Status of the Institute of Medicine's " Ranch Hand" Assets Management and "Veterans and Agent Orange" Research Projects

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences has a history of conducting studies that evaluate the impact of the wartime spraying of herbicides in Vietnam that dates back to the 1970s. This presentation will summarize two ongoing efforts. The first of these relates to a charge from the US Congress to make the records and biologic assets collected in the course of the Air Force Health Study (AFHS)—popularly known as the Ranch Hand Study—available to researchers. AFHS materials available include more than 80,000 serially collected biologic samples and voluminous data on health status, demographic and socioeconomic status, occupations, and other activities at six time points over a 20 year period (1982-2002); 2,758 Vietnam veterans participated in at least one exam cycle. New technologies and methods permit analyses that were not possible during the time of the original study, and much of the collected information has never been analyzed. The IOM was granted funding to make the Ranch Hand materials available to the research community and to provide support for pilot studies, and several are in process. This presentation will address the characteristics of the Ranch Hand data and biospecimens, the scientific merit of their continued study, the status of the IOM assets management and dissemination effort, and potential research opportunities. The second study is the most recent edition of IOM’s “Veterans and Agent Orange” reports, a congressionally-mandated series that has been evaluating the association between adverse health outcomes and exposure to the herbicides used by the US military during the Vietnam War and to the herbicide contaminant 2,3,7,8-TCDD. Results of the latest report’s review of epidemiological and toxicological literature will be presented.