I am a child of the 1970s, a casualty of poisons used during the Vietnam War. While #AgentOrange was intended to brutally strip the forest trees bare of their dense foliage to improve visibility in the jungle, it also stripped the future health of #vets' children away. Thread 1/6 https://twitter.com/VVMF/status/1293017825511079936

(2/6) Like me, thousands of children of servicemen exposed to the potent defoliant #AgentOrange were born with constellations of birth defects. I was born missing bones and with shortened limbs. I have survived >30 corrective surgeries so I could walk as an #amputee.

(3/6) Now in our 40s, one need only look a bit closer to see how similar our stories are. Our fathers were exposed to the poison during the war. Born years after their return, we share familiar health histories of missing bones, shortened limbs, neural tube defects, and more.

(4/6) Although in 1997, the US Veterans Administration included children of this era born with spina bifida in their coverage of health benefits for the children of Vietnam veterans, those like me who suffered from other life-altering bone defects are not covered. There was no

(5/6) assistance, no government health plan to help pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars in surgeries and prosthetic devices I’ve needed over my lifetime. When we attack Nature with poisons, the collateral damage to future generations is difficult to predict.

(6/6) Let us learn from the mistakes of #AgentOrange and do better as a nation in righting these wrongs done to the #vets and their families.

#BringLight #VietnamWar #VietnamMemorial