McCain’s brain cancer draws renewed attention to possible Agent Orange connection

When Amy Jones’ dad, Paul, was diagnosed with glioblastoma last month, she wondered whether it might be tied to his time in Vietnam.

Then, last week, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also a Vietnam veteran, was diagnosed with the same aggressive brain cancer, Jones searched online for glioblastoma and Vietnam vets.

She soon learned the disease is one of a growing list of ailments that some Vietnam veterans and their relatives believe is caused by exposure to Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide sprayed during the war.

“Honestly, it’s not easy to even admit that this is happening, let alone to even talk about it,” said Jones, whose 68-year-old father has had surgery to remove a brain tumor and now is receiving radiation treatments. “It’s only been six weeks. It’s such a devastating diagnosis.”

McCain’s diagnosis comes as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is under increased pressure to broaden who’s eligible for Agent Orange-related compensation. During the war, the military sprayed millions of gallons of the herbicide in Vietnam to kill enemy-covering jungle brush, and in the process, may have exposed as many as 2.6 million U.S. service members — including McCain.

News of his illness has prompted Amy Jones and others to call on the VA to study a possible connection between their loved ones’ Agent Orange exposure and glioblastoma.

Under current policy, the agency makes disability payments to veterans who develop one of 14 health conditions, but only if they can prove they served on the ground in Vietnam, where the chemicals were sprayed. Veterans who served off the coast in the Navy and those with other diseases not on the list — such as brain cancer — are left to fight the agency for compensation on a case-by-case basis.

Those with glioblastoma — or widows seeking survivor benefits — must prove the disease was “at least as likely as not” caused by Agent Orange, a cumbersome process that often takes years and more times than not results in denial.

Although McCain primarily served at sea from the deck of an aircraft carrier — and survived more than five years in a prison camp after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam — the VA would presume he was exposed to Agent Orange because he also spent time on the ground in Saigon.

Still, McCain never has sought to connect any of his health troubles, including prior bouts with skin cancer, with Agent Orange exposure and has a mixed record when it comes to compensating fellow veterans for wartime exposures. His office did not respond to emailed questions about a possible link between glioblastoma and the chemical.

As a senator, McCain voted to approve the original 1991 law that directed the VA to presume every veteran who served in Vietnam was exposed and to begin compensating those with illnesses scientifically linked to it.

In 2011, however, as many Vietnam veterans aged into their 60s and 70s and annual disability payments to them swelled to more than $17 billion, McCain spoke in favor of an amendment that would have required a higher standard of scientific proof before any new illnesses would be covered.

The goal, McCain said in a floor speech, was to ensure that veterans who actually deserved compensation received it, “but at the same time not have a situation where it is an open-ended expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars.” The amendment was defeated — and since then, Vietnam vet disability payments have grown to $24 billion a year — and the episode damaged McCain’s reputation with veterans groups.

In a statement, a VA spokesman said the agency currently does not recognize a connection between Agent Orange exposure and brain cancer but is examining the topic anew in light of the questions that have been raised. In March, the VA asked a National Academy of Medicine panel studying the effects of Agent Orange to focus special attention on glioblastoma. (Previous reports by the group have not found a connection.) The VA also is asking about brain cancer in a sweeping survey of Vietnam veterans now underway.

VA data provided to ProPublica last fall shows that more than 500 Vietnam-era veterans have been diagnosed with glioblastoma at VA health facilities since 2000. That doesn’t include the unknown number diagnosed at private facilities.

ProPublica and The Virginian-Pilot reported last year how widows of Vietnam vets were banding together to push the VA to add glioblastoma to its list of diseases linked to Agent Orange. Through a Facebook group, they support one another and offer advice on navigating the VA’s labyrinthian process for seeking disability and survivor benefits.

Since news of McCain’s illness broke last week, dozens like Jones have joined the group, whose members mostly include widows and surviving relatives, but also some veterans living with the disease. “Every one of us, our phones were blowing up the day it came out” that McCain had glioblastoma, said Kathy Carroll-Josenhans, one of the group’s leaders.

The group now has some 450 members, about double its size in December.

One of their challenges is that the VA’s handling of claims related to glioblastoma has been somewhat inconsistent. Between 2009 and last fall, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, the VA’s in-house tribunal for adjudicating benefit denials, issued more than 100 decisions in cases in which widows have appealed benefits denials related to their husbands’ brain cancer, according to a ProPublica analysis of board decisions. About two dozen won. (Here are two additional approvals from this year.)

Brad Riddell, a 35-year-old communications specialist living in Austin, Texas, is not a member of the Facebook group but immediately thought of his father when he heard about McCain’s illness. His dad, Jerry Riddell, served in a Navy construction battalion in Da Nang during the war and routinely came in contact with Agent Orange, which was used to clear brush before paving roads and runways.

Riddell was in high school when his father had a seizure while driving from work one day. A brain scan later that day revealed a tumor the size of a grapefruit and a medical term that still makes Riddell shudder: glioblastoma.

His father endured three surgeries — including two at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston — before doctors told him there was nothing more they could do. He entered hospice and died in February 1999, just 14 months after the diagnosis.

