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.
Manufacturing Mutation
The World Health Organization launched its Global Polio Eradication Initiative will the goal of eliminating the disease by 2000.
However, by 2000 it became clear that polio was still around, and new strains derived form the vaccine itself were emerging.
In 1983, some researchers realized that a “vaccine-derived” polio virus had caused an outbreak in Egypt. [Reuters Health. “Polio outbreak in Dominican Republic and Haiti caused by vaccine-derived virus.” Reuters Medical News (December 4, 2000)]
In 2000, virologist Hiromy Yoshida found a new infectious polio virus in Japanese rivers and sewages. The virus had mutated from the polio vaccine and regained much of its original virulence, as confirmed by genetic sequencing. According to Yoshida, this poses a “persistent environmental threat” and the live oral polio vaccine is to blame.
According to a 2000 Reuters Medical News article, a polio outbreak in Haiti and the Dominican Republic resulted in numerous cases of flaccid paralysis.
People around the world continue to be stricken with vaccine-derived polio viruses (VDPVs), and the aforementioned case in India is just one example. Under certain circumstances, polio viruses within the vaccine “regain both neuro-virulence and the capacity to circulate and cause outbreaks.”
In 2010, a study was published in Finland with a title that just about says it all: “Highly divergent neurovirulent vaccine-derived polioviruses of all three serotypes are recurrently detected in Finnish sewage.”
Although no cases of “suspected poliomyelitis” have reportedly occurred in Finland since 1985, “Since December 2008, 21 genetically highly divergent, neurovirulent vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPV) have been isolated from sewage in Tampere, Finland. While the source of the VDPV is unknown, characteristics of the viruses resemble those of strains isolated from immunodeficient, persistently infected persons.”
Unfortunately, animal matter and questionable drugs are still used in making the polio vaccine.
Dr. Arthur Levine of the NIH, however, believes that making polio vaccines using human cells isn't risk-free either, “because they must be tested for human infections.”
Levine also worries that even discussing these issues will frighten parents, “We do a grave disservice to the public if we were now to question the safety of the current polio vaccines on the basis of SV40.”
It is perhaps this attitude that prompted the CDC to recently remove the section of their website devoted to SV40 information. However, how can this be justified when hundreds of studies have now been conducted linking SV40 to cancer?
Urnovitz sums it up nicely, “You have to realize that if you mess around with nature, you're going to pay the price...”