| N APRIL 15, 1970, Dr. Jesse L. Steinfeld, the Surgeon General of the United States, appeared before a hearingof the Senate Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources,and the Environment, headed by Senator Philip A. Hart,which was investigating the potential hazard to humanhealth of the widely used phenoxy herbicide 2,4,5-T. Heannounced a series of governmental actions aimed at limit-ing the use of 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid aroundhomes, on farms, and on other areas in the United States.On the same day, the Deputy Secretary of Defense,David Packard, announced that the American armed forces,which had been using 2,4,5-T in the Vietnam war, wouldstop using it. The employment of the compound in aerialdefoliation operations over huge tracts of South Vietnamfor the stated purpose of denying cover to vietcong forcesbut also for the unstated purpose of creating a flow ofrefugees from villages controlled by the Communists intoareas controlled by the South Vietnamese governmenthad aroused increasing protests from biologists in thiscountry, who maintained that the 2,4,5-T had a potentialfor causing birth defects among the offspring of Vietnamesewomen exposed to it. Indeed, studies made for our govern-ment from 1966 onward by an organization known asBionetics Research Laboratories, of Bethesda, Maryland,had shown that the herbicide caused a significant numberof deformities in the unborn offspring of female mice andrats. |
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