Rogue virus in the vaccine: Early polio vaccine harbored virus now feared to cause cancer in humans

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Rogue
virus in the vaccine / Early polio vaccine harbored virus now feared to cause
cancer in humans
Students at St. Vibiana’s school in Los Angeles
were among the first to receive the Salk vaccine.

A growing number of medical researchers fear that a monkey virus that contaminated 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.

Dr. Howard Strickler, chief investigator for the National Cancer Institute, said that none of his studies of SV40 have shown “an inkling of an effect on the population.” Photo by Craig Allen, special to the Chronicle.

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.

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.

In April, more than 60 scientists met in Chicago to discuss the controversial virus and how it works to defeat certain cells’ natural defenses against cancer.

“I believe that SV40 is carcinogenic (in humans),” said Dr. Michele Carbone of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. “We need to be creating therapies for people who have these cancers, and now we may be able to because we have a target – SV40.”

“I belives that SV40 is carcinogenic (in humans). We need to be creating therapies for people who have these cancers, and now we may be able to because we have a target — SV40.” — Dr. Michele Carbone of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, ILL.

But scientists at the National Cancer Institute say their studies show almost no SV40 in human tumors and no cancer increase in people who received the contaminated vaccine.

“No one would dispute there’s been a widespread, very scary exposure to the population of potentially cancer-causing virus,” said Dr. Howard Strickler, NCI’s chief investigator. “But none of our studies and other major analyses have shown an inkling of an effect on the population.”

Critics charge, however, that the few studies done by the government are scientifically flawed and that health officials have downplayed the potential risks posed by SV40 ever since they learned in 1961 that the virus contaminated the polio vaccine and caused tumors in rodents.

“How long can the government ignore this?” asked Dr. Adi Gazdar, a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center cancer researcher. “The government has not sponsored any real research. Here’s something possibly affecting millions of Americans, and they’re indifferent.

“Maybe they don’t want to find out.”

The recent SV40 discoveries come at a time of growing concern over the dangers posed by a range of animal viruses that have crossed the species barrier to humans, including HIV, which scientists now believe came from chimpanzees and ultimately caused the AIDS epidemic.

Based on dozens of interviews and a review of the medical research, this is the story of how the campaign to eradicate polio may have inadvertently permitted another potentially deadly monkey virus to infect millions of people – and why the government for years discounted the accumulating evidence suggesting that SV40 may be a health risk for humans.

Polio epidemic, 1955

During the first half of the 20th century, polio struck down hundreds of thousands of people, leaving many paralyzed – some in iron lung machines – and killing others. The worst year was 1952, when more than 57,000 polio cases were reported in the United States. Three thousand died.

Then on April 12, 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk, a slightly built, soft-spoken researcher from Pittsburgh, mounted the podium at the University of Michigan and announced that he had developed a vaccine. That afternoon, the government licensed the vaccine for distribution.

Salk’s vaccine was made by growing live polio virus on kidney tissue from Asian rhesus monkeys. The virus was then killed with formaldehyde. When the vaccine was injected in humans, the dead virus generated antibodies capable of fending off live polio.

Dr. Dwight Murray, then chairman of the American Medical Association, called Salk’s announcement “one of the greatest events in the history of medicine.”

Within weeks, the stockpiled vaccine was being injected into the arms of millions of people worldwide.

Virus and the tumors, 1959

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 newborn hamsters. Within nine months, “large, malignant, subcutaneous tumors” appeared on 20 of the animals.

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.”

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