The Virus and the Vaccine

Interview with authors Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher

Q: What exactly is SV40 and how did it happen to contaminate the polio vaccine?

SV40 stands for simian virus 40, so-called because it was the 40^th simian – or monkey – virus to be discovered. It got into the polio vaccine because the vaccine was manufactured by growing poliovirus on the kidneys of rhesus monkeys from the time it was first used in field trials in 1954 through 1963. Most rhesus monkeys are infected with the virus, but it doesn’t harm them. But scientists have discovered that the virus causes cancer in other animals, including human beings.

Q: How many people were exposed to the virus?

Between 1954 and 1963, almost every baby boomer, or about a hundred million Americans, and many millions more in Canada and Western Europe were administered polio vaccine that was widely contaminated with SV40. In 1960, scientists observed that SV40 caused cancer in laboratory animals but were unsure of its effect in humans. After 1963, steps were taken aimed at keeping SV40 out of polio vaccine and for a long time, the SV40 contamination was pretty much forgotten. Then in the mid-1990s, researchers from all over the world began to uncover evidence that SV40 is a human carcinogen and that it is now causing a variety of human cancers, including a very deadly type of lung cancer called mesothelioma, several types of bone and brain cancers, and a lymphatic cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Q: In your book you say that when SV40 was discovered, the government didn’t do much about it.

That’s right. Although there was alarm within the scientific circles that the vaccine might cause cancer, federal health officials made a deliberate decision not to recall contaminated stocks of vaccine. They feared that withdrawing the vaccine, or alerting the public about SV40, would cause people to lose confidence in the vaccine. So, for two more years, millions more Americans were needlessly exposed to the virus. They were never given a choice in the matter. Instead, federal health officials tried to suppress the news of SV40’s discovery. For example, when the NIH scientist who first discovered SV40 caused cancer in hamsters announced her findings at a scientific conference in 1960, her superiors demoted her and took away her laboratory. That attitude – of trying to ignore the virus – has pretty much prevailed through the last decade.

Q: When did the virus become linked to cancer in humans?

In the 1990s, scientists got interested in searching for the virus in some of the same tumor types it had caused in hamsters back in the 1960s when SV40 was first discovered. One of the first scientists to do this was a young Italian doctor at the National Institutes of Health named Michele Carbone. He examined dozens of human lung tumors called mesotheliomas and to his surprise, and shock, he found the virus was present in more than 60 percent of them. He also found that it was actively producing proteins, which means it was likely to play a role in causing the tumors. Other scientists found the virus in types of human brain and bone tumors which it had also caused in laboratory animals. Their findings have now been replicated by dozens of independent laboratories around the world and published in top peer-reviewed scientific journals. To date, more than 90 different studies have been published associating SV40 with cancer and 30 scientific reviews on the subject have also been published. More recently, the virus has also been linked with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that afflicts tens of thousands of Americans every year. Interestingly, the studies find the virus in tumors most frequently in countries where contaminated polio vaccine was widely used, such as the U.S., Great Britain and Italy.

Q: How dangerous is the virus? Do people who received the vaccine years ago, have cause to worry today?

In recent research, Carbone and other prominent cancer researchers have begun to see exactly how the virus works on the cellular level to cause cancer, and they have found that it is a very, very powerful carcinogen. It is, frankly, unlike any other virus discovered in that it can do so many things simultaneously on the cellular level to promote cancer. These include damaging chromosomes, stimulating cells to proliferate, and binding to the body’s most important anti-cancer genes so they cannot function properly to stop cancerous cells from dividing. That, obviously, does not mean that everyone who received the vaccine will get cancer, just as not everyone who spends a lot of time in the sun will get skin cancer. But interestingly, many of the cancers with which the vaccine is associated have increased dramatically in the years since SV40 contaminated the polio vaccine. For example, mesothelioma was virtually unheard of in 1950; now it strikes 2,000-3,000 Americans each year. Brain tumors have also increased dramatically and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is soaring. Combined, these cancers afflict more than 60,000 Americans every year.

Q: In your book you tell the story of a little boy named Alexander Horwin who died in 1999 from an SV40-caused tumor. Do people who received the vaccine after the 1960s have any reason to be concerned?

Well, one of the disturbing discoveries scientists have made is that the monkey virus is also being found in the tumors of children too young to have received the contaminated vaccine back in the 1950s and 1960s. So scientists are trying to determine whether the virus could now be spreading from human to human, much as scientists have feared could happen with the bird flu virus in a worst-case scenario, or if it got into the tumors of children because the vaccine, which was produced using monkey kidney materials right through 1999, may have at times still been contaminated after 1963, even though it was supposed to have been screened out by then.

Q: What happened to Alexander Horwin?

Alexander Horwin died in 1999 at the age of two-and-a-half from a brain tumor that contained SV40. His parents sued the vaccine manufacturer. During the course of that court case and others, internal drug company documents were disclosed that revealed that there were ongoing contamination problems with SV40 and other viruses during production of the vaccine. Alexander’s parents believe a contaminated dose of vaccine caused their son’s brain tumor.

Q: Does that mean today’s polio vaccine isn’t safe?

The Food and Drug Administration maintains that all polio vaccine produced for use in the U.S. has been free of SV40 since 1963, when manufacturers began screening for the virus. However, as our book shows, federal oversight of polio vaccine manufactured in the U.S. was, at times, shoddy. And, as we reveal in the book, some documents suggest that polio vaccine contaminated with SV40 may have been released even after 1963. Some scientists speculate that, along with human-to-human transmission, this may explain why SV40 is showing up in the tumors of some children and young adults today. Fortunately, beginning in January 2000, polio vaccine produced for use in the United States was no longer manufactured on monkey kidney tissues. Interestingly, Europe and Canada, adopted this same technology decades ago – in the 1970s and 1980s – to ensure that their polio vaccines were free of viruses and other unwanted contaminants.

Q: What do you think the government reaction should be to SV40?

Given the number of Americans possibly exposed to SV40 – one hundred million – and the clear link between this virus and human cancer, the scientists we interviewed feel very strongly that there should be much more research on this virus, especially since it appears to be such a potent carcinogen. Unfortunately, very little federal support has been forthcoming for research on SV40 and its connection to human cancer. The fact that SV40 came from the polio vaccine seems to make the government unwilling to acknowledge its danger and to support the researchers who are investigating those dangers. And that is a bad public health decision.

Q: What can we learn from the story of SV40 and the polio vaccine?

One of the lessons is that science is not always the disinterested pursuit most of us believe it is. Sometimes it can be shaped by a political agenda. In the case of SV40, some of the scientists we interviewed believe federal health officials are reluctant to fund studies exploring the link between this virus and human tumors because they wish to protect the reputation of the polio vaccine, even though the contamination problems largely occurred forty years ago. Hopefully, that will change and the study of this virus and its relationship to human tumors can get the serious attention it warrants.

© 2004 Debbie Bookchin & Jim Schumacher. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by St. Martin’s Press.