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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.)