had announced plans to make deep cuts in the VA budget. Second, most VA hospitals are far better equipped to handle physical disabilities, which are the norm among older veterans, than psychological disabilities, which predominate among Viet Nam vets. Third, the VA has been slow to acknowledge the existence of "delayed stress syndrome," mental illnesses that arise years after their cause has ceased-in this case the war. Fourth, the Government has rejected the claim of thousands...
Eight years after the Viet Nam War ended, Americans who fought it have not yet won a hero's homecoming. That condition became especially galling to them when the Iran hostages returned to cheering crowds this winter. Yet, increasingly, the veterans' demands are shifting from spiritual appreciation for their sacrifices to material help of the kind sought by past generations of warriors: tuition aid comparable to the G.I. Bill of Rights; generous and inclusive disability pensions; and, more and more, better treatment at the nation's 172 Veterans Administration hospitals...
...protests for improved medical care are sometimes as passionate as protests against the war used to be. Despite a conciliatory letter from the White House, two Viet veterans' groups continued a sit-in and a hunger strike at the Veterans Administration Wadsworth Medical Center in Los Angeles, a city that has become the focus of veteran activism. One of the 16 hunger strikers, a diabetic, had collapsed after refusing food and insulin for four days, and four others have quit. But, vows Hunger Striker Kenneth Van Glen: "We're going to stay out as long as it takes...
Both groups are protesting the death of James Hopkins, 32, a onetime Marine who thought his Viet Nam service injuries were driving him mad and that the Government would not help him. In March Hopkins donned his camouflage fatigues, drove his Jeep through glass doors into the Wadsworth lobby and shot up the walls with an M-14 rifle. Two months later he died at home, an open liquor bottle and an empty pill container near...
Scientists have linked dioxin, the most toxic element in Agent Orange, to cancer in animals. Researchers in Italy and Viet Nam claim dioxin is tied to birth defects in humans. Veterans also blame the chemical for headaches, sexual dysfunction and organ damage. They say perhaps 80,000 soldiers were exposed to dioxin. The Federal Government says there is no way to tell, although some 45,000 soldiers have been tested and a federally financed study is under way at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health...