It only took 40 years for the United States to start cleaning up Agent Orange in Vietnam. Of course, the U.S. government doesn’t agree with Vietnamese claims that at least four million people were poisoned by the toxic defoliant as it was dumped all over the country’s jungles, but I guess you’ve got to start somewhere. Still, there are an untold number of people still suffering from dioxin, a carcinogenic ingredient in Agent Orange that can produce absolutely horrifying birth defects, and the Vietnamese government has turned to an odd source for health: the Church of Scientology.According to the New York Times,The detoxification program, which Tom Cruise and other prominent Scientologists have promoted, is known as the Purification Rundown or the Hubbard method, after L. Ron Hubbard, the American science fiction writer who founded Scientology.
A clinic in New York City offered treatment based on the same program to firefighters who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.The Times report states that around 300 people have passed through the country’s fledgling adaptation of the program, which more or less involves taking a ton of vitamins, and working out and sweating a lot. To me, that kind of sounds like a generic hangover cure — everyone has that friend that always has to “sweat out the toxins” — rather than a method of eliminating a persistent, toxic chemical. American doctors and representatives of the U.S. government have said they don’t expect any positive results from L. Ron’s sweat lodge therapy, but according to Vietnamese news sources, local officials say the program is already producing positive results.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead
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