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For The Record  

FTR #316 Update on the Politics of SV40

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This broad­cast high­lights arti­cles from the main­stream press that rein­force the remark­able research done by Ed Haslam, the author of the vital­ly impor­tant recent book Mary, Fer­rie and the Mon­key Virus: The Sto­ry of an Under­ground Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry. A con­t­a­m­i­nant in the orig­i­nal polio vac­cine, the SV40 appears to be the cause of a soft-tis­sue can­cer epi­dem­ic.

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of a front-page sto­ry in the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle that is strong­ly sup­port­ive of infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in pre­vi­ous pro­grams about SV40. “A grow­ing num­ber of med­ical researchers fear that a mon­key virus that con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the polio vac­cine giv­en to tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans in the 1950s and ’60s may be caus­ing rare human can­cers. For four decades, gov­ern­ment offi­cials have insist­ed that there is no evi­dence the simi­an virus called SV40 is harm­ful to humans. But in recent years, dozens of sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies have found the virus in a steadi­ly increas­ing num­ber of rare brain, bone and lung-relat­ed tumors—the same malig­nant can­cer SV40 caus­es in lab ani­mals.” (“Rogue Virus in the Vac­cine” by William Carlsen; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; p. A1.)

2. As report­ed in pre­vi­ous pro­grams on SV40, there is evi­dence that the virus (and, con­se­quent­ly, the can­cers it caus­es) are con­ta­gious. “Even more trou­bling, the virus has been detect­ed in tumors removed from peo­ple nev­er inoc­u­lat­ed with the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed vac­cine, lead­ing some to wor­ry that those infect­ed by the vac­cine might be spread­ing SV40.” (Idem.)

3. The num­ber of researchers who feel that SV40 is a threat is grow­ing. “The dis­cov­ery of SV40 in human tumors has gen­er­at­ed intense debate with­in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, pit­ting a hand­ful of gov­ern­ment health offi­cials, who believe that the virus is harm­less, against researchers from Boston to Chi­na who now sus­pect SV40 may be a human car­cino­gen. At stake are mil­lions of research dol­lars and poten­tial med­ical treat­ments for those afflict­ed with the can­cers SV40 may be caus­ing.” (Ibid.; pp. A1-A16.)

4. Four years after the devel­op­ment of the Salk vac­cine, Ber­nice Eddy of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health dis­cov­ered the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the vac­cine with SV40. “Four years lat­er, Ber­nice Eddy, a researcher at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, noticed some­thing strange while look­ing through her micro­scope. Mon­key kid­ney cells—the same kind used to make the vaccine—were dying with­out appar­ent cause. So she tried an exper­i­ment. She pre­pared kid­ney extracts from eight to 10 rhe­sus mon­keys and inject­ed tiny amounts under the skin of 23 new born ham­sters. With­in nine months, ‘large, malig­nant, sub­cu­ta­neous tumors’ appeared on 20 of the ani­mals.” (Ibid.; p. A16.)

5. Eddy’s results were dis­missed by NIH researchers. “On July 6, 1960, con­cerned that a mon­key virus might be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the polio vac­cine, Eddy took her find­ings to Dr. Joseph Smadel, chief of the NIH’s bio­log­ics divi­sion. Smadel dis­missed the tumors as harm­less ‘lumps.’ The same year, how­ev­er, at a Mer­ck lab­o­ra­to­ry in Penn­syl­va­nia, Dr. Mau­rice Hille­man and Dr. Ben Sweet iso­lat­ed the virus. They called it simi­an virus 40, or SV40, because it was the 40th virus found in rhe­sus kid­ney tis­sue.” (Idem.)

6. Oth­er experts, how­ev­er, shared Eddy’s con­cern. “But U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice offi­cials were wor­ried. Tests had found SV40 in both the Sabin and Salk vaccines—it was lat­er esti­mat­ed that as much as a third of the Salk vac­cine was tainted—and that SV40 was caus­ing can­cer in lab ani­mals. In ear­ly 1961, they qui­et­ly met with the agen­cy’s top vac­cine advis­ers. The agency found no evi­dence that the virus had been harm­ful to humans, but in March, the offi­cials ordered man­u­fac­tur­ers to elim­i­nate SV40 from all future vac­cine. New pro­ce­dures were adopt­ed to neu­tral­ize the taint­ed polio virus seed stock and SV40-free African green mon­keys were used to pro­duce the bulk vac­cine instead of rhe­sus mon­keys.” (Idem.)

7. Although the vac­cine-mak­ing pro­ce­dures had been altered, the pub­lic was kept in the dark. “But offi­cials did not recall con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Salk vaccine—more than a year’s supply—still in the hands of the nation’s doc­tors. And they did not noti­fy the pub­lic of the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and SV40’s car­cino­genic effect on new­born ham­sters. [Mau­rice] Hille­man would lat­er explain that gov­ern­ment offi­cials were wor­ried that any poten­tial­ly neg­a­tive infor­ma­tion could ignite a pan­ic and jeop­ar­dize the vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign. The first pub­lic dis­clo­sure that the Salk vac­cine was con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed came in the New York Times on July 26, 1961. A sto­ry on Page 33 report­ed that Mer­ck and oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers had halt­ed pro­duc­tion until they could get a ‘mon­key virus’ out of the vac­cine. When asked to com­ment, the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice stressed there was no evi­dence the virus was dan­ger­ous.” (Idem.)

8. Michele Car­bone was able to con­firm the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the vac­cine. In addi­tion, Car­bone dis­cov­ered that the vac­cine con­tained a sec­ond form of SV40 that may have con­tin­ued to con­t­a­m­i­nate vac­cines! “For years, researchers had believed that all SV40-con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Salk vac­cine made between 1955 and 1963 had been used or dis­card­ed. Then in 1999, Car­bone was con­tact­ed by a for­mer pub­lic health direc­tor in Oak Park, Ill., who said he had sev­en sealed vials of vac­cine dat­ed Octo­ber 1955 in a refrig­er­a­tor in his base­ment. Car­bone, who had left the NIH and joined the fac­ul­ty at Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter, ran tests on the vac­cine and made a star­tling dis­cov­ery: Not only was the vac­cine con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, it con­tained a sec­ond form of the virus—an ‘arche­typ­al’ SV40 strain.” (Ibid.; p. A17.)

