US Vietnam Research Articles

Analysis Competition Coffee Exports From Producing Countries in the United States Market with Use Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) Model

For the Indonesian economy, coffee is one of the commodities plantation methods. Coffee's contribution to state revenues, especially in the form of foreign exchange, is what gives it its strategic worth. Indonesia follows Brazil, Vietnam, and Colombia as the world's top four coffee producers. Other nations besides Indonesia sell coffee to the US market, including Brazil, Vietnam, and Colombia. This study uses the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) Model to examine competitiveness between coffee-supplying nations in the US market. Examine Data spanning 2003 to 2022 is used for this. According to research, Brazilian and Indonesian coffee prices are inelastic, whereas Vietnamese and Colombian coffee prices are elastic. Colombian, Vietnamese, and Indonesian coffee are competitors of Indonesian coffee. This is demonstrated by the mark elasticity positive cross (substitution), and Brazilian coffee has a complementary relationship.

Homecomings, belonging and the mediating memory work of US Vietnam War remains

A half-century since its conclusion, the Vietnam War’s ‘work of remembrance’ in the United States continues to generate, even innovate, forms of homecoming and claims of belonging among the state, its military and veterans, surviving families and the wider public. Such commemoration often centres on objects that materialise, physically or symbolically, absence and longed-for recovery or reunion – from wartime artefacts-turned-mementos to the identified remains of missing war dead. In exploring the war’s proliferating memory work, this article examines the small-scale but persistent practice of leaving or scattering cremains at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC, against the backdrop of the US military’s efforts to account for service members missing in action (MIA). Seen together, the illicit and sanctioned efforts to return remains (or artefacts closely associated with them) to places of social recognition and fellowship shed light on the powerful role the dead have in mediating war’s meaning and the debts it incurs.

From Quad to Quint? Vietnam’s Strategic Potential

The United States should enlarge its concept for countering Chinese expansionism to stress economic power in addition to military power. One bold move to this end would be to include Vietnam in a redefined ‘Quint’ alongside the current Quad comprising Australia, India, Japan and the United States. Instead of forging a US–Vietnam defence treaty and encouraging a Vietnamese military build-up, which could trigger a hostile Chinese reaction, the US would help Vietnam advance its own priorities of renewable development and improved worker productivity. For this, an American-led business–government initiative will be needed. As China’s economy sputters while its military investments grow, a Quint with both economic and military power could enjoy an advantage in peacetime and during crises.

ACTIONS OF THE US AND SOUTH VIETNAM SPECIAL DIVISIONS ON THE "HO CHI MINA TRAIL" IN 1961-1967. BASED ON THE MEMOIRS OF AMERICAN WAR PARTICIPANTS

The article devoted to the analysis of the actions of special forces of US and South Vietnam during 1961–1967. One of the main tasks of these units during Vietnam war – destruction main objects of «Ho Chi Minh Trail» in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The work is built with the assistance of a memoir – translations memories combatants in South Vietnam and Laos, soldiers and commanders of Army of US, South Vietnam and Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The materials housed in the monographs of American and Vietnam researchers of the Indochina conflict, 1960–1970-s.In the early 1960s, in the setting of active infiltration teams of PAVN from DRV administration of USA adopted decision to send to Indochina units of special forces (Green Berets). Many of the military personnel who served in Vietnam belonged to 5th and 7th Special Forces Groups. Some Green Berets were assigned to the U.S. Military Assistance Command’s Studies and Observation Group (SOG) for making top secret intelligence operations and helped train the South Vietnamese special forces (LLDB). The most Green Berets defended South Vietnam’s border from infiltration from DRV. Apart from Green Berets, special units of the US NAVY were also active in South Vietnam. The main task of the special forces of the NAVY was the blockade of all waterways supplying partisans from North Vietnam and Cambodia by means of ambushes, sabotage, laying of mines and raids on bases of PAVN. In 1965-1967s mixed teams of Green Berets and LLDB conducted long-range reconnaissance missions into Laos and directed air strikes against the «Ho Chi Minh Trail». The U.S. aircraft bombed the «Ho Chi Minh Trail» daily, targeting areas based on electronic detection devices and intelligence gained by covert teams that infiltrated the area. However, these efforts could not slow down the movement of troops of PAVN, supplies southward along the «Ho Chi Minh Trail». The author paid attention to the creation units of special forces as part of army units of US Army situated in South Vietnam during 1965–1967. Special attention is paid by the author to the analysis secret operations of Green Berets against «Ho Chi Minh Trail». The author concluded that the special forces of USA and South Vietnam failed to achieve the set goals.