“I absolutely thought about dad when I heard about McCain,” Riddell said. “Anytime I hear that diagnosis, it just feels like, ‘Man, that person is a goner.’ It’s terrible.”

After his father’s death, Riddell’s mother gave him a bag of his military records and told him to hold onto them: “She said, ‘You need to have all these records in case there‘s ever a connection made between your dad’s cancer and Agent Orange.’”

In the wake of the McCain news, Riddell wonders if it’s time to pull the records out.

Heidi Spencer had a similar revelation a year ago. Her father, Jack Niedermeyer, died of glioblastoma at age 58 in June 2004. Her mother didn’t think to apply for benefits until last year when someone at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post where she works suggested it. Spencer helped her mom fill out the application and the VA approved it in March.

“He never knew his cancer came from Agent Orange. He never talked about his service,” she said of her dad, who worked in a steel mill in Pittsburgh and had six kids.

Spencer, 42, found her dad’s commanding officer in the Marine Corps, who wrote a letter saying her dad had been sprayed by Agent Orange.

“The more you research it, the more it comes into light,” she said. “The VA needs to look at this, they need to link it and they need to look at his [McCain’s] diagnosis and whether or not the Vietnam War played a role in him getting his disease.”

In approving her mom’s claim, the VA wrote that glioblastoma was not recognized as a disease that automatically warranted benefits linked to Agent Orange but that “current medical research has shown a causal relationship between herbicide exposure and glioblastoma multiforme.” This is contrary to the VA’s official policy.

Regardless of McCain’s position on the matter, advocates hope his diagnosis will spark a conversation.

In a statement last week, John Rowan, the president of Vietnam Veterans of America, said he was saddened to learn “yet another Vietnam veteran” had been diagnosed with glioblastoma.

“Unfortunately, brain cancer is not on the presumptive list for exposure to Agent Orange,” Rowan said in a statement, “despite the efforts of our fellow veterans and their family members.”

Via ProPublica

Featured Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

Groundbreaking Study Confirms Cannabis Has ‘Significant’ Effect on Killing Cancer Cells

Leukemia has a new foe — one reviled by the U.S. DEA, loved as a tool for law enforcement profiteering, and purposely maligned by Big Pharma — cannabis.

A new study found that, in combination with traditional chemotherapy, cannabinoids — the active compounds in cannabis — significantly improved treatment of leukemia.

Adding cannabinoid therapy to a traditional cancer treatment regimen meant doctors could lower the dose of chemotherapy while minimizing its oft-debilitating side effects, such as nausea.

Researchers also found the order in which the two medicines were administered proffered different results — more cancer cells die, or experience apoptosis, when cannabinoids follow chemotherapy.

“We have shown for the first time that the order in which cannabinoids and chemotherapy are used is crucial in determining the overall effectiveness of this treatment,” explained Dr. Wai Liu of St. George’s, University of London, and lead author of the study, quoted by the Daily Mail.

Cannabis has long been touted as efficacious in alleviating nausea and vomiting associated with rigorous chemotherapy treatment — but this study marks a groundbreaking foray into the study of the plant as a potentially curative medicine.

Liu deemed cannabinoids a “very exciting prospect in the oncology.”

Researchers sought to analyze the effects of various cannabinoids — specifically THC, the compound known for giving recreational users a ‘high,’ as well as CBD, or cannabidiol — on leukemia cells and whether the order in which the plant compounds and two common chemotherapy drugs, cytarabine and vincristine, are given would impact results.

According to the study, published in the International Journal of Oncology:

“In addition to the well-known palliative effects of cannabinoids on some cancer-associated symptoms, a large body of evidence shows that these molecules can decrease tumour growth in animal models of cancer. They do so by modulating key cell signalling pathways involved in the control of cancer cell proliferation and survival. In addition, cannabinoids inhibit angiogenesis and decrease metastasis in various tumour types in laboratory animals.”

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Taken after chemotherapy, cannabinoids “can increase the cancer cell-killing effects of the chemotherapy and decrease the growth of new tumor cells and tumor-feeding blood vessels,” UPROXX reports.

“These extracts are highly concentrated and purified,” Liu elaborates, “so smoking marijuana will not have a similar effect.”

Most momentously for advocates of medical cannabis, the team found phytocannabinoids indeed display significant “anticancer activity” — even when used as sole treatment against the disease.

Further analysis and study must be completed, however,

“Studies such as ours serve to establish the best ways that they should be used to maximise a therapeutic effect,” Liu said.

Leukemia wasn’t the only cancer studied by the researchers — glioblastoma, the most aggressive brain cancer, may also be significantly impacted by the introduction of cannabinoids, should promising animal testing be ultimately translatable for treatment in humans.

This study adds to the evidence as presented by the National Cancer Institute as well. As the Free Thought Project previously reported, the government agency recently acknowledged the power of cannabis to kill cancer cells which is backed up by laboratory tests.

“Cannabis has been shown to kill cancer cells in the laboratory,” states the cancer.gov website. 