9. The con­tin­ued con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the vac­cine-mak­ing process is high­light­ed in the pas­sage that fol­lows. “Although man­u­fac­tur­ers switched from rhe­sus mon­keys to SV40-free green African mon­keys to grow the bulk vac­cine in 1961, they have con­tin­ued to use poten­tial­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed polio seed strains orig­i­nal­ly grown on the rhe­sus mon­key tis­sue to start the bulk vac­cine process. [Empha­sis added.] Man­u­fac­tur­ers check the puri­ty of their vac­cine with a series of 14-day tests to detect whether any SV40 slipped through. But when Car­bone repli­cat­ed the tests, he found that the sec­ond, slow­er-grow­ing ‘arche­typ­al’ strain took 19 days to emerge. It was pos­si­ble, Car­bone not­ed in a pub­lished report, that this sec­ond strain of SV40 had been evad­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers’ screen­ing pro­ce­dures for years—and infect­ing vac­cine recip­i­ents after 1962.” (Idem.)

10. The Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute con­tin­ues to drag its feet with regard to SV40 and its rela­tion­ship to human can­cer. His­tor­i­cal­ly, that insti­tu­tion is deeply taint­ed. “But the NCI recent­ly acknowl­edged that there is evi­dence to sug­gest that SV40 ‘may be asso­ci­at­ed with human can­cer.’ The NCI state­ment, released last month, also said that SV40’s inter­ac­tion with ‘tumor sup­pres­sor pro­teins’ indi­cates ‘pos­si­ble mech­a­nisms that could con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of can­cer.’ Top NCI offi­cials declined to be inter­viewed on the record for this report. Frau­meni also declined sev­er­al requests for an in inter­view. Dr. James Goed­ert, the chief of the NCI’s Viral Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Branch who super­vised Strick­ler’s work, said that if SV40 is in human tumors, it must be at extreme­ly low lev­els. To crit­ics who claim the gov­ern­ment has down played SV40’s poten­tial health risks, Goed­ert respond­ed: ‘Absolute­ly not.’ He acknowl­edged that research is need­ed to resolve the ques­tion of whether SV40 is preva­lent in the human pop­u­la­tion and, if so, how it might be spread­ing. But Goed­ert said he has no plans for such stud­ies. ‘It’s not our high­est pri­or­i­ty,’ he said.” (Idem.)

11. A sub­se­quent arti­cle by William Carlsen sup­ple­ments the above infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the SV40 con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of more recent vac­cines. “A mon­key virus linked to human can­cers may have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the oral polio vac­cine for years after the U.S. gov­ern­ment ordered man­u­fac­tur­ers to remove it, accord­ing to drug com­pa­ny doc­u­ments obtained by The Chron­i­cle. The Chron­i­cle report­ed last week that the simi­an virus SV40 had con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ear­ly polio vac­cine giv­en to mil­lions of Amer­i­cans. When health offi­cials dis­cov­ered in 1961 that SV40 caused malig­nant tumors in lab ani­mals, they ordered the virus elim­i­nat­ed from all future vac­cine.” (“New Doc­u­ments Show the Mon­key Virus is Present in More Recent Polio Vac­cine” by William Carlsen; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 7/22/2001; p. A6.)

12. More details about the sub­se­quent con­t­a­m­i­na­tion indi­cate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of lia­bil­i­ty. (As this descrip­tion is being writ­ten, the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Act has been passed con­tain­ing a clause elim­i­nat­ing the civic lia­bil­i­ty of vac­cine mak­ers for the prod­uct that they man­u­fac­ture.) “But inter­nal mem­os from Led­er­le Lab­o­ra­to­ries, the chief pro­duc­er of polio vac­cine in the Unit­ed States, indi­cate SV40 may not have been com­plete­ly removed. Accord­ing to one memo, SV40 was found in three of 15 lots of the oral vac­cine sev­en months after the fed­er­al direc­tive was issued in March 1961. Led­er­le released the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed vac­cine to the pub­lic any­way, the memo shows. The doc­u­ments also sug­gest that the com­pa­ny failed to test the mon­key-kid­ney seed strains used to make the bulk polio vac­cine for con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, despite a writ­ten warn­ing from Dr. Albert Sabin, who devel­oped the oral vac­cine.” (Idem.)

13. Next, the broad­cast sets forth the work of one of Ber­nice Eddy’s hero­ic (and rel­a­tive­ly unrec­og­nized) co-work­ers, Sarah Stew­art. After relat­ing the dis­as­trous dis­cov­ery of the SV40 con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the vac­cine, the text high­lights Ms. Stew­art’s work. “In the after­math of the deba­cle, Ber­nice Eddy was tak­en off of polio research and trans­ferred to the influen­za sec­tion by the thank­less NIH man­age­ment. She shared her frus­tra­tions with a small group of women sci­en­tists who ate brown-bag lunch­es on the steps of one of the lab­o­ra­to­ries. There, Eddy met a tena­cious woman sci­en­tist named Sarah Stew­art, who was wag­ing her own bat­tle against the offi­cial par­a­digms of bureau­crat­ic med­i­cine. Ber­nice Eddy and Sarah Stew­art became close friends.” (Mary, Fer­rie and the Mon­key Virus: The Sto­ry of an Under­ground Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry; Copy­right 1995 [SC]; Wordsworth Press; p. 97.)

14. Although her con­tri­bu­tions remain unrec­og­nized, Sarah Stew­art’s work led to the appli­ca­tion of recom­bi­nant DNA, in addi­tion to con­firm­ing the role of virus­es in the devel­op­ment of can­cer. “Sarah Stew­art’s name remains vir­tu­al­ly unknown today despite her huge con­tri­bu­tion to mod­ern med­i­cine. Not only did she prove that some can­cers were caused by virus­es, but sub­se­quent research on the virus she dis­cov­ered led o the dis­cov­ery of DNA recom­bi­na­tion, which is the most pow­er­ful tool in med­ical research today.” (Idem.)