On the (a)symmetric effects of real exchange rate on trade flows: new evidence from US–Vietnam trade balance at the industry level

In this paper, we examined the asymmetric and symmetric effects of real exchange rate on bilateral trade balance between the United States and Vietnam at the industry level by employing both ARDL and NARDL models. We found that (i) only symmetric real exchange rate is statistically significant in explaining the total trade balance between the US and Vietnam in the long-run at the 10% statistical significant level; (ii) the effect at the industry level is mixed and dependent on product category; and (iii) the asymmetric effects are found in both short-run and long-run in 29 industries which account for 69% of the total industry. These findings suggest that Vietnam could import more commodities with a high import weight such as agricultural products, cork and wood, textile fiber, chemicals, and machinery products to reduce the US’s trade deficit.

Understanding A-Z of Export-Oriented Furniture Design Process for US Clients and Vietnam Suppliers

Understanding A-Z of Export-Oriented Furniture Design Process for US Clients and Vietnam Suppliers

The Vietnam War and Chicana/o Environmentalism in El Grito del Norte (1968–73)

The Vietnam War and Chicana/o Environmentalism in El Grito del Norte (1968–73) Emily Cheng (bio) This essay addresses El Grito del Norte (EGDN), a Chicana/o nationalist newspaper published in Española, a small working-class town in northern New Mexico, from 1968 to 1973. The paper was originally formed to support the politics of La Alianza Federal de Mercedes (Federal Alliance of Land Grants), the organization led by Reies López Tijerina that in the 1960s and 1970s sought the restoration of land grants established under the Spanish and Mexican governments. Written and run by women, the paper was founded and edited by Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez (known previously as Elizabeth Sutherland), whose socialist and third-world feminist politics shaped the paper's concern with the connections between rural Chicana women of New Mexico and other women of color in the US and abroad.1 Though the paper was committed to Chicana/o issues grounded in New Mexico, it soon moved away from its original role as a mouthpiece for the Alianza to include reports on indigenous issues in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. EGDN was, in Martínez's words, the "only one" of "about twenty Chicano newspapers … that was completely international."2 Of particular importance was the newspaper's reporting on Vietnam, which made it exceptional among a Chicano press in the 1960s that, George Mariscal notes, "was largely silent on the topic of the war in Southeast Asia."3 The paper's coverage included a special issue on North Vietnam by Martínez, a five-part series by Valentina Valdez explaining Vietnam and the war to readers, articles addressing Chicanos serving in the military by Enriqueta Vasquez that appeared in "El Soldado Razo Today" and her column, "Despierten! Hermanos," reports on the military events of the war, poetry by Ho Chi Minh, and a report on the Chicano Viêt Nam Project, a solidarity organization.4 While other scholars have written about the newspaper's concerns with land in New Mexico and, to a lesser extent, its third-world feminist politics, I examine how these aspects of the paper come together with its internationalism [End Page 55] to represent a distinctive and radical "environmental" politics. I do not mean to argue that the writers and activists who contributed to EGDN identified themselves as environmentalists or to attach this label to them. What I do want to argue is that, in contrast to the mainstream environmental movement that emerged in this period, these women writers possessed an environmental understanding that fundamentally engaged social justice, particularly around issues of race, gender, and imperialism. The environmental epistemology in EGDN was shaped by, but moved beyond, the long-standing relationship between Mexican-origin people, land, and nature in the US Southwest that was central to Chicana/o nationalist politics, as I discuss through Vasquez's article "La Santa Tierra." In considering Vietnam as another site in which to explore and understand the violence the US empire inflicts on land and colonized people, EGDN made connections between the US Southwest and Vietnam that developed its alternative environmental lens. Approaching the North Vietnamese as fellow peasants, or "campesinos," whose harmonious relationship to the land was being attacked by US imperialism, the newspaper made womanhood central to forging this relationship between Chicana/o and North Vietnamese anticolonialism. The feminist politics of "global sisterhood" facilitated the writers' interest in Vietnam, and their access to direct encounters with Vietnamese women through the international women's peace movement. The women writers of the paper also deployed a gendered lens that highlighted the role of women in environmental resistance to masculine military violence and symbolically established similarities between the two communities through idealized portrayals of rural, domestic life. With its attention to the lived human relationship to land, EGDN offered an alternative to notions of land that were central to mainstream American environmental thinking, which generally assumed the "separability of the human and natural realms … expressed through a melancholic attitude linking natural plenitude with human absence."5 In this mainstream tradition, land has been considered through the ideal of wilderness, and the human realm predominantly characterized by the individual relationship to the land through possession...

