EDITORIAL: Incremental progress on Agent Orange

Though the Department of Veterans Affairs has just made it easier for Vietnam vets to get compensation for the damage that the herbicide Agent Orange did to their health, there's plenty of work left to be done to right this long-standing wrong, both here and in Vietnam.

The good news is a proposed rule change, expanding the list of ailments presumed to be connected to Agent Orange exposure during service in Vietnam. It will now include B-cell leukemias, Parkinson's disease and ischemic heart disease. That removes from veterans suffering from these diseases the burden of proving that their service made them sick.

But, as a Newsday report showed this weekend, the issue of birth defects caused by Agent Orange lingers. Here, too many parents still struggle raising children whose birth defects are not yet presumed to be linked to it. In Vietnam, 500,000 children have been born with defects after 19 million gallons of herbicides were sprayed from 1961 to 1971. But a study of the link to Agent Orange was canned. The issue still festers.

As thousands of veterans apply for disability payments under the new rule, the VA will implement an automated system for the new claims. It's vital that it work; claims from one suffering group of vets must not add to the perpetual backlog and affect veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. We must get all our vets to the front of the line soon, and someday, we must help everyone hurt by Agent Orange, wherever they live. hN