15. Ms. Stew­art’s work on can­cer-caus­ing virus­es sup­ple­ment­ed the work of Ber­nice Eddy and influ­enced and antic­i­pat­ed the efforts of their col­lab­o­ra­tor, Dr. Mary Sher­man. “From the begin­ning, Sarah Stew­art pro­mot­ed the idea that can­cer was caused by virus­es. Due to this, she was not well accept­ed by the NIH or NCI staffs who described her as ‘an eccen­tric lady’ deter­mined to prove her the­o­ry was right. ‘No one believed her . . .’ Final­ly, she was giv­en access to an NCI lab­o­ra­to­ry in Bethes­da where she could try to prove her the­o­ries. In 1953, she almost suc­ceed­ed, but her work was not accept­ed by the rul­ing crowd at NIH. They found her meth­ods slop­py and object­ed to the fact that she did not cul­ture her virus­es. So in 1956, her lunch part­ner Ber­nice Eddy showed Sarah Stew­art how to grow her virus­es in a cul­ture of mouse cells. She now had all the ingre­di­ents she need­ed and began a series of exper­i­ments which are called ‘clas­sic’ by mod­ern day NIH researchers.” (Ibid.; p. 98.)

16. Stew­art’s work was reject­ed by many of her col­leagues. Notable among those col­leagues was her super­vi­sor Alan Rabson—a name to remem­ber in the con­text of dis­cus­sion to fol­low. “As her work pro­gressed, she real­ized she stood on the edge of an extreme­ly impor­tant dis­cov­ery and became very pro­tec­tive of her tech­niques. In staff pre­sen­ta­tions, she would bewil­der NIH pathol­o­gists by show­ing them slides of things they had nev­er seen before. Then, when they asked how she pro­duced her results, she would gig­gle and say ‘It’s a secret.’ To quote her super­vi­sor Alan Rab­son: ‘She drove every­body crazy.’ ” (Idem.)

17. Stew­art and Eddy dis­cov­ered a car­cino­genic virus called “poly­oma,” which shed a great deal of light on the dis­cov­ery of SV40. “In 1957, Stew­art and Eddy dis­cov­ered the poly­oma virus which pro­duced sev­er­al types of can­cer in a vari­ety of small mam­mals. Poly­oma proved that some can­cers were indeed caused by virus­es. Her dis­cov­ery offi­cial­ly threw open the doors of can­cer virol­o­gy. As Rab­son phrased it, ‘Sud­den­ly, the whole place just explod­ed after Sarah found poly­oma.’ It was the begin­ning of a new era of hope. But it raised some dark ques­tions about ear­li­er deeds. Before long Yale’s lab­o­ra­to­ry dis­cov­ered that the poly­oma virus that had pro­duced the can­cer in Stew­art’s mice and ham­sters turned out to be vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to Simi­an Virus #40 (SV-40), a mon­key virus that caused can­cer.’ ” (Idem.)

18. High­light­ing the dis­cus­sion that is pre­sent­ed in the first part of the pro­gram, Mr. Haslam relates Ber­nice Eddy’s dis­cov­ery of the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the polio vac­cine. He then goes on to describe the reac­tion of the NIH to her dis­clo­sures. “In Octo­ber 1960, Eddy gave a talk to the Can­cer Soci­ety in New York and, with­out warn­ing NIH in advance, announced that she had exam­ined cells from the mon­keys kid­neys in which the polio virus was grown and had found they were infect­ed with can­cer caus­ing virus­es! Her infer­ence was clear: There were can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus­es in the polio vac­cine! This was tan­ta­mount to fore­cast­ing an epi­dem­ic of can­cer in Amer­i­ca! When the word got back to her NIH boss­es, they explod­ed in anger. When the cussing stopped, they crushed Ber­nice Eddy pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Any men­tion of can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus­es in the polio vac­cine was not wel­comed by NIH. They took away her lab, destroyed her ani­mals, put her under a gag order, pre­vent­ed her from attend­ing pro­fes­sion­al meet­ings, and delayed pub­li­ca­tion of her sci­en­tif­ic paper. In the words of Edward Short­er, author of The Health Cen­tu­ry, ‘Her treat­ment became a scan­dal with­in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty.’ Lat­er, it became the sub­ject of a con­gres­sion­al inquiry. In the words of Dr. Lawrence Kil­ham, a fel­low NIH researcher who wrote a lat­ter of protest to the Sur­geon Gen­er­al’s office, ‘the pres­ence of a can­cer virus in the polio virus vac­cine is the mat­ter demand­ing full inves­ti­ga­tion . . .’ ” (Ibid.; pp. 98–99.)

19. In that con­text, one should note the fol­low­ing, ref­er­enced from the Con­gres­sion­al Record, U.S. Sen­ate, Con­sumer Safe­ty Act of 1972. In turn, the quote is from Ruth Kirch­stein of the NIH. Along with the afore­men­tioned Alan Rab­son, hers is a name to be remem­bered. “The insid­ers already knew there was a can­cer-caus­ing virus in the polio vac­cine, but they had not announced it. . .” (Ibid.; p. 99.)

20. The media cov­er-up of the SV40 con­t­a­m­i­na­tion fol­lowed the insti­tu­tion­al cov­er-up. “On the heels of the polio fias­co, the med­ical hier­ar­chy feared the judg­ment of the mass­es. Their abil­i­ty to destroy a painstak­ing­ly con­struct­ed sci­en­tif­ic career overnight had been clear­ly proven. Anoth­er spate of bad news might shat­ter the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in vac­cines alto­geth­er. Where would the world be then? Where would the pub­lic health estab­lish­ment be then? As SV40 dis­cov­er­er Mau­rice Hille­man put it, the gov­ern­ment kept the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the polio vac­cine secret to ‘avoid pub­lic hys­te­ria.’ ” (Ibid.; pp. 99–100.)

