84/85 Royal Commission Swedish Scientist Thank you 12/9/26
Dear Professor Hardell,
I am writing to you from Australia simply to say thank you.
I am the daughter of an Australian Vietnam veteran Plant Operator who served in Vietnam in 1969–70. For the past two years I have been researching the history of Agent Orange, TCDD dioxin, Australian veterans and their children.
During that research, I found your work and your involvement in the Australian Royal Commission on the Use and Effects of Chemical Agents on Australian Personnel in Vietnam.
I have now read how your scientific findings were challenged and dismissed at the time, and how Sir Richard Doll specifically criticised your research in correspondence with Justice Phillip Evatt. I have also learned what was subsequently revealed about Doll’s financial relationship with Monsanto.
ABC Radio Report 2006
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/pm/agent-orange-commission-witness-on-company-payroll/2149962
More than forty years later, Australia is still dealing with the consequences of that history.
I recently discovered that you are still publishing scientific research, including your work published in January 2026. I wanted you to know that, on the other side of the world, the daughter of an Australian Vietnam veteran has found the work you did all those years ago.
Thank you for continuing to speak when your science was challenged. Thank you for leaving a scientific record that people like me can still find decades later.
Your work has become part of my own documentary record concerning what happened to Australian Vietnam veterans and their children, which I have submitted to international human-rights and accountability mechanisms.
Having followed the scientific record, I believe your concerns about TCDD and the way scientific uncertainty was handled were remarkably prescient. What strikes me most is that these concerns did not disappear. Decades later, scientists including former UN Special Rapporteur Dr Marcos Orellana and Professor Bethanie Carney Almroth have written about how scientific uncertainty can be exploited or manufactured by corporations and authorities to delay action and avoid accountability.
Looking back at what happened to your work in Australia in the 1980s through that modern lens has been extraordinary. I wanted you to know that I believe you were right to raise those concerns, and I am grateful that you did.
I thought, after all these years, you deserved to know that your work was not forgotten.
With sincere gratitude,
Danielle Stevens
Geneva AP1 Article 77
We will always be a child of a Vietnam Veteran
A formal complaint has been lodged with the International Criminal Court for Crimes against Humanity. The final submission was the 1st of July 2025.
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