- In the late 1940's and early 1950's the
polio virus was taking a savage toll on the American public. Thousands
of children and adults were crippled or killed. In 1955, Jonas Salk performed
a medical miracle when he discovered how to mass produce polio vaccine
by growing it on the kidneys of rhesus monkeys. While there is no question
that thousands were saved from the ravages of polio by the Salk vaccine,
by 1960 a problem had surfaced -- a problem which would come back to haunt
the nation some forty years later.
-
- The complication researchers had isolated
in 1960 was a viral contaminate. It seems that when the live polio virus
grown on monkey tissues was extracted for vaccine production another virus
was extracted as well, SV-40. When this monkey virus was injected into
research animals it produced brain cancer. It appears our government didn't
wish to create a public panic or discredit the public health service, because
instead of recalling the tainted vaccines, it quietly ordered the manufacturers
to find a monkey free of SV-40 and continue production. As of 1963, the
rhesus monkey had been replaced with the African green monkey for production
of a safer polio vaccine, but between the years of 1955 and 1963 as many
as 98 million Americans had received doses of live polio virus vaccines
tainted with SV-40.
-
- Jumping to the early 1990's, Michele
Carbone, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Loyola University in Chicago,
isolated fragments of the SV-40 virus in human bone cancers and in a particularly
nasty form of lung cancer called mesotheliomas. The viral contaminate from
the 50s was back to haunt us, and appeared in 33% of the osteosarcoma bone
cancers studied, in 40% of other bone cancers, and in 60% of the mesotheliomas
lung cancers. Dr. Carbone believed this study could explain why 50% of
the current mesotheliomas being treated were no longer occurring in association
with their traditional cause of asbestos exposure.
-
- Already sounding like a bad science fiction
story, the worse news was yet to follow. An Italian team of researchers
from the Institute of Histology and General Embryology of the University
of Ferrara lead by Dr. Fernanda Martini discovered SV-40's presence in
various other tumors.
-
- To be specific they found the monkey
virus in 83% of choriod plexus papillomas, in 73% of ependymomas, in 47%
of astrocytomas, in 50% of glioblastomas, and in 14% of meningiomas.
-
- While the virus's appearance in all of
these types of brain tumors is mortifying, even more so is the fact that
it materialized in 23% of blood samples and 45% of sperm fluids taken from
normal individuals -- normal meaning free of disease at the time of testing.
The researchers determined the virus could be transmitted sexually and
through blood transfusions. As if to drive this point home, SV-40 has appeared
in 61% of all new cancer patients -- patients too young to have received
the contaminated vaccine being administered forty years ago who are now
believed to have been infected by human to human transmission. Being a
blood born organism, it is also suspected that SV-40 is transmissible from
mother to child during pregnancy.
-
- The more this matter is researched the
more startling the evidence. Senior epidemiologist at the National Institutes
of Health, Dr. Howard Strickler, has plotted a geographic pattern to the
cancers associated with SV-40 helping to confirm its link to the tainted
vaccine. People who lived in Massachusetts and Illinois who received identified
lot numbers of the contaminated vaccine administered in the 1950s are now
demonstrating ten times the rate of the osteosarcoma bone tumors as those
who received vaccine free of the SV-40 contaminate in other parts of the
country.
-
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
mandates that every American infant and child receive polio vaccinations.
While public health officials continue to emphasize how current supplies
of the vaccine are safe, Peter Reeve, FDA Virologist, has acknowledged
that the administration abandoned independent testing of vaccine purity
some fifteen years ago. The job of ensuring safety and purity rests squarely
on the shoulders of those manufacturing the vaccines with no federal oversight.
Wyeth-Lederle controls the supply of all the oral polio vaccine in this
country, and last year's sales totaled some $230 million dollars. Surely
there would be no conflict of interest in allowing this corporation to
be the sole agent of quality oversight of their own pocketbook?
-
- The government may not have paid attention
to the quality of these vaccines, but they had formulated a plan for their
distribution. Federal vaccination policy advocated the use of live-virus
oral polio vaccine (OPV) based on the belief the live virus shed in the
body fluids of infants immunized with OPV could immunize others through
contact exposure. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) insisted this was
a safe practice, and emphasized that no one previously vaccinated could
contract the disease in this manner. The public was never informed of this
strategy, however, and no consent was ever obtained from the unknowing
participants in this vaccination scheme. One hundred and twenty people,
many previously vaccinated, contracted polio as a result of this practice.
To add insult to injury in 1994 the World Health Organization proclaimed
polio was eliminated from the Western Hemisphere. Insult because for the
past seventeen years the only cases of polio occurring in the United States
have been caused by the vaccine itself, and injury because this victory
will be paid for in blood from the cancers produced by the monkey virus
spread with the vaccine.