21. In that con­text, it is worth not­ing that Sarah Stew­art and Ber­nice Eddy had devel­oped a pro­to­typ­i­cal vac­cine to pro­tect ani­mals against poly­oma as ear­ly as 1959! “Devel­op­ing a vac­cine against a spec­trum of can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus­es already inoc­u­lat­ed into mil­lions of peo­ple in the polio vac­cine was at best a long shot. But there was some evi­dence that anti-can­cer vac­cines were pos­si­ble. Quot­ing Time mag­a­zine [“The New War on Can­cer via Virus Research & Chemother­a­py;” 7/27/1959; p. 54.]: ‘Stew­art and Eddy have gone a vital step far­ther . . . and made a vac­cine that pro­tects a big major­i­ty of nor­mal­ly sus­cep­ti­ble ani­mals against the poly­oma virus’s effects.’ ” (Ibid.; p. 104.)

22. After dis­cussing the rela­tion­ship between Dr. Mary Sher­man, David Fer­rie, Dr. Alton Ochsner (like David Fer­rie, a key fig­ure in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the JFK assas­si­na­tion) and the (almost cer­tain) work that was under­way in New Orleans on a can­cer vac­cine, Mr. Haslam goes on to describe the rela­tion­ship between Dr. Mary Sher­man, the afore­men­tioned Ruth Kirch­stein and Alan Rab­son. “Mary Sher­man also knew Ruth Kirch­stein at NIH. Kirch­stein, who was thir­teen years younger than Sher­man, was an instruc­tor at Tulane Med­ical School in 1954 and 1955. Dur­ing these years, Mary was an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in Tulane’s Depart­ment of Ortho­pe­dic Surgery and was that depart­men­t’s spe­cial­ist in pathol­o­gy. Both Sher­man and Kirch­stein had com­mon inter­ests in pathol­o­gy and can­cer and taught in the same med­ical school. It is rea­son­able to assume they knew each oth­er well. In 1957, imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the polio shake-up, Kirch­stein went to the Nation­al Insti­tute of Health where she stayed for the rest of her career. At NIH, Kirschstein began work­ing as a pathol­o­gist in the Bio­log­ics divi­sion where Ber­nice Eddy worked. Her spe­cial­ties were list­ed in the med­ical direc­to­ries as virol­o­gy, polio, and oncol­o­gy. But since Kirschstein was bare­ly out of med­ical school when Sher­man, Stew­art and Eddy were already nation­al­ly rec­og­nized author­i­ties, I do not con­sid­er their direct con­tact to be very strong, but there are two things about Kirschstein that should be kept in mind. First, once at NIH, Kirschstein dat­ed and lat­er mar­ried, Alan Rab­son, who was Sarah Stew­art’s super­vi­sor. There­fore, she was in a posi­tion to know things about both Stew­art and Eddy’s research that she might not have known oth­er­wise. And sec­ond­ly, Kirch­stein cred­its much of her pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess to the per­son­al sup­port and pro­fes­sion­al guid­ance of Tulane Med­ical School’s Chief of Surgery, Dr. Alton Ochsner, who is known to have enjoyed using his con­sid­er­able con­tacts to help Tulane med­ical grad­u­ates find good pro­fes­sion­al posi­tions. Did Kirschstein keep Ochsner informed about the research activ­i­ties at NIH and NCI? It would be hard to crit­i­cize her for keep­ing her men­tor informed about the progress of can­cer research at the nation­al labs, espe­cial­ly since he was the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety and held many impor­tant posi­tions in the world of med­i­cine. Addi­tion­al­ly, as an expert in polio who lived in New Orleans in 1955, Kirschstein would also have been keen­ly aware of the prob­lems that Dr. Ochsner faced after inject­ing his grand­chil­dren with Salk’s polio vac­cine. When Eddy and Hille­man broke the news about the can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus in the polio vac­cine, it would not have been unrea­son­able for Kirschstein to noti­fy Ochsner about the dan­ger his grand­daugh­ter faced. Not­ing the coin­ci­dence of the time frame, we ask the ques­tion: ‘Did the ‘Sen­si­tive Posi­tion’ that Dr. Ochsner was cleared for in Octo­ber 1959 have any­thing to do with a secret attempt to devel­op a can­cer vac­cine to pro­tect the Amer­i­can pub­lic from an epi­dem­ic of can­cer?’ ” (Ibid.; pp. 105–106.)

23. Mr. Haslam goes on to devel­op more con­nec­tions between bio­log­i­cal war­fare research, the NIH, New Orleans and the milieu of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion. “There were oth­er con­nec­tions between NIH and New Orleans. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est was Jose Rivera, M.D. Ph.D., who sat on the NIH Board of Direc­tors in the 1960’s. We will note that the Dr. Rivera was real­ly Col. Jose A. Rivera, one of the U.S. Army’s top experts in bio­log­i­cal war­fare, and that in the sum­mer of 1963 he was in New Orleans hand­ing out research grants from NIH (Insti­tute for Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­eases and Blind­ness) to Tulane Med­ical School, LSU Med­ical School, and the Ochsner Clin­ic. It is not my objec­tive to pin Fer­rie’s pos­ses­sion of the trea­tise on any one per­son, but I am try­ing to show that there were numer­ous con­nec­tions between NCI and New Orleans, any one of which might explain how Mary Sher­man and/or David Fer­rie wound up with an inter­nal doc­u­ment from NIH or NCI.” (Ibid.; p. 106.)

24. In the sec­ond edi­tion of his book, Mr. Haslam high­lights anoth­er intrigu­ing detail about the con­nec­tion between the JFK assas­si­na­tion and the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SV40/cancer con­nec­tion. ” ‘The War­ren Com­mis­sion Vol­umes. The FBI went to the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice Hos­pi­tal on 11/25/63 look­ing for evi­dence of either Lee Har­vey Oswald or A.J. Hidell. They went back a sec­ond time on 11/26.’ The FBI was look­ing for Oswald at the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice Hos­pi­tal! I could hard­ly believe my ears. ‘Why?’ ‘Accord­ing to the Dal­las Police, Oswald had a vac­ci­na­tion card issued to him by the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice on 6/8/63, when he lived at 4907 Mag­a­zine Street in New Orleans. It was issued to Lee Har­vey Oswald, signed by Dr. A.J. Hidell. The FBI reports are in Vol­ume 19. I’ll send you the cita­tions.’ Had Lee Har­vey Oswald been on the grounds of the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice Hos­pi­tal at the time the lin­ear par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor was there? Take a look at this map. [Dr. Ochsner’s house, Oswald’s apart­ment, Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, the Infec­tious Dis­ease Lab­o­ra­to­ry Build­ing and the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice Hos­pi­tal are with­in a 1‑mile radius of one anoth­er.]” (Ibid.; p.127.)

