From David O. Carpenter, Institute for Health and the Environment, University at Albany
Your report on the US’s proposed study of the effects of Agent Orange contains comments attributed to me implying something that is not true – that the cancellation of this study was in any way related to the ongoing litigation (19 March, p 7).
The study was cancelled solely because 18 months after it had been approved for funding by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, we were still unable to obtain approval by the Vietnamese government, which resulted in an inability to initiate the project and hire Vietnamese staff to work with us. There was no relationship whatsoever to the litigation, even though the study would have had the potential to answer one of the major questions about the health effects of dioxin.
Rensselaer, New York, US
