Posted on 04/25/2011 7:51:24 AM PDT by decimon
Up to a million soldiers and their families were secretly exposed to poisonous water at Camp Lejeune—including Sgt. Jerry Ensminger and his daughter, Janey, who died at 9 of leukemia. He tells his story in a riveting documentary premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, and talks to Lloyd Grove about fighting the Marine Corps brass through Congress, his family’s devastating breakup, and his daughter’s legacy.
On September 24, 1985, Janey Ensminger died of acute lymphocytic leukemia. She had been fighting the disease for nearly 2½ years, and was 9 years and two months old.
Janey’s diagnosis was as baffling as it was cruel. Her two sisters were evidently healthy, and there were no childhood cancers in the family medical histories of either her Okinawan mother, Etsuko, or her American father, Marine Corps Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger.
“We were at the Penn State University Medical Center in Hershey,” Jerry Ensminger tells me, “and I’d go down to the research area, go into the laboratory and talk to the researchers, asking questions: ‘How did this happen? Why? What do you know about it?’ And nobody could give me an answer.”
It wasn’t until 1997 that Ensminger received a shocking clue. Retired to his small North Carolina soybean, corn, and hay farm after a 24-year military career, he was cooking himself dinner when the local news came on: The federal government had just released a report concluding that for nearly three decades the tap water at Camp Lejeune, N.C.—the base where Janey was conceived in December 1975—had been contaminated by toxic chemicals associated with childhood and adult cancers.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Benzine and Polychloricobifenelyne are necessary to survival.
Both are also able to kill you when mishandled.
And no doubt both were misspelled.
Former is a rocket fuel, latter an electric insulator used in transformers.
Neither can be removed from water supplies, unless things have changed lately.
This is not anything specific just to LeJeune either. The military has been dumping stuff on all their military bases for many, many years. Nasty organic solvents like MEK to name just one.
And the worst thing about ALL, especially in children, is that the disease is so devastating to the body, that there is very little hope for a cure. The chronic form, CLL, has a better chance but it’s still a choice of rotten apples.
Up to a million soldiers and their families were secretly exposed to poisonous water at Camp Lejeune—
If you're in the military then you're a soldier.
“toxic chemicals associated with childhood and adult cancers”
What exactly is the federal study? Is that anything like the 8lbs of sacchrine they gave to lab rats to accosciate the artificial sweetener with cancer? Where is the data showing higher cancer rates among the children of Lejune or any other base for that matter. Where is the data compared to similar geographic locations and socioeconomic levels?
This strikes me as nothing more than a fishing expedition for taxpayer money or a new income stream for trial lawyers.
This issue has been debated for some time and at times on FR. Whatever the merits it’s not going away and will now be the subject of a documentary.
PCB is a substance that can contaminate ground water and any other contact source. We think it can induce various cancers decades after initial exposure.
Polychlorobifenalienes, in various permutations, are a necessary thing.
Everyone is against such a thing being used.
Everyone also has a container of such material hanging on their street keeping their lights on. It is a necessary nasty material that will be immediately replaced when possible.
Years back, we used to incinerate used PCB type material on sea based units.
“This strikes me as nothing more than a fishing expedition for taxpayer money or a new income stream for trial lawyers.”
Maybe not. I was stationed at Camp Lejeune in 1970. In 2002 I was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma at the base of my tongue. My doctors where shocked that I was neither a smoker or a heavy drinker. I underwent seven weeks of radiation treatment. I lost 60 lbs and my throat was permanently damaged. My wife of twenty years was so stressed out over my deteriorating condition that she died of a heart attack. She literally died in my arms. By the grace of God I am still alive today.
The Marine Corps instilled in me the self-discipline and confidence I was lacking that enabled me to go to college on the GI Bill and get a good job. I am forever grateful to them for that. But they need to step up to the plate on this issue.
They do indeed.
An “AMEN” to your post at #10.
How many guys have you punched out?
if I am a soldier do I get to wear a black beret and sell girl scout cookies?
Whatever turns you on.
I do think that we as a country are wealthy enough to provide our servicemen with whatever health care they require (servicemen or veterans with cancer should be treated regarless how they got it) but I fear what it would mean in the long run if the federal government simply declared that exposure to these chemicals equals cancer.
If there is a targeted study (with peer reviewed controls) showing a statistically anomalous amount of cancers in Lejeune residents then restitution should be made. If we cannot prove causality and we hand out 4 billion dollars anyway, we risk out of control litigiousness followed by EPA intervention and government regulation set upon anyone who uses or has used the suspect chemicals.
>>> “If you’re in the military then you’re a soldier.”
In a word... no. No matter what some ignorant civilian reporter labels a military servicemember. Generally, they’re even less accurate in that respect than in the substance of the stories they cover.
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