25. Sub­se­quent­ly, Dr. Ruth Kirch­stein went on to become Act­ing Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health. “Mr. Chair­man and Mem­bers of the Com­mit­tee: I am Ruth Kirch­stein, the Act­ing Direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health.” (“Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices: State­ment by Dr. Ruth L. Kirschstein Act­ing Direc­tor, Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health on Fis­cal Year 2001 Pres­i­den­t’s Bud­get Request for the Nation­al Insti­tute of Health;” 2/15/2000.)

26. Alan (“Al”) Rab­son went on to become the Deputy Direc­tor of the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute. “NIH WORKING GROUP ON PRIORITY SETTING: [Names include] Al Rabson—Deputy Direc­tor, Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute.” (“Set­ting Research Pri­or­i­ties at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health;” September/1997; p. 10.)

27. Although it was not in the orig­i­nal broad­cast, an arti­cle pub­lished on the front page of the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle on 3/9/2002 sup­ple­ment­ed the mate­r­i­al on the SV40/cancer con­nec­tion in an impor­tant way. Ref­er­enc­ing two arti­cles from the pres­ti­gious British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet, the arti­cle impli­cates SV40 in the devel­op­ment of non-Hodgkins lymphoma—one of the soft tis­sue can­cers that Mr. Haslam doc­u­ments as hav­ing assumed epi­dem­ic pro­por­tions.

Simi­an virus in polio shots tied to can­cer
Two stud­ies sup­port wide­ly dis­put­ed the­o­ry

by William Carlsen
San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle

Sci­en­tists have found traces of a mon­key virus that con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the polio vac­cine in the 1950s in a com­mon form of high­ly malig­nant human can­cer that has mys­te­ri­ous­ly dou­bled in inci­dence over the past 30 years. Two stud­ies, pub­lished yes­ter­day in the British jour­nal Lancet, found a link between the virus, called SV40, and non-Hodgk­in’s lym­phomas, a dis­or­der ranked fourth or fifth among can­cer deaths in the Unit­ed States among women and men, respec­tive­ly. Results sug­gest that the virus may play a much wider role in can­cer than pre­vi­ous­ly sus­pect­ed.

‘No obvi­ous risk fac­tors have emerged for non-Hodgk­in’s lym­phoma in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, but a viral cause has been pos­tu­lat­ed,’ said a group of eight researchers at Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine in Texas led by Dr. Janet Butel. ‘This find­ing sheds new light on the pos­si­ble gen­e­sis of (this) impor­tant group of malig­nant dis­or­ders.’ The sci­en­tists added that their find­ings may also offer hope for new ther­a­pies for the malig­nan­cies.

In lab­o­ra­to­ry tests, ham­sters inject­ed with SV40 devel­oped a vari­ety of malig­nant tumors, but ear­ly gov­ern­ment stud­ies indi­cat­ed that the virus appeared to have no neg­a­tive effect in humans who had been exposed. That view began to change in the 1990s when DNA detec­tion tech­niques became much more refined and evi­dence of the virus start­ed show­ing up in human tumors.

The Salk polio vac­cine, admin­is­tered by injec­tion in the Unit­ed States and world­wide from 1955 through 1963, was grown on minced kid­ney tis­sue from rhe­sus mon­keys. At the time, the man­u­fac­tur­ing process was con­sid­ered safe. But in 1960, it was dis­cov­ered that large batch­es of the vac­cine were con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with the simi­an virus lat­er named SV40. An esti­mat­ed 90 mil­lion Amer­i­cans received Salk vac­cine injec­tions and as many as 30 mil­lion were exposed to the virus.

In lab­o­ra­to­ry tests, ham­sters inject­ed with SV40 devel­oped a vari­ety of malig­nant tumors, but ear­ly gov­ern­ment stud­ies indi­cat­ed that the virus appeared to have no neg­a­tive effect in humans who had been exposed. That view began to change in the 1990s when DNA detec­tion tech­niques became much more refined and evi­dence of the virus start­ed show­ing up in human tumors.

The group includ­ed rare brain, bone and lung-relat­ed can­cers called mesothe­liomas. Oth­er research has also turned up SV40 in tumors of chil­dren and adults born after the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed vac­cine was tak­en off the mar­ket in 1963, lead­ing to the still-unsolved mys­tery of how the virus is being trans­mit­ted.

Yes­ter­day’s reports indi­cate that SV40 may be involved in a much broad­er group of human can­cers, play­ing a pos­si­ble role in near­ly half of the 55,000 new cas­es of non-Hodgk­in’s lym­phoma diag­nosed annu­al­ly. The can­cer, which can be high­ly aggres­sive, has been asso­ci­at­ed with HIV- pos­i­tive patients, and it was thought that the sup­pres­sion of the immune sys­tem in these patients may have had a con­nec­tion with the dra­mat­ic increase in lym­phomas since 1970.

The new stud­ies exam­ined lym­phomas from HIV-pos­i­tive and ‑neg­a­tive patients. Results sug­gest­ed that both groups had either about the same lev­el of SV40 DNA frag­ments, or that the HIV-neg­a­tive sam­ples had a greater inci­dence.

The sec­ond group of researchers were at the Fred Hutchin­son Can­cer Research Cen­ter in Seat­tle and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas South­west­ern Med­ical Cen­ter in Dal­las. Remark­ably, both groups of researchers using slight­ly dif­fer­ent detec­tion tech­niques came up with almost iden­ti­cal results: SV40 frag­ments were found in 42 per­cent of 154 lym­phomas sam­pled in one study, while the oth­er found 43 per­cent in 68 cas­es.