But, in order for swaths of patients in the United States to even dream of eradicating their leukemia, cannabis prohibition — existent primarily for the highly politicized agenda of criminalizing the antiwar left, African-Americans, and, earlier, jazz musicians — must be lifted.

Perhaps the steepest obstacle to ending cannabis prohibition rests with the lucrative pharmaceutical industry, whose societally-established drugs for treating cancer rake in billions each year.

As long as the astonishingly beneficial plant remains out of reach for many U.S. patients, any future cannabinoid additions to chemotherapy could theoretically find the user fined or locked in a cage.

Dr. Liu and his team conclude the abstract of their promising by imploring immediate further examination of their results, stating,

“Given that cannabinoids show an acceptable safety profile, clinical trials testing them as single drugs or, ideally, in combination therapies in glioblastoma and other types of cancer are both warranted and urgently needed.”

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Now, only the dollar signs blinding the U.S. government and Big Pharma to the indisputable benefits of cannabis stand between cancer sufferers and relief.

Conspiracy Theory Confirmed: Secret Docs Show Gov’t Covered Up Cell Phone Cancer Risks for Years

After years hidden from the public, California Department of Public Health officials have finally released a draft document outlining health concerns stemming from cellphone radiation — including multiple cancers and infertility.

“We have evidence of brain tumors and other head and neck tumors. We also have evidence of sperm damage in males, infertility in females,” explained Joel Moskowitz of U.C. Berkeley’s School of Public Health, who sued the state in 2016 under the California Public Records Act to obtain the information.

Although the Department of Public Health ultimately chose not to publish the document — both pages have since been emblazoned with “Draft and Not for Public Release” — its content is of critical import to cellphone users around the planet.

San Francisco affiliate ABC7 reports, “Moskowitz says there’s been a lot of pressure from the wireless industry to keep any kind of negative report on cellphones hidden from the public,” and, he notes,

“[T]hey’ve done a very good job at it, essentially following the same playbook that the tobacco industry used.”

Moskowitz’ conclusion seems apt. Despite the matter-of-fact tone with which the nature of cellphone health threats is presented, the document — appropriately titled “Cell Phones and Health” — reads more like a checklist for phone usage.

Following several simple guidelines parsed out by health officials could help prevent the development of brain and other cancers, as well as other afflictions. In fact, basic protocols like holding the phone at a distance, switching to speakerphone, or, most preferably, using headphones for conversations can all help reduce risk.

And CDPH’s Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control believes sufficient reason exists to be concerned, as the document states,

“Cell phones, like other electronic devices, emit a kind of energy called radiofrequency EMFs (electromagnetic fields). Health officials are concerned about possible health effects from cell phone EMFs because some recent studies suggest that long-term cell phone use may increase the risk of brain cancer and other health problems […]

“Several studies have found that people with certain kinds of brain cancer were more likely to have used cell phones for 10 years or more. Most of the cancers were on the same side of the head that people usually held their phones. Although the chance of developing brain cancer is very small, these studies suggest that regular cell phone use increases the risk of developing some kinds of brain cancer. Some studies have also linked exposure to EMFs from cell phones to fertility problems. As more studies are done and we learn about possible risks for cancer and other health problems linked to cell phone use, the recommendations on this fact sheet may change.”

Where the government chose a painfully neutral tone to discuss the gravity of possible side effects, others have been warning about the perils of cellphones for years.

“People need to know, people are unaware that cellphones as they are used now are not safe,” Ellie Marks of the California Brain Tumor Association, told ABC7.

Environmental Working Group (EWG) eight years ago released its own set of guidelines for safer cellphone operation, as well as a review of studies on cellphone radiation, including one from the “World Health Organization that linked cell phone radiation to brain cancer, and other studies that linked cell phone radiation to diminished sperm count and sperm damage.”

EWB reports officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deny succumbing to pressure from the mobile phone industry — but nonetheless, the information in the health document could have been put to better use with a full, public release. As EWB continues,

“In human epidemiological studies, cell phone use has been linked to an increased risk of brain and salivary gland cancers. Studies from teams of scientists in several nations have raised troubling questions about possible associations between heavy cell phone use and altered brain metabolism, sleep disturbance, and even diminished sperm count and sperm damage. In 2011, the World Health Organization declared cell phone radiation a possible carcinogen.

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“Animal studies support the findings in people. A multi-year study from the U.S. National Toxicology Program found that male rats exposed to radio-frequency radiation from before birth through two years of age had a greater chance of being diagnosed with a brain cancer called malignant glioma, as well as developing a tumor found on the heart. The radiation levels to which the rats were exposed included levels that current cell phones are allowed to emit.”

EWB emphasizes more research and study must occur before the extent of risks from cellphones can be fully assessed, but cautioned sufficient evidence has been found in previous studies to be trepidatious about current FCC rules regarding the ubiquitous devices.

In the meantime, CDC and California health officials continue calling for further research — without releasing guidelines that offer at least minimal guidance for the least risky use of a cellphone.

“This could have perhaps saved some lives if it had been published by the department seven years ago,” Moskowitz lamented. “It’s disconcerting it has taken so long to issue this. And still, they are making it clear this isn’t their official position.”

CDPH cell phone document April 2014