Comments on "Screening US Vietnam Veterans for Liver Fluke Exposure 5 Decades After the End of the War".

Comments on "Screening US Vietnam Veterans for Liver Fluke Exposure 5 Decades After the End of the War".

Responding to Letter “Comments on ‘Screening US Vietnam Veterans for Liver Fluke Exposure 5 Decades After the End of the War’” by Theodore E. Nash, David Sullivan, Edward Mitre, et al

Responding to Letter “Comments on ‘Screening US Vietnam Veterans for Liver Fluke Exposure 5 Decades After the End of the War’” by Theodore E. Nash, David Sullivan, Edward Mitre, et al

Screening US Vietnam Veterans for Liver Fluke Exposure 5 Decades After the End of the War

Clonorchiasis caused by Clonorchis sinensis and opisthorchiasis caused by Opisthorchis viverrini are prevalent in the Far East, including Vietnam. The causal relationship between the 2 liver flukes and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) has been well documented. Cholangiocarcinoma, a rare tumor of bile ducts, usually occurs in the sixth-seventh decade of life. In the United States, 8000 people are diagnosed with CCA each year. US Vietnam Veterans, 5 decades after the end of the war, are being diagnosed with CCA. Although CCA is linked to several conditions, no study has been done to our knowledge linking C. sinensis or O. viverrini as the culprits for CCA diagnosis in Vietnam Veterans. A pilot prospective epidemiological study was performed at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center. We screened Vietnam Veterans for exposure to eating raw or undercooked fish from the rivers in Vietnam during their service. Serological testing was performed by the multiantigen enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in Seoul National University of Medicine, South Korea. Of the 97 Veterans screened, 50 met the inclusion criteria with 1 Veteran being diagnosed with CCA. Of the 50 Veterans, 24% tested positive for serum IgG antibodies to C. sinensis. Those who tested positive had no detectable liver fluke parasites by fecal examination. Our study is the first to show evidence of exposure to liver flukes in US soldiers during their service in the Vietnam War. Further research is needed to examine the possible link of liver fluke infection and risk for developing CCA in Vietnam Veterans.

Lee Robins' studies of heroin use among US Vietnam veterans

The work of Robins and her colleagues on heroin addiction among Vietnam veterans sets out in microcosm many of the key factors that play out in the development and maintenance of substance addiction beyond the pharmacology of the drug: price, availability, the process of delivery of the addictive substance, availability of other substances, social norms, education and life circumstances. Robins' studies found high rates of heroin use (34%) and symptoms of heroin dependence (20%) among US soldiers while serving in Vietnam. In the first year after returning to the United States only 1% became re-addicted to heroin, although 10% tried the drug after their return. Like other seminal studies, this work needs to be read in the original, because relying upon secondary interpretations risks being given a selectively edited version of their findings in service of varied policy and theoretical agendas.

Mechanisms of early trauma-induced coagulopathy: The clot thickens or not?

Traumatic-induced coagulopathy (TIC) is a hemostatic disorder that is associated with significant bleeding, transfusion requirements, morbidity and mortality. A disorder similar or analogous to TIC was reported around 70 years ago in patients with shock, hemorrhage, burns, cardiac arrest or undergoing major surgery, and the condition was referred to as a "severe bleeding tendency," "defibrination syndrome," "consumptive disorder," and later by surgeons treating US Vietnam combat casualties as a "diffuse oozing coagulopathy." In 1982, Moore's group termed it the "bloody vicious cycle," others "the lethal triad," and in 2003 Brohi and colleagues introduced "acute traumatic coagulopathy" (ATC). Since that time, early TIC has been cloaked in many names and acronyms, including a "fibrinolytic form of disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC)." A global consensus on naming is urgently required to avoid confusion. In our view, TIC is a dynamic entity that evolves over time and no single hypothesis adequately explains the different manifestations of the coagulopathy. However, early TIC is not DIC because an increased thrombin-generating potential in vitro does not imply a clinically relevant thrombotic state in vivo as early TIC is characterized by excessive bleeding, not thrombosis. DIC with its diffuse anatomopathologic fibrin deposition appears to be a latter phase progression of TIC associated with unchecked inflammation and multiple organ dysfunction.

