Maine veterans facing cancer hoping that ‘atomic veteran’ bill becomes law

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Belfast, ME -- March 23, 2015 -- Jeffery Dean, 58, served in the United States Army from 1976 to 1979. During his service, he spent 4 months involved in the Enewetak Radiological Support Project in the South Pacific. The mission was to clean up the radiation debris from atomic bomb testing that took place there. Dean and many of the other men who served there are suffering from different cancers and other health conditions. Dean and several others are now fighting to be recognized and compensated for medical expenses due to ionized radiation exposure. "We didn't hesitate when they asked us to go out there," said Dean, "but now that we're all getting sick, they're [the V.A.] turning their back on us." Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN

Belfast, ME -- March 23, 2015 -- Jeffery Dean, 58, served in the United States Army from 1976 to 1979. During his service, he spent 4 months involved in the Enewetak Radiological Support Project in the South Pacific. The mission was to clean up the radiation debris from atomic bomb testing that took place there. Dean and many of the other men who served there are suffering from different cancers and other health conditions. Dean and several others are now fighting to be recognized and compensated for medical expenses due to ionized radiation exposure. "We didn't hesitate when they asked us to go out there," said Dean, "but now that we're all getting sick, they're [the V.A.] turning their back on us." Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN

By Abigail Curtis

Congress is considering a bill that would create a special “atomic veteran” designation for the men and women who worked to clean up nuclear waste from a South Pacific atoll nearly 40 years ago, a move that Maine veteran Paul Laird says was a long time coming.

But Laird, a 59-year-old from Otisfield who served with the U.S. Army’s 84th Engineer Battalion on Enewetak Atoll and who is a three-time cancer survivor, said that the bill has only a slim chance of becoming law — and that is not acceptable to him. As of now, only 30 co-sponsors have officially signed on to the bill, which is a number the Mainer said does not seem like enough.

“We are not seeing people jump up and down to get onboard,” he said earlier this month. “We’re a little disappointed. We’re trying however we can to get the word out, but people just don’t seem to think it’s very important.”

The bill, H.R. 3870, is called the Atomic Veterans Healthcare Parity Act, and was introduced last November by U.S.hire vets Rep. Mark Takai, D-Hawaii. It was referred to the House subcommittee on health on Nov. 6 and has not advanced any farther on its legislative path. The website GovTrack.us, which follows Congress, only gave the bill a 5 percent chance of getting out of committee and a 1 percent chance of being enacted into law.

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