The true story of a cancer-causing mon­key virus, con­t­a­m­i­nated polio vac­cine, and the mil­lions of Amer­i­cans exposed

by Deb­bie Bookchin and Jim Schu­macher
2005, St. Martin’s Grif­fin
ISBN-10: 0312342721
ISBN-13: 978–0312342722
400 pages.

Amazon.com Review
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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