Posted on 11/22/2017 8:59:27 AM PST by blam
Veterans returned to the U.S. after fighting in the jungles of Vietnam a half century ago, but hundreds of them may be dying from a silent bullet a slow-killing parasite living in the men decades after the war, a new study revealed.
Liver flukes, parasites that infect a human when raw or undercooked fish is eaten, are being investigated as the cause of a rare bile duct cancer among veterans who served in the Vietnam War. It could take years for symptoms to show up, but when they do, the host is left with tremendous pain and given just a few months to live.
The Department of Veterans Affairs this spring commissioned a small pilot study to look into the link between liver flukes and the cancer. More than 20 percent of the 50 blood samples submitted to the study came back positive or bordering positive for liver fluke antibodies, said Sung-Tae Hong, the tropical medicine specialist who carried out the tests at Seoul National University in South Korea.
Gerry Wiggins, who served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, agreed to take part in the study even though he didnt have any symptoms. The 69-year-old said he has already lost friends to the disease. To his surprise, liver fluke antibodies were detected in him.
"I was in a state of shock," he said. "I didn't think it would be me."
Further tests showed two cysts on his bile duct what could develop into cancer known as cholangiocarcinoma. They were removed and Wiggins is doing well.
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(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Actually, that's where we all got our prostate cancer: every single guy from my infantry company who survived the war got very aggressive prostate cancer from Agent Orange.
This and many other things convinced us that what happened to us really didn't matter to our leaders. We were as expendable as Kleenex to them.
Pretty obvious that you've never been anywhere near the wrong side of a rifle. I don't doubt that there is abuse of the system but PTSD, as they are calling it now, exists in some form in all combat veterans. It's the normal human reaction to 24/7 fear, seeing others around you killed and maimed and having to try to kill other people - while trying your damndest not to kill innocent bystanders or your fellow soldiers/Marines. It's going sleepless for long periods of time, carrying more weight than a pack mule in stunning heat, while nor knowing if the next step you take will be your last.
People like you are only too willing to let the rest of us take the burdens and the many residuals afterward, while you get to carp from the sidelines.
Well, bravo. I hope you don't mind that I will continue to respect and admire my generation's and our current times' veterans far more than the service-avoiders and sideline gripers, as you seem to be.
I call bullspit on that statement. If true I wouldn't have had to fight the VA tooth and nail for years and still today for upgrades to shell fragment wounds from rockets, shredded muscle from explosives and you decry the unworthiness of unseen but still real damage by Agent Orange or PTSD and think the VA tries to get all the vets unearned benefits. The VA hands nothing out easy as you state. Sure there's fake mental con artist vets, those need to be punished and followup evaluations done.
Thank you both for your reasoned response. I am glad I read yours before I responded myself. Saved me getting banned for calling him a ignorant, lowlife, non-serving, worthless, pile of crap.
Pretty clearly not a combat veteran but a veteran of sorts with little or no understanding of what real combat can do to people.
It will be interesting if he has the nerve to respond to us.
Which is a shame, since in your many earlier posts on FreeRepublic indicate that you are at least a retired Staff Non-Commissioned Officer.
Recommend that in the future you refrain from commenting on combat-related topics and if you feel the urge to do so, that you disconnect your keyboard that day and just go fishing.
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