Scientologist detox targets the victims of Agent Orange

MORE than 40 years after Agent Orange was sprayed on the jungles of Vietnam to strip them of their foliage in America’s war against the Viet Cong, a controversial “detoxification” treatment is being offered to people who suffer medical conditions linked to the toxins it contained.

Sufferers are being treated with saunas and vitamins under a Church of Scientology regime which has been slammed as pseudo-science.

One group of 24 people were treated at a military hospital in Hanoi for a month, free of charge, Dau Xuan Tuong, deputy administrator at the ­Vietnam Association of Agent Orange Victims, revealed yesterday. He said 22 people had undergone the treatment in 2011 in northern Thai Binh province.

“Their health improved after the treatment, and some saw their chronic illnesses disappear,” he claimed. “We need to do more scientific research to determine its impact.”

The Church of Scientology was not available to comment immediately. Proponents have said its detox programme improves quality of life.

America’s military dumped some 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides on about a quarter of former South Vietnam between 1962 and 1971, decimating about five million acres of jungle to remove the foliage that concealed enemy fighters. Dioxins in it have since been linked to birth defects, cancers and other illnesses, but the US maintains there is no evidence Agent Orange caused health problems among the Vietnamese, even though US soldiers have been compensated for ailments they say are linked to the compound.

“I hope my wife and I will fully recover completely and will not suffer after-effects to pass on to my descendants,” prospective patient Nguyen Dai Sang was quoted as saying in the Viet Nam News daily.

US embassy spokesman Christopher Hodges said Washington was not funding the programme and said “we are not aware of any safe, effective detoxification treatment for people with dioxin in body tissues”.

It is not known what other medical care the participants were receiving.

Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard opposed psychiatry and the use of drugs for mental illness and addictions, but church members accept conventional medical treatment for physical conditions.

Scientologists use the “Hubbard Method” to try to cure drug addiction and alcoholism. The church set up a centre in New York after the 9/11 attacks offering a similar service for rescuers who may have been exposed to toxins.

Actor Tom Cruise co-founded the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, where participants were each given vitamins and nutritional counselling and participated in daily exercise and sauna sessions.

Critics, many of them scientists, have said there is no evidence the “Hubbard Method” does any good.

Last month, the US began cleaning up toxins from the site of a former airbase in Danang in central Vietnam. Part of the former base consists of a field where US troops once stored and mixed the defoliant before it was loaded onto planes.

Washington has been quibbling for years over the need for more research to show Agent Orange caused health problems in Vietnam. It has given about $60 million (£37.5m) for environmental restoration and social services in Vietnam since 2007, including to disabled people, but the Danang project is its first direct involvement in cleaning up dioxin, which has seeped into Vietnam’s soil and water.