Vietnam and Beyond: Tim O’Brien and the Power of Storytelling by Stefania Ciocia (review)

Reviewed by: Vietnam and Beyond: Tim O’Brien and the Power of Storytelling by Stefania Ciocia Ty Hawkins Ciocia, Stefania. Vietnam and Beyond: Tim O’Brien and the Power of Storytelling. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012. 256pp. $99.95. With Vietnam and Beyond: Tim O’Brien and the Power of Storytelling, Stefania Ciocia has published the first scholarly monograph devoted solely to Tim O’Brien to appear in more than a decade. Ciocia attempts to elevate O’Brien to the status of a “world author,” which positions her to argue for the universality of major O’Brien themes. Of particular importance to her effort is his concept of “story-truth,” which she examines from myriad angles in a text that eschews a chronological treatment of O’Brien, favoring a thematic approach instead. Ciocia claims a desire to correct a certain “pigeon-holing” of O’Brien as solely a war author so that his work might be “judged against the parameters of great literature tout court” (2). However, her study falls short of that goal, largely because she fails to engage O’Brien with sufficient rigor. This lack of rigor results in a book whose synthetic capacity outweighs its generative potential. For Ciocia, there exists an odd contradiction at the heart of O’Brien’s reception. On the one hand, she writes, we engage O’Brien as an author whose concerns have global relevance. On the other hand, we confine O’Brien to the realm of US Vietnam War fiction. She wants us to understand that “Vietnam is for O’Brien a productive starting point for the treatment of wider themes with a deep, universal resonance... and for the development of thought-provoking formal experiments underpinned by a strong sense of one’s moral accountability” (2). Much of Ciocia’s study devotes itself to uncovering O’Brien’s skill in both of these areas; she is particularly interested in O’Brien’s contribution to postmodern literary aesthetics and O’Brien’s competence as a cultural critic. She sees these two aspects of O’Brien’s work as interdependent and reconciled through O’Brien’s devotion to “story-truth.” As those familiar with his canon will recall, O’Brien opposes “story-truth” to “happening-truth,” and privileges the former over the latter in a dichotomy perhaps guilty of laying the groundwork for a paralytic relativism. However, Ciocia does not challenge O’Brien on this issue, writing, [End Page 705] O’Brien firmly rejects the moral authority typically associated with experience, in favour of a fragile, and always provisional, personal connection with the Other, to be sought after in the endless refashioning of stories and in the imaginative identification with the plight of fellow human beings—an imperfect foundation for our ethical commitments, and yet the only foundation available to us at all. (12) Ciocia does offer intriguing ideas relevant to O’Brien’s place in literary history. She proves especially interesting when discussing O’Brien’s relationship to Joseph Conrad, whose novella, Heart of Darkness, has served as a major influence for a number of US Vietnam War writers and filmmakers. Ciocia distinguishes between Conrad’s modernism and O’Brien’s postmodernism by foregrounding the concept of performance, writing that O’Brien’s fiction “enacts the belief that truth can be painstakingly summoned and momentarily glimpsed through the performativity of the narrative act” (35). She offers an extensive close-reading of O’Brien’s story, “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” uncovering an intertextual dialogue of sorts between Conrad and O’Brien. Unfortunately, Ciocia pushes this too far. Her argument that protagonist Mary Anne Bell’s fate—Mary Anne’s performance, as it were—represents a kind of gender-bending transcendence is unearned. Rather, a better reading of the end of “Sweetheart” would uncover how the war subsumes Mary Anne, which in turn points to how The Things They Carried shows us the power of war to reinforce traditional gender norms. This is a crucial lesson in a war-themed text that otherwise proves unconventionally inviting to women readers, as Ciocia herself clarifies. Besides Conrad, Ciocia also traces O’Brien’s literary heritage to Hawthorne, Melville, and Hemingway, among other figures...

Serum 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin Levels and Their Association With Age, Body Mass Index, Smoking, Military Record-based Variables, and Estimated Exposure to Agent Orange in Korean Vietnam Veterans

