PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalists Bookchin and Schumacher argue that for nine years, from 1954 to 1963, almost every dose of polio vaccine produced in the world - and the 98 million Americans who received polio vaccinations - was contaminated with a cancer-causing virus from the monkey kidneys used to develop the vaccine. Although the polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk virtually ended polio as a threatening disease, the authors detail how "the screening techniques and observation periods that Salk and the vaccine manufacturers employed were not capable of always catching the contaminants."
This sordid story spells out how repeated research studies showing that the "SV40" virus was in the vaccine were dismissed by federal health officials, so that "there would be no warning to consumers that the vaccine they and their children were receiving contained a live monkey virus whose effect on humans was entirely unknown." In the second part, the authors contend that even today such organizations as the National Institutes of Health continue to dismiss study results, even though numerous studies have shown that SV40 is capable of causing cancer in humans.
The final and most horrific part of the story reports that Lederle Laboratories, the sole oral vaccine supplier in the U.S. from 1977 onward, continued to use monkey kidneys possibly infected by the SV40 virus in its manufacturing process until oral polio vaccine was removed from the market as late as January 2000. This meticulously researched, levelheaded and well-written book should stir up considerable debate. Because the authors never become alarmist, this solid work of investigative reporting carries considerable weight, and deserves to be read by a large audience.
© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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BOOKLIST
A publication of the American Library Association, April 1, 2004
*Bookchin, Debbie and Schumacher, Jim. The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the Millions of Americans Exposed. Apr. 2004 400 p. index. St. Martin’s $25.95 (0-312-27872-1).
Imagine being snatched from the paralyzing jaws of polio, only to be blindsided later by the mysterious appearance of a lymphoma, mesothelioma, or brain or bone cancer that could have been prevented. According to journalists Bookchin and Schumacher, the mightiest salvo in the U.S. war against polio seems to have been contaminated with a carcinogenic virus. What’s worse, efforts within the scientific community to prevent dispensing contaminated vaccines have been systematically stonewalled from the very beginning by nothing less than the federal government, which first denied the vaccine was contaminated and then denied that the viral contaminant causes cancer in humans—a denial it continues to make. Bookchin and Schumacher document dozens of independent studies and experiments that repeatedly link SV40, a virus imbedded in the monkey kidneys that were used as a polio vaccine medium, with the above-mentioned cancers. In a page turning narrative, they recall a nation terrorized by polio, the scramble to find a preventive or cure, and how a federal initiative led to the immunization of millions of American schoolchildren with either Salk’s or Sabin’s vaccine, neither of which, apparently, was resistant to SV40. Bookchin and Schumacher name names, which may bring them not only more keenly interested readers but also enemies from among the medical elite.—Donna Chavez
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LIBRARY JOURNAL
* [Starred review] Bookchin, Debbie & Jim Schumacher The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine and the Millions of Americans Exposed. St. Martin’s April 2004 c.400 p. Index. ISBN 0-312-27872-1 $25.95
Immunizations have been responsible for wiping out many diseases that formerly killed or crippled millions of children. However, no medical treatment is without its risks. A husband-and-wife team, journalists Bookchin and Schumacher, chronicle the polio vaccine, hailed as one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the last century. They focus on an important and little known chapter of that story: the contamination of the vaccine with the simian virus 40 (SV40) between 1954 and 1963. Later studies of SV40 linked it with a variety of cancers and it continues to show up in cancers today: patients include those too young to have received the older vaccine. How can that be? As they answer this question, the authors delve into the intricacies of vaccine production and testing as well as government regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. Well researched and footnoted, this gripping title reads like a novel, following the drama of the early search for a polio cure to the heartbreak of family members watching loved ones die of cancer that may have been preventable by stronger regulations. Recommended for health collections and larger public libraries. –Eris Weaver, Redwood Health Library Pentaluma, CA.
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Amazon.com
Past tragedies caused by "miracle drugs" have taught the public to approach cures with caution, and vaccines, in particular, have come under public scrutiny. In The Virus and the Vaccine, journalists Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher uncover the true tale of the polio vaccine and its past and present dangers. Like many medical detective stories before it, this book starts with a chilling anecdote, then flashes back to slowly set the stage for disaster. Baby boomers who only know Jonas Salk and his virus-fighting colleagues as heroes will be disturbed at how some of them downplayed concerns about a monkey virus called SV40 that was present in the polio vaccine. The links between SV40 and human cancer took a long time to define, and breakthroughs in molecular biology made the job more realistic in later decades. Nevertheless, Bookchin and Schumacher argue that a biased scientific bureaucracy in combination with a desperate public and money-hungry pharmaceutical companies fostered the use of a vaccine that may have increased cancer risk. "The vast majority of baby boomers--almost all of whom received polio vaccine in the late 1950s and early 1960s--have potentially been exposed to the virus," they write. But baby boomers aren't the only ones at risk. The authors reveal that Lederle Laboratories continued to produce potentially contaminated oral polio vaccines well into the 1990s. Although the authors point fingers of blame at some specific targets, they carefully balance their accusations with reminders that public demands for cures must be balanced with careful assessment of new medical treatments. --Therese Littleton
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Copyright 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 20, 2004 Sunday Home Edition
SECTION: Arts; Pg. 5L
LENGTH: 930 words
HEADLINE: BOOKS: Scientific saga tracks taint of polio vaccine
BYLINE: MARK PENDERGRAST
SOURCE: For the Journal-Constitution
BODY: NONFICTION
The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine and the Millions of Americans Exposed. By Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher. St. Martin's Press. $25.95. 380 pages.