No virus was detect­ed by either study in non­ma­lig­nant lym­phoid sam­ples and oth­er can­cers used as con­trols. A Chron­i­cle inves­ti­ga­tion report­ed last year that there is a heat­ed con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing detec­tion of SV40 and that most U.S. gov­ern­men­t’s stud­ies over the past decade have debunked the the­o­ry that SV40 is caus­ing human can­cer or is even present in tumors.

But The Chron­i­cle found that more than 60 stud­ies from 30 lab­o­ra­to­ries around the world have report­ed detec­tions of the virus in human malig­nan­cies. ‘I’ve been in meet­ings where peo­ple say there is noth­ing to it,’ said Dr. Jay A. Levy, a renowned virol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Fran­cis­co. ‘That atti­tude is wrong.’

Levy said he had care­ful­ly reviewed the papers pub­lished yes­ter­day and was impressed with the research. ‘You just can’t walk away from it,’ he said, not­ing that the asso­ci­a­tion found was very strong. ‘But there is still quite a dif­fer­ence between asso­ci­a­tion and cau­sa­tion,’ he added, ‘and prov­ing cau­sa­tion is very dif­fi­cult.’

Dr. Adi Gaz­dar of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, who led the sec­ond study, said yes­ter­day that the ‘data is very, very sol­id.’ He said it had to be more than coin­ci­dence that the four types of tumors found in ham­sters after injec­tion with SV40 — brain, bone, mesothe­lioma and lym­phomas — are now exact­ly the same tumor types in humans found with detectable lev­els of SV40.

‘The chances are 10 mil­lion to 1 it is a coin­ci­dence,’ he said. Evi­dence of how the virus works in tumors is grow­ing as research shows that pro­teins from SV40 have a pow­er­ful effect in turn­ing off tumor sup­pres­sor genes in humans.

Gaz­dar and the oth­er researchers said that the recent SV40 dis­cov­er­ies also could help lead to effec­tive can­cer treat­ment, by using SV40 as a tar­get for ther­a­pies. ‘A vac­cine tar­get­ing SV40 in mesothe­lioma is now being devel­oped,’ he said. ‘But it’s still only a poten­tial ther­a­py, and we don’t know if it will work yet.’

He said that U.S. offi­cials have all but ignored the SV40 detec­tions and that gov­ern­ment fund­ing and sup­port for research has been nonex­is­tent. One rea­son giv­en by Gaz­dar and oth­er sci­en­tists is that the gov­ern­ment is wor­ried about its role in pro­mot­ing polio vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns in the 1950s. ‘And maybe it’s because the first SV40-relat­ed can­cers that were dis­cov­ered were such rare ones,’ Gaz­dar said. ‘But you can’t ignore lym­phoma; it’s too wide­spread and too impor­tant a can­cer. Jack­ie Kennedy and a lot of oth­er well-known peo­ple have died from it. [Empha­sis added.]’

(“Simi­an Virus in Polio Shots Tied to Can­cer: Two Stud­ies Sup­port Wide­ly Dis­put­ed The­o­ry” by William Carlsen; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 3/9/2002; p.A1.)

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #316 Update on the Politics of SV40”

  1. I just added you to my Google News Read­er. Keep up the good work. Look for­ward to read­ing more from you in the future.

    Posted by mesothelioma | July 23, 2009, 1:22 pm
  2. yea and i just found out salk was promi­nent in the eugen­ics move­ment . the test­ing by B Eddys was in about 1955 but Alton Oschn­er at the Tuland labs dis­missed Eddys find­ings of tumor in hamp­sters , why not ‚he was heav­i­ly invest­ed in the reaserch and devel­op­ment . the risks were known bu a few very ear­ly on in the mass polio vac­cine cam­paign .

    Posted by al | March 6, 2011, 2:36 pm
  3. Here’s a quick update on advances in biowar­fare tech­nolo­gies. Or, in this case, it’s expect­ed advanced in biowar­fare tech­nolo­gies: The US Depart­ment of Defense ordered a study exam­in­ing how syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy tech­nolo­gies could be applied for biowar­fare pur­pos­es.

    The tools they looked at, like CRISPR gene-edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy, aren’t new and are already wide­ly employed in areas like agri­cul­ture and med­i­cine. And, for the most part, they did­n’t see syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy as a major threat “at the moment”. But since things like vac­cines can take years to devel­op it’s the kind of threat that you don’t want to catch you by sur­prise.

    One of the “high con­cern” threats is exact­ly what you would expect: the re-cre­ation of a virus such as small­pox. It’s a high con­cern because it’s both tech­no­log­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble and pre­vi­ous­ly demon­strat­ed.

    Oth­er threats include using CRISPR to cre­ate virus­es that dam­age DNA and cause can­cer (which isn’t exact­ly a new threat, but CRISPR could make the virus­es much more potent).

    And one par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty pos­si­bil­i­ty includ­ed genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer­ing human gut bac­te­ria to pro­duce tox­ins. So we could end up get­ting the pop­u­la­tion of bac­te­ria that nor­mal­ly have a sym­bi­ot­ic-like rela­tion­ship with humans can con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with weaponized vari­ants.

    At the same time, there’s con­cern that these kinds of stud­ies are, them­selves, poten­tial fuel­ing a new syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy arms race. Why? Because these kind of stud­ies are typ­i­cal­ly fund­ed by the mil­i­tary, and while they are osten­si­bly defen­sive in nature (try­ing to under­stand pos­si­ble futures risks to defend against them), the stud­ies also obvi­ous­ly dou­ble as pos­si­ble offen­sive stud­ies (iden­ti­fy­ing pos­si­ble offen­sive capa­bil­i­ties of new tech­nolo­gies). It’s a great exam­ple of why tech­nol­o­gy in the hands of a species like human­i­ty is so per­ilous: even sim­ply learn­ing about the dan­gers is poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous because it might fuel an arms race:

    MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review

    US mil­i­tary wants to know what syn­thet­ic-biol­o­gy weapons could look like
    Re-cre­at­ed virus­es, tox­ic bac­te­ria top new rank­ing of risks.

    by Anto­nio Regal­a­do
    June 19, 2018

    A study ordered by the US Depart­ment of Defense has con­clud­ed that new genet­ic-engi­neer­ing tools are expand­ing the range of mali­cious uses of biol­o­gy and decreas­ing the amount of time need­ed to car­ry them out.

