I'd like to acknowledge a few books that opened my eyes to this controversial but fascinating field of research.
The first is The Virus and the Vaccine, a fascinating true story of the contamination of the polio vaccine with a cancer-causing monkey virus.
The second is Dr. Mary's Monkey. Although I didn't use this book as a source, it's a thrilling story in its own right, and weaves together the JFK assassination, the contaminated polio vaccine scandal, and a secret project to develop a bio-weapon to kill Fidel Castro.
Lastly I owe much of this research to the indispensable Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Families and Health Practitioners. The thousands of references provided have proved to be a veritable gold mine.
Contamination, Compensation and Corruption
Most young parents don't remember when MMR vaccines didn't exist and when virtually all children contracted measles, rubella, mumps, chickenpox and pertussis, and as a result they developed life long immunity.
In a perfect world, no one would suffer and these diseases would be eradicated. However, it seems we may have put too much trust in the ever-increasing vaccine schedule to achieve this goal.
The problem was greatly compounded in the U.S. by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccination Injury Act, which shockingly was meant “to reduce the potential financial liability of vaccine makers due to vaccine injury claims.”
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was subsequently created “to provide a federal no-fault system for compensating vaccine-related injuries or death by establishing a claim procedure involving the United States Court of Federal Claims and special masters.”
In other words, when the vaccine manufacturer makes a mistake, which has happened before and will happen again, you have to go to a special vaccine court and you aren't even allowed to sue the manufacturer directly. Many countries other than the U.S. have similar arrangements.
Without the burden of possibly damaging litigation, this seems to remove an absolute incentive for safety and responsibility on the part of the manufacturers and their product.
One of the reasons that vaccine manufacturers should be held completely accountable is that contamination of vaccine stocks are disturbingly common, and this includes organisms such as SIV, mycoplasma, pestivirus, cytomegalovirus and SV40.
SV40 is of particular note, because millions worldwide were exposed to the cancer-causing virus beginning in 1955 as the result of contaminated polio vaccines. The story behind this tragedy is quite shocking and a more detailed account is included in the section on polio.
Studies by Michele Carbone and others have demonstrated a profound link between SV40 virus from vaccines and mesotheliomas and osteosarcomas, as well as numerous types of brain tumors.
One of the most potent cocarcinogens with SV40 is asbestos.
Although many countries quietly banned SV40 once news of the contamination was released in the 1960's, “an analysis presented at the Vaccine Cell Substrate Conference in 2004 suggested that vaccines used in the former Soviet bloc countries, China, Japan, and Africa, could have been contaminated up to 1980.” And according to Carbone's analysis:
Carbone and co-workers also published a study in 1999 claiming that current testing for SV40 was inadequate.
It has also been demonstrated that those infected with SV40 before 1963 have passed the virus to their offspring (vertical or transplacental transmission).
These fears were given some credibility when the CDC recently removed the SV40 section on their website.
As for HIV, although much of the population is unaware of the SV40 scandal and its implications, many do remember the contaminated haemophilia blood products tragedy that saw thousands of haemophiliacs infected with HIV and hepatitis C in the 1970's and 80's.
Perhaps the most shocking thing about the episode was that the products continued to be sold even when they were known to be contaminated:
According to Neil Miller, this level of corruption often extends to the safety studies of the vaccines themselves.
Perhaps one of the most important shortcomings of the vast majority of vaccine safety studies is the absence of the true double-blind study.
However, not all studies are skewed, for example this 1999 study published by the British Medical Journal showed a strong correlation between the haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccine to rising rates of type 1 diabetes, concluding that “the potential risk of the vaccine exceeds the potential benefit.”