The verdict: A cautionary tale that should find a wide readership.
At first I thought "The Virus and the Vaccine" might be one of those over-the-top government-conspiracy books, something from the kind of anti-vaccinators who rely primarily on anecdote, hyperbole and paranoia. The sensational subtitle made me even warier.
But the subtitle is accurate. This well-researched, well-documented book unfurls a compelling scientific saga and leaves readers wondering exactly what was in the polio vaccine they got as children. Not only that, it's written with the zing of a medical thriller, featuring fully realized characters, dramatic conflicts, high-level politics and scientific egos big enough to levitate Stone Mountain.
The first 10 chapters cover the early years of polio, including material on Franklin Roosevelt, the March of Dimes and the miraculous Salk vaccine, which promised to end the paralytic scourge that terrified mothers every summer. On April 12, 1955, the 10th anniversary of Roosevelt's death, the Salk field trials were pronounced a success and the vaccine was rushed into the waiting arms and rear ends of the nation's children.
Within three weeks, however, it became clear that some shots contained live, not killed, virus and that they were causing, not preventing, polio. A nationwide panic ensued but was laid to rest by the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which determined that only two contaminated lots made by Cutter Laboratories were at fault.
The "Cutter incident," as it was called, traumatized the U.S. health establishment and made it particularly defensive about the polio vaccine. Enter Bernice Eddy, a virologist from West Virginia who, beginning in 1959, injected rhesus monkey kidney cell cultures into hamsters, 70 percent of whom developed cancerous tumors. Joe Smadel, her boss at the Division of Biologic Standards within the National Institutes of Health, was infuriated because the polio vaccine was grown in a culture of rhesus kidney cells, and Eddy's experiment might once again raise a flag about the vaccine's safety.
Monkey kidneys are, as Bookchin and Schumacher write, full of "parasites, bacteria, unknown viruses." Scientists knew this and, in fact, were finding dozens of new viruses in the rhesus kidneys. The first, discovered in 1954, was named Simian Virus 1, or SV1. The 40th in the series, SV40, was the nasty little virus that probably caused hamster tumors.
Most health officials were not initially concerned, since they presumed that the formaldehyde that killed the polio virus in the "cooking" process for the vaccine also killed SV40. But it turns out that some SV40 survived the process. Vaccines injected into millions of children may have contained the monkey virus until 1963, when it was finally produced on an SV40-free substrate, albeit still on monkey kidneys. By that time, nearly half the American population may have been exposed to virus-contaminated Salk vaccine.
With Chapter 11, the book jumps to 1986, when Italian virologist Michele Carbone arrived at the NIH in Bethesda, MD. Carbone, a black belt in karate who cooks gourmet dinners in his spare time, replicated and refined Eddy's SV40 experiments, discovering that the monkey virus, when injected into hamsters, appeared to cause malignant mesothelioma, a fatal cancer of the lungs previously associated only with asbestos inhalation in humans.
No room here for the details, but suffice it to say that Carbone --- no longer at the NIH --- and other scientists such as Janet Butel have since compiled disturbing evidence that SV40 is probably a human carcinogen. In 2003, Butel and others performed a meta-analysis of studies that, they asserted, demonstrate a significant statistical association between SV40 and many tumor types, including a higher association with mesothelioma than that linking smoking to cancer.
"As of 2003," write journalists Bookchin and Schumacher, "researchers have found SV40 in human tumors in China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Spain . . ." and 14 other countries, including, of course, the United States. Alarming? Yes. And the authors present evidence that SV40 may have contaminated some polio virus vaccines even in the years following 1963. Only in 2000 did American vaccines stop using monkey kidneys as vaccine substrates.
Could SV40 explain some increased cancer prevalence in the past few decades? That is very hard to say, as a 2002 review by the Institute of Medicine concluded. Epidemiological studies --- examining exposed populations vs. non-exposed --- are almost meaningless for SV40, since the virus appears to have spread widely among the population, perhaps from mother to child, regardless of vaccination dates.
Here is one crucial place where Bookchin and Schumacher have left an unsatisfactory hole in their narrative, which does not fully explore how SV40 spreads among humans other than a few brief hints. On the other hand, there just has not been much research on that issue.
"The Virus and the Vaccine" raises important issues, not only about SV40, but about how science can be affected by politics and ego.
Mark Pendergrast is the author of "For God, Country & Coca-Cola," among other books. He is working on a history of the Epidemic Intelligence Service.
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Experts Comment
"Millions of Americans are unaware that government officials and leading scientists played Russian roulette with their health in the 1960s after discovering that the original polio vaccines were contaminated with a cancer-causing monkey virus. Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher's fascinating, meticulously-researched account of the coverup, and its possible long-term health effects, is a deeply disturbing chapter in the recent history of science."
Stephen S. Hall, New York Times Magazine science contributor and author of Merchants of Immortality and A Commotion in the Blood
"The Virus and the Vaccine has its share of heroes and villains, like any good novel, except that this is not fiction. Powerful and emotive, the book captures the joy of scientific discovery–from the dramatic fight against polio to the thrill of basic virology–with the tone of a mystery thriller. It offers an inside look at how scientific thinking evolves and how scientists must struggle to overcome established dogmas.”
Dr. Norman J. Maitland, Professor of Molecular Biology, Director of Cancer Research Unit, University of York.
“A beautifully-told tale of science and a fascinating piece of medical history. The Virus and the Vaccine reveals how science can be distorted, pushed and pulled by the pressures of politics and profits.”
David Himmelstein, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
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© 2004 Debbie Bookchin & Jim Schumacher. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by St. Martin’s Press.
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