    The new tools aren’t in them­selves a dan­ger and are wide­ly employed to cre­ate dis­ease-resis­tant plants and new types of med­i­cine. How­ev­er, rapid progress by com­pa­nies and uni­ver­si­ty labs rais­es the specter of “syn­thet­ic-biol­o­gy-enabled weapons,” accord­ing to the 221-page report.

    The report, issued by the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, is among the first to try to rank nation­al secu­ri­ty threats made pos­si­ble by recent advances in gene engi­neer­ing such as the gene-edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy CRISPR.

    “Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy does expand the risk. That is not a good-news sto­ry,” says Gigi Gron­va­ll, a pub­lic health researcher at Johns Hop­kins and one of the report’s 13 authors. “This report pro­vides a frame­work to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly eval­u­ate the threat of mis­use.”

    Experts are divid­ed on the per­ils posed by syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, a term used to describe a wide set of tech­niques for speed­ing genet­ic engi­neer­ing. In 2016, the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty placed gene edit­ing on its list of poten­tial weapons of mass destruc­tion.

    “Many dif­fer­ent groups have writ­ten and spo­ken about the top­ic, with a wide spread of opin­ion,” says D. Chris­t­ian Has­sell, deputy assis­tant sec­re­tary of defense for chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal defense, who com­mis­sioned the report in order to obtain a “con­sen­sus opin­ion from among the top lead­ers and thinkers” in the field.

    Has­sell says the military’s cur­rent view is that “syn­bio is not a major threat issue at the moment” but bears prepar­ing for, in part because defens­es like vac­cines can take years to devel­op.

    ...

    Among the risks the authors termed of “high con­cern” is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that ter­ror­ists or a nation-state could re-cre­ate a virus such as small­pox. That is a present dan­ger because a tech­nol­o­gy for syn­the­siz­ing a virus from its DNA instruc­tions has pre­vi­ous­ly been demon­strat­ed.

    The eval­u­a­tion process shed light on some risks the authors called unex­pect­ed. In one sce­nario, the report imag­ined how ordi­nary human gut bac­te­ria could be engi­neered to man­u­fac­ture a tox­in, an idea ranked as high­ly wor­ri­some in part because such an attack, like a com­put­er virus, could be dif­fi­cult to uncov­er or attribute to its source.

    Among the weapons imag­ined, sev­er­al involved CRISPR, a ver­sa­tile gene-edit­ing tool invent­ed only six years ago, which the report said could be intro­duced into a virus to cut human DNA and cause can­cer. If sci­en­tists can alter ani­mals to cre­ate dis­ease, “it fol­lows that [the] genomes of human beings could be sim­i­lar­ly mod­i­fied,” accord­ing to the report.

    In its analy­sis, the com­mit­tee down­grad­ed oth­er threats. Attempts to con­struct entire­ly nov­el man-made virus­es, for instance would be hob­bled by sci­en­tif­ic unknowns, at least for now.

    The US mil­i­tary, which asked for the study, is already among the largest fun­ders of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy. Although its research is defen­sive in nature, tech­ni­cal reports such as this one, which imag­ine future weapon­ry, could gen­er­ate anx­i­ety in oth­er nations, says Fil­ip­pa Lent­zos, a senior research fel­low in biose­cu­ri­ty at King’s Col­lege Lon­don.

    “You don’t want to start a new bioweapons race. The field needs to ask itself who is dri­ving the agen­da, and how does this look from the out­side,” she says. “Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy has a prob­lem, which is that much of its fund­ing comes from the mil­i­tary.”

    His­tor­i­cal­ly, the US and oth­er coun­tries have wor­ried most about spe­cif­ic germs such as small­pox, includ­ing them on a list of “select agents” whose pos­ses­sion is tight­ly con­trolled.

    As the biotech tool box grows, how­ev­er, the list-based approach to secu­ri­ty is no longer seen as suf­fi­cient.

    Accord­ing to the report, the US must now also track “enabling devel­op­ments” includ­ing meth­ods, wide­ly pur­sued by indus­try, to syn­the­size DNA strands and devel­op so-called “chas­sis” organ­isms designed to accept genet­ic pay­loads.

    “The US gov­ern­ment should pay close atten­tion to this rapid­ly pro­gress­ing field, just as it did to advances in chem­istry and physics dur­ing the Cold War era,” says Michael Impe­ri­ale, a micro­bi­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and chair of the com­mit­tee behind the pub­licly avail­able report, titled Biode­fense in the Age of Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy.

    ———-

    “US mil­i­tary wants to know what syn­thet­ic-biol­o­gy weapons could look like” by Anto­nio Regal­a­do; MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review; 06/19/2018

    The new tools aren’t in them­selves a dan­ger and are wide­ly employed to cre­ate dis­ease-resis­tant plants and new types of med­i­cine. How­ev­er, rapid progress by com­pa­nies and uni­ver­si­ty labs rais­es the specter of “syn­thet­ic-biol­o­gy-enabled weapons,” accord­ing to the 221-page report.”

    This is part of what’s going to make future biowar­fare tech­nolo­gies so chal­leng­ing to con­trol: the tools aren’t in them­selves a dan­ger. If your civ­i­liza­tion wants things like med­ical advances or biotech for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es there’s no avoid­ing the pos­si­ble appli­ca­tion of these tech­nolo­gies for nefar­i­ous pur­pos­es. And in the case of this report it appears that CRISPR, the new super pre­cise gene-edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy
    , is the dual use tech­nol­o­gy in par­tic­u­lar that has experts con­cerned about biowar­fare uses. If your civ­i­liza­tion wants super pre­cise gene-edit­ing tech­nolo­gies, these kinds of dan­gers come with that pack­age:

    ...
    The report, issued by the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, is among the first to try to rank nation­al secu­ri­ty threats made pos­si­ble by recent advances in gene engi­neer­ing such as the gene-edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy CRISPR.

