10/21

     Today we continued watching the video on corporations. in the late 20th century, big chemical companies have created useful chemicals which were actually harmful to the environment and even humans. For example, a pesticide called DDT was used in Japan before, but later it was discovered that it causes cancer. Also, it changes animal hormones and causes deformities of animals. During the Vietnamese war, France wanted to take back their colonies in Vietnam, so they hired Japanese soldiers to fight off socialist Vietnamese people. The US sprayed defoliant called Agent Orange that destroyed hundreds of acres of forests to stop the socialist soldiers from attacking South Vietnam. The chemical was absorbed in the land, leaked into the rivers then the Vietnamese people accumulated in their bodies via food and water. This caused many deformities of children and health issues. The US soldiers who were exposed to the defoliant sued the chemical company and was compensated, but when the Vietnamese people, who were exposed to the defoliant for much longer than the US soldier, sued the chemical company, the supreme court rejected them with a ridiculous reason. They said that the future US president would become scared to do brutal acts in wars if they had to compensate the victims. I thought that this was a ridiculous and selfish argument.