-
- One might ask just how such a thing could
happen considering the injectable form of the vaccine (IPV) does not use
a live virus and doesn't transmit the disease it is designed to shield
us from? Well, Wyeth-Lederle's leading competitor Connaught produces IVP
which could explain why Wyeth lobbied so hard against the CDC recommending
increased use of IVP. In 1996 the CDC revised its recommendation from four
doses of OPV to two doses of IVP followed by two doses of OPV, however,
physicians have been instructed to give all four doses as OPV if they desire.
The cost of IVP vaccine is $5.40 per dose, whereas OPV costs $2.32 per
dose. With the difference in cost favoring the use of OPV, and the current
climate of regulating health care costs, clearer guidelines must come from
the government if they truly expect to increase the use of the safer IVP
vaccine.
-
- Well the story of contaminated polio
vaccine is not over yet. Microbiologist Howard Urnovitz, Ph.D. provided
significant evidence at the Eighth Annual Houston Conference on AIDS that
human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is a monkey hybrid virus which
was produced when 320,000 Africans were injected with polio virus contaminated
with live simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in the late 1950's. Apparently,
viral fragments combine easily with other viruses to produce these hybrids
called "chimeras." This theory was confirmed by another research
team headed by Dr. B. F. Elswood at the University of California in San
Francisco. Interestingly enough, when researchers Cecil H. Fox and John
Martin applied to the National Institutes of Health for grants to confirm
the presence of SIV and simian cyto-megalovirus (SCMV) contaminates in
polio vaccines their requests were denied. Dr. Urnovitz may have an explanation
as he stated in the Boston Globe, "that almost 100 million Americans
were exposed (to SV-40) through a government sponsored program, but for
over 30 years, there has been virtually no government effort to see if
anyone's been harmed by the exposure." He added, "The government
will not fund science that makes it look culpable."
-
- Could it be our government, once again,
is attempting to avoid a public panic while ignoring the great potential
for harm these viruses could inflict. Time will tell. Harvard Medical School
professor, Dr. Ronald Desroier points out that taking all known scientific
evidence into account that the medical experts' knowledge is limited to
"perhaps 2% of existing monkey viruses." Who knows what lethal
virus may be discovered in our blood streams forty years from now as a
result of good intentions....
-
- References
-
- Berleur, M. P., & Cordier, S. (1995).
The Role of Chemical, Physical, or
- Viral Exposures and Health Factors in
Neurocarcinogenesis: Implications
- for Epidemiologic Studies of Brain Tumors.
Cancer Causes and Control,
- 6(3), 240-256.
-
- Bookchin, D., & Schumaker, J. (1997).
Tainted Polio Vaccine Still Carries
- Its Threat 40 Years Later. The Boston
Globe, January 26.
-
- Carbone, M., et al. (1996). SV-40 Like
Sequences in Human Bone Tumors.
- Oncogene, 13(3), 527-535.
-
- Elswood, B. F., & Stricker, R. B.
(1995). Polio Vaccines and the Origin
- of AIDS. Medical Hypotheses, 42(6), 347-354.
-
- Fisher, B. L. (1997). Workshop on Simian
Virus 40: A Possible Human
- Polyomavirus. National Vaccine Information
Center, January 27, On-line
- at
- <http://www.909shot.com/polio197.htmhttp://www.909shot.com/polio197.htm.
-
- Krieg, P., Amtmann E, Jonas, D., Fischer,
H., Zang, K., & Sauer G.
- (1981). Episomal Simian Virus 40 Genomes
in Human Brain Tumors.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of
- America, 78(10), 6446-6450.
-
- Lednicky, J. A., Garcea, R. L., Bergsagel,
D. J., & Butel, J. S. (1995).
- Natural Simian Virus 40 Strains are Present
in Human choroid Plexus and
- Ependymoma tumors. Virology, 212(2),
710-717.
-
- Martini, F., et al. (1995). Human Brain
Tumors and Simian Virus 40.
- Journal of the National Cancer Institute,
87(17), 1331.
-
- Martini, F., et al. (1996). SV-40 Early
Region and Large T Antigen in
- Human Brain Tumors, Peripheral Blood
Cells, and Sperm Fluids From Healthy
- Individuals. Cancer Research, 56(20),
4820-4825.
-
- Pass, H. I., Kennedy, R. C., & Carbone,
M. (1996). Evidence for and
- Implications of SV-40 Like Sequences
in Human Mesotheliomas. Important
- Advances in Oncology, 89-108.
-
- Rock, A. (1996). The Lethal Dangers of
the Billion Dollar Vaccine
- Business. Money, December, pages 148-163.
-
- Tognon, M., et al. (1996). Large T Antigen
Coding Sequences of Two DNA
- Tumor Viruses, BK and SV-40, and Nonrandom
Chromosome Changes in Two
- Glioblastoma Cell Lines. Cancer Genetics
and Cytogenics, 90(1), 17-23.
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