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to examine the levels of serum 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and evaluate their association with age, body mass index, smoking, military record-based variables, and estimated exposure to Agent Orange in Korean Vietnam veterans.MethodsSerum levels of TCDD were analyzed in 102 Vietnam veterans. Information on age, body mass index, and smoking status were obtained from a self-reported questionnaire. The perceived exposure was assessed by a 6-item questionnaire. Two proximity-based exposures were constructed by division/brigade level and battalion/company level unit information using the Stellman exposure opportunity index model.ResultsThe mean and median of serum TCDD levels was 1.2 parts per trillion (ppt) and 0.9 ppt, respectively. Only 2 Vietnam veterans had elevated levels of TCDD (>10 ppt). The levels of TCDD did not tend to increase with the likelihood of exposure to Agent Orange, as estimated from either proximity-based exposure or perceived self-reported exposure. The serum TCDD levels were not significantly different according to military unit, year of first deployment, duration of deployment, military rank, age, body mass index, and smoking status.ConclusionsThe average serum TCDD levels in the Korean Vietnam veterans were lower than those reported for other occupationally or environmentally exposed groups and US Vietnam veterans, and their use as an objective marker of Agent Orange exposure may have some limitations. The unit of deployment, duration of deployment, year of first deployment, military rank, perceived self-reported exposure, and proximity-based exposure to Agent Orange were not associated with TCDD levels in Korean Vietnam veterans. Age, body mass index and smoking also were not associated with TCDD levels.

COMPARISON OF CRIMINAL ACTIVITY BETWEEN ISRAELI VETERANS WITH AND WITHOUT PTSD

The literature, based on US Vietnam veterans, suggests that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with increased criminal activity, especially violence, alcohol, and drug abuse, although more recent studies, which tested data from the United States as well as the United Kingdom, suggest a more moderate effect for this relationship. The current study examines Israeli veterans, who differ socioeconomically and have lower rates of substance abuse than veterans in previous studies. In this study, the social security numbers of 2,235 male veterans with PTSD and 2,235 matched control male veterans without a PTSD diagnosis were checked for criminal records in the Israeli Police criminal records database. Severity measures were also obtained for 273 veterans who are currently treated for PTSD by the Ministry of Defense. PTSD diagnosed veterans, as compared to controls, were slightly more likely to have criminal records (43%, n = 957/2235 versus 36%, n = 803/2235, Chi- square = 22.23, P < 0.001, OR = 1.33). This was due to a small difference in "Violence" and "Crimes against public order and legal authority." No difference was found in drugs or any other categories. In addition, criminal activity was not related to symptoms severity. More veterans with PTSD had their first criminal record after the traumatic event. Contrary to previous findings, in this large national cohort, only slight association was found between PTSD and criminal activity. The unique sample of Israeli veterans might account for this difference and suggest that PTSD per se might not be linked to increased criminal activity, violence, or substance abuse.

Export Liberalization, Job Creation, and the Skill Premium: Evidence from the US–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA)

This paper explores how the expansion of labor-intensive manufacturing exports resulting from the United States-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2001 translated into wages of skilled and unskilled workers and the skill premium in Vietnam through the channel of labor demand. In order to isolate the impacts of trade shock from the effects of other market-oriented reforms, a strategy of exploiting the regional variation in difference in exposure to trade is employed. Using the data on panel individuals from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys of 2002 and 2004, and addressing the issue of endogeneity, the results confirm the existence of a Stolper-Samuelson type effect. That is, those provinces more exposed to the increase in exports experienced relatively larger wage growth for unskilled workers and a decline of (or a smaller increase in) the relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers. During the period 2000-2004, the skill premium increased for Vietnam's economy as a whole in the sample of panel individuals. Thus, the Stolper-Samuelson type effect appears to have mitigated but did not outweigh the impacts of other factors that contributed to the rise in the skill premium.

Cognitive ability in early adulthood as a predictor of habitual drug use during later military service and civilian life: The Vietnam Experience Study

BackgroundRecent reports have linked cognitive ability (IQ) with alcohol dependency, but the relationship with illegal drug use is not well understood. MethodsParticipants were 14,362 male US Vietnam veterans with IQ test results at entry into military service in 1965–1971 (mean age 22.58) who participated in a telephone interview in 1985–1986. A structured diagnostic telephone interview was used to ascertain habitual drug use during military service (for once a week, ≥3 months) and in civilian life (in the past 12 months, ≥once a week), combat exposure, and post-traumatic stress disorder according to established Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders criteria (version III). ResultsIn unadjusted analysis, men with high IQ scores were less likely to be habitual users of cannabis (OR=0.89, 95% CI=0.86, 0.93), cocaine (OR=0.69, 95% CI=0.61, 0.78), heroin (OR=0.80, 95% CI=0.73, 0.88), amphetamines (OR=0.90, 95% CI=0.83, 0.98), barbiturates (OR=0.79, 95% CI=0.72, 0.86) and LSD (OR=0.91, 95% CI=0.82, 0.99) during military service and civilian life. These associations were markedly attenuated after adjustment for socioeconomic status in early and later civilian life. ConclusionIn this cohort, socioeconomic position might lie on the pathway linking earlier IQ and later habitual drug use but might also act as a surrogate for IQ. This suggests interventions to prevent drug use could attempt to improve early life IQ and opportunities for employment.