    “Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy does expand the risk. That is not a good-news sto­ry,” says Gigi Gron­va­ll, a pub­lic health researcher at Johns Hop­kins and one of the report’s 13 authors. “This report pro­vides a frame­work to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly eval­u­ate the threat of mis­use.”

    Experts are divid­ed on the per­ils posed by syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, a term used to describe a wide set of tech­niques for speed­ing genet­ic engi­neer­ing. In 2016, the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty placed gene edit­ing on its list of poten­tial weapons of mass destruc­tion.

    “Many dif­fer­ent groups have writ­ten and spo­ken about the top­ic, with a wide spread of opin­ion,” says D. Chris­t­ian Has­sell, deputy assis­tant sec­re­tary of defense for chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal defense, who com­mis­sioned the report in order to obtain a “con­sen­sus opin­ion from among the top lead­ers and thinkers” in the field.

    Has­sell says the military’s cur­rent view is that “syn­bio is not a major threat issue at the moment” but bears prepar­ing for, in part because defens­es like vac­cines can take years to devel­op.
    ...

    And the range of pos­si­bil­i­ties for cus­tomized virus­es is immense. For instance, a virus could be designed to sim­ply dam­age DNA and cause can­cer:

    ...
    Among the weapons imag­ined, sev­er­al involved CRISPR, a ver­sa­tile gene-edit­ing tool invent­ed only six years ago, which the report said could be intro­duced into a virus to cut human DNA and cause can­cer. If sci­en­tists can alter ani­mals to cre­ate dis­ease, “it fol­lows that [the] genomes of human beings could be sim­i­lar­ly mod­i­fied,” accord­ing to the report.

    In its analy­sis, the com­mit­tee down­grad­ed oth­er threats. Attempts to con­struct entire­ly nov­el man-made virus­es, for instance would be hob­bled by sci­en­tif­ic unknowns, at least for now.
    ...

    Or we could see design­er bac­te­ria based on the ubiq­ui­tous bac­te­ria that make up the human micro­bio­me built to release tox­ins:

    ...
    The eval­u­a­tion process shed light on some risks the authors called unex­pect­ed. In one sce­nario, the report imag­ined how ordi­nary human gut bac­te­ria could be engi­neered to man­u­fac­ture a tox­in, an idea ranked as high­ly wor­ri­some in part because such an attack, like a com­put­er virus, could be dif­fi­cult to uncov­er or attribute to its source.
    ...

    Keep in mind that one of the fea­tures of the bac­te­ria that make up the human micro­bio­me is that they’re gen­er­al­ly evolved to co-exist well with a human body. So design­ing micro­bio­me bac­te­ria to pro­duce tox­ins is lit­er­al­ly weaponiz­ing bac­te­ria your body’s immune sys­tem is built to not attack.

    But per­haps the most imme­di­ate dan­ger from syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy tech­nol­o­gy is the sim­ple pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­one will use these to recre­ate a known virus like small­pox:

    ...
    Among the risks the authors termed of “high con­cern” is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that ter­ror­ists or a nation-state could re-cre­ate a virus such as small­pox. That is a present dan­ger because a tech­nol­o­gy for syn­the­siz­ing a virus from its DNA instruc­tions has pre­vi­ous­ly been demon­strat­ed.
    ...

    And the fact that this is high­ly use­ful tech­nol­o­gy already in use in sci­ence and med­i­cine for legit­i­mate pur­pos­es means that the tra­di­tion­al list-based approach of track­ing tech­nolo­gies deemed to be dan­ger­ous is no longer going to be suf­fi­cient:

    ...
    As the biotech tool box grows, how­ev­er, the list-based approach to secu­ri­ty is no longer seen as suf­fi­cient.

    Accord­ing to the report, the US must now also track “enabling devel­op­ments” includ­ing meth­ods, wide­ly pur­sued by indus­try, to syn­the­size DNA strands and devel­op so-called “chas­sis” organ­isms designed to accept genet­ic pay­loads.

    “The US gov­ern­ment should pay close atten­tion to this rapid­ly pro­gress­ing field, just as it did to advances in chem­istry and physics dur­ing the Cold War era,” says Michael Impe­ri­ale, a micro­bi­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and chair of the com­mit­tee behind the pub­licly avail­able report, titled Biode­fense in the Age of Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy.

    But per­haps the most omi­nous aspect of this report is the reminder that sim­ply gen­er­at­ing a report of this nature could gen­er­ate anx­i­ety in oth­er nations and help fuel an arms race. Because you can’t use a weapon you haven’t thought of before:

    ...
    The US mil­i­tary, which asked for the study, is already among the largest fun­ders of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy. Although its research is defen­sive in nature, tech­ni­cal reports such as this one, which imag­ine future weapon­ry, could gen­er­ate anx­i­ety in oth­er nations, says Fil­ip­pa Lent­zos, a senior research fel­low in biose­cu­ri­ty at King’s Col­lege Lon­don.

    “You don’t want to start a new bioweapons race. The field needs to ask itself who is dri­ving the agen­da, and how does this look from the out­side,” she says. “Syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy has a prob­lem, which is that much of its fund­ing comes from the mil­i­tary.”

    His­tor­i­cal­ly, the US and oth­er coun­tries have wor­ried most about spe­cif­ic germs such as small­pox, includ­ing them on a list of “select agents” whose pos­ses­sion is tight­ly con­trolled.
    ...

    It’s all a reminder that knowl­edge is, itself, the ulti­mate dual use tool. It can be used for good or ill. And since human­i­ty is filled with so much ill will towards itself it’s more or less a giv­en that the knowl­edge we pos­sess will some­how be weaponized. This is why we can’t have nice things. Like non-poi­so­nous gut bac­te­ria.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 20, 2018, 4:04 pm
  4. @Pterrafractyl–

    Remem­ber, the dis­tinc­tion between “offen­sive” and “defen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is ENTIRELY aca­d­e­m­ic.

    When you are study­ing how micro-organ­isms infect, sick­en and/or kill humans and/or crops and/or live­stock you are study­ing it–PERIOD.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | June 20, 2018, 6:18 pm

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