Product Description

Jonas Salk's polio vaccine has taken on an almost legendary quality as a medical miracle, for it largely eradicated one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century. But the story of the vaccine has a dark side, one that has never been fully told before...

Between 1954 and 1963, close to 98 million Americans received polio vaccinations contaminated with a carcinogenic monkey virus, now known as SV40. A concerted government effort downplayed the incident, and it was generally accepted that although oncogenic to laboratory animals, SV40 was harmless to humans.

But now SV40 in showing up in human cancers, and prominent researchers are demanding a serious public health response to this forgotten polio vaccine contaminant. A gripping medical detective story, The Virus and the Vaccine raises major questions about vaccine policy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #553737 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 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

From Publishers Weekly
Journalists Bookchin and Schumacher argue that for nine years, from 1954 to 1963, almost every dose of polio vaccine produced in the worldâ€"and the 98 million Americans who received polio vaccinationsâ€"was contaminated with a cancer-causing virus from the monkey kidneys used to develop the vaccine. Although the polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk virtually ended polio as a threatening disease, the authors detail how "the screening techniques and observation periods that Salk and the vaccine manufacturers employed were not capable of always catching the contaminants." This sordid story spells out how repeated research studies showing that the "SV40" virus was in the vaccine were dismissed by federal health officials, so that "there would be no warning to consumers that the vaccine they and their children were receiving contained a live monkey virus whose effect on humans was entirely unknown." In the second part, the authors contend that even today such organizations as the National Institutes of Health continue to dismiss study results, even though numerous studies have shown that SV40 is capable of causing cancer in humans. The final and most horrific part of the story reports that Lederle Laboratories, the sