THE fighting spirit has never left Wayne P. Wilson, a decorated combat veteran who now does battle with the Federal and state bureaucracies.
Mr. Wilson, executive director of the New Jersey Agent Orange Commission, has seen his initial attitude of cautious cooperation with the Veterans Administration become more and more adversarial over what he views as a callous disregard for the needs of veterans - many of whom were exposed to the defoliant contaminated with the most toxic form of dioxin.
The commission's main purpose, under its charter, is to find out whether there are provable links between exposure to Agent Orange and ailments reported by Vietnam veterans. After a touch-and-go political fight for survival last year, $230,000 was eventually appropriated by the Legislature to further new research under the supervision of Dr. Peter C. Kahn, a commission member and a biochemist at Rutgers University's Cook College. But Mr. Wilson's activities cover a lot of ground. In March, for example he testified in Washington in favor of a House bill to require the V.A. to presume veterans to have service-connected disabilities for chloracne (a skin rash known to be caused by dioxin exposure), soft-tissue sarcoma (a cancer linked in some studies to 2,4,5-T, which was an Agent Orange component) and a liver disorder linked to exposure to toxic substances.
The commission is ''very much'' advocacy-oriented, conceded Mr. Wilson, who was wounded on his second tour in Vietnam.
ADVERTISEMENT
Mr. Wilson also contends that the Federal Government did little until state commissions began goading the Federal establishment and that that action is mostly negative.
''All Federal efforts seem to be aimed at proving that Agent Orange is not a risk,'' Mr. Wilson asserted.
Just getting the V.A. to listen to the state commissions has been a struggle, he said. About two years ago, according to Mr. Wilson, the commission had asked that the states be given representation on the V.A. advisory committee on the defoliant. Finally, in March, the new head of the V.A., Harry N. Walters, agreed to let state commissions collectively have one representative.
On the state political front, Mr. Wilson and commission members are in a wrangle with the Governor's office over the panel's leadership. Several weeks ago, Mr. Wilson received a copy of a letter signed by Governor Kean naming Paul Licitra, an insurance salesman and an aide to Senator Walter E. Foran, Republican of Flemington, as chairman to replace Guy A. Wiener, who resigned from his post but not from the commission, for health and professional reasons. However, the commission, following its bylaws, had already elected one of its own, Allen Falk, a lawyer who served with the First Marine Division in Vietnam, to the position.
Mr. Wilson insisted that the commission, the veterans community and even the Governor's own Advisory Council on Veterans Affairs had not been consulted in advance.
ADVERTISEMENT
One of the panel's objections, said Mr. Wilson, is that Mr. Licitra is unknown to people working on Agent Orange. Also, he said, the early phases of Dr. Kahn's research are about to begin at Barnert Memorial Hospital Center in Paterson. And other research is being considered by the Rutgers University Human Subjects Review Board, an ethics panel.
''The scientific people are very suspicious of any political involvement here at all,'' said Mr. Wilson, who said the panel was chartered as an autonomous unit.
In his latest skirmish with the V.A., Mr. Wilson sharply criticized a report to the American Chemical Society that said data collected on veterans screened through V.A. hospitals had turned up no link between Agent Orange or dioxin and health problems.
''We think the V.A. should take steps to take back the misinformation it put out,'' he said. Dr. Kahn assailed the report from the convention floor, said Mr. Wilson, adding that a Government Accounting Office study in 1982 had found fault with the hospital screening program as slack on the collection of basic information.
As another example of frustration, Mr. Wilson cited a major epidemiological study mandated by Congress three years ago, which was finally transferred from the V.A.'s to the National Centers for Disease Control - and which still has not been made. ''The V.A. clearly has set themselves up in an adversarial role,'' he asserted, saying Congressional hearings in April showed the agency was mostly concerned with having to pay compensation.
Despite heightened public awareness after disclosures about dioxin- tainted towns in Missouri, ''the issue of Agent Orange is being controlled much too much by the V.A.,'' he said.
This ambiguous relationship with the V.A. is one reason the Legislature in the first place backed the need for independent, non-Federal research.
ADVERTISEMENT
''Obviously, there are folks who don't want to accept the body of evidence'' suggesting a link between Agent Orange and various disorders, Mr. Wilson continued, such as cancers, neurological disease and birth defects in children of veterans. ''Nor do we accept the V.A. position that there is no evidence.''
''It is incumbent on someone to come up with scientific evidence either proving or disproving a link,'' he said.
Dr. Kahn's study, designed in consultation with experts at Rutgers, will seek to determine whether patterns of health effects can be traced to veterans with detectable levels of dioxin in their bodies. He is doing the research with a Swedish expert on dioxin poisoning, Dr. Christopher Rappe, who developed means to detect dioxin in residents of Seveso, Italy, years after an industrial accident spread a plume of dioxin over the town.
Concerning an Agent Orange conference sponsored by Vietnam in January, Mr. Wilson and commission members maintain that, despite the fact that ''a lot of good people'' attended, the draft summary of the conference ''doesn't deal much in anything scientific'' and recounts much of what the commission already knows. At any rate, ''anything coming out of there'' will be viewed with suspicion in the United States, he said.
A secondary commission objective, Mr. Wilson said, has been to educate veterans, the public and legislators on some of the issues. As a result, the commission has established a rapport with many Vietnam veterans.
Mr. Wilson's cramped office here is swamped with calls and the office responds by sending out packets of information not only to New Jersey veterans but also to veterans throughout the country, on other issues of concern, such as delayed stress syndrome (in which some of the emotional trauma of combat does not surface until years later) and melioidosis, a tropical disease that typically afflicts the lungs.
The biggest payoff for his campaign, Mr. Wilson said, would be to alleviate the uncertainty so many veterans face on health effects.
ADVERTISEMENT
The more the delay on verifying a link between Agent Orange and health problems - which Dr. Kahn has said is not certain at all - the more the delay into research for treatment, noted Mr. Wilson.
And suppose Agent Orange is proved to be a major health threat to veterans, then what? ''What's next?'' he said. ''I don't know what's next.''
A subject that Mr. Wilson has downplayed, but that still raises a trace of indignation, is his salary: $20,754. The father of two said he had been awaiting a raise to $24,000 since July 1982 but it had been tied up in the Governor's office. As an unclassified state worker, he receives no scheduled raises.
''I'm probably the lowest paid executive director in the state of New Jersey,'' he likes to say.
