Agent Orange

[huy.duong@ctsu.ox.ac.uk]

Dear friends,

I have held back from supporting anh Tuan's proposal.
My reasons are:

1) This is an emotionally and politically charged issue and we will
have to be very careful to maintain our integrity as scientists and not be
taken in by emotions or politicians.   

2) I don't know what chi. Diem Quynh does, but it seems that the other
people are biostatisticians and mathematicians. But we need first of all 
scientists to ask the right questions. We can at most do the study design
but we need to know what it is that we are studying. "The association
between birth defects and Agent Orange" is too general. None of us know
much about either birth defect or Agent Orange. 

Judith's advice is right. But perhaps we can do some reading in the mean time.

Actually, anh Tuan, do you remember that I mentioned that a doctor in the
Pasteur Institute said that there is no data on birth defects in Vietnam (*)
and he is interested in establishing one? I wonder if this is a good
project. The problem is what do you count as a birth defect? Suppose
a person has a foot which is slightly twisted. What degree of twistedness
is normal and what degree means a defect?

Huy

(*) How can anyone show any association between Agent Orange and
birth defect if there is no nationwide data on birth defects?