Medicalisation, morality, and addiction : why we should be wary of problem gamblers in primary care

In the 35 years since Ivan Illich led a vanguard of searing medical-scepticism with his Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health ,1 critiques of medicalisation may have become less fashionable, but no less necessary. The continuing need for a critical perspective on medicalisation is apparent at a time when the UK media displays a violent backlash against people with drink and drug problems; when the British Prime Minister defines the optimal method to ‘get drug addicts clean’;2 and when the Chair of the RCGP endorses an addiction model for addressing ‘problem gambling’ in primary care.3 Medicalisation is the ‘process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems’.4 A recent BMJ article on the subject perceived ‘medicine’s imperial project’: the medical profession determinedly defining new diseases and broadening the diagnostic criteria of old ones (so much so that ‘virtually the entire older adult population is now classified as having at least one chronic disease’).5 However, medicalisation is frequently a more complex phenomenon than the united professional advance implied by analogies with imperialism. The processes of medicalisation may be as varied as the problems medicalised (pregnancy,6 masturbation,7 and repetitive strain injury8 for example, have fascinatingly unique, and mercifully unrelated, medical histories). Furthermore, sociologist Ellie Lee has described uses of medicalisation that even the most anti-imperialist, anti-establishment agitators among us might find it difficult to disapprove of: ‘battered woman syndrome’ has been valuably employed in the legal defence of women who have killed their abuser; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) gained benefits for unacknowledged US Vietnam war veterans in the 1980s; and a PTSD diagnosis still occasionally halts the Home Office from returning an asylum seeker to a country where they have been tortured.9 Arguably though, the immediate gains …

Combat exposure and mental health: the long-term effects among US Vietnam and Gulf war veterans

Using a random sample of more than 4000 veterans, we test the effects of combat exposure on mental health. We focus on two cohorts of veterans: those who served in Vietnam (1964-1975) and the Gulf War (1990-1991). Combat exposure differed between these groups in intensity, duration and elapsed time since exposure. We find that combat exposure generally, and exposure to dead, dying, or wounded people, specifically, is a significant predictor of mental health declines as measured by an individual's Mental Component Summary score. Under our general specifications, the negative effects of combat on mental health were larger for Gulf war veterans than for Vietnam veterans as of 2001. These effects persist after controlling for demographic characteristics, insurance coverage, income and assets. Using discrete factor, nonparametric maximum likelihood (DFML) estimation we controlled for unobserved heterogeneity as well as the factors above. In the DFML specifications we find a negative impact of exposure to dead, wounded or dying people for both Gulf and Vietnam veterans, but find no statistically significant effect for combat exposure overall for Vietnam veterans as of 2001. Based on our Gulf war parameters, we estimate that the costs of mental health declines to be between $87 and $318 per year for each soldier with combat service and exposure to dead, dying and wounded people.

Does a fitness factor contribute to the association between intelligence and health outcomes? Evidence from medical abnormality counts among 3654 US Veterans

We suggest that an over-arching ‘fitness factor’ (an index of general genetic quality that predicts survival and reproductive success) partially explains the observed associations between health outcomes and intelligence. As a proof of concept, we tested this idea in a sample of 3654 US Vietnam veterans aged 31–49 who completed five cognitive tests (from which we extracted a g factor), a detailed medical examination, and self-reports concerning lifestyle health risks (such as smoking and drinking). As indices of physical health, we aggregated ‘abnormality counts’ of physician-assessed neurological, morphological, and physiological abnormalities in eight categories: cranial nerves, motor nerves, peripheral sensory nerves, reflexes, head, body, skin condition, and urine tests. Since each abnormality was rare, the abnormality counts showed highly skewed, Poisson-like distributions. The correlation matrix amongst these eight abnormality counts formed only a weak positive manifold and thus yielded only a weak common factor. However, Poisson regressions showed that intelligence was a significant positive predictor of six of the eight abnormality counts, even controlling for diverse lifestyle covariates (age, obesity, combat and toxin exposure owing to service in Vietnam, and use of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs). These results give preliminary support for the notion of a superordinate fitness factor above intelligence and physical health, which could be further investigated with direct genetic assessments of mutation load across individuals.