What was Chris tuckers disease??

It was an illness, nobody pulls a 50% medical in the service for being a drug addict. Something else was wrong with him that the armed forces felt he needed to be compensated for.

If you consider the context of the story being about the Vietnam era and the social-psychological effects on Vietnam Veterans then it is quite obvious that the disease is Agent Orange, an illness that afflicted many Vietnam Vets which became figuratively synonymous with the after-effects of the Vietnam War.

As others have mentioned, I believe the confusion lies within the respective age differences of the viewers. For those of us who grew up in the immediate aftermath of Vietnam it was an easier frame of reference for us to understand since it was a very major popular topic of discussion back then.

Many of us have fathers, brothers, uncles, etc who suffer(ed) from it.

For younger viewers who do not have as much familiarity with the effects of the VW who grew up in the aftermath of the AIDS epedimic, then that disease is probably their frame of reference, particularly in this case when things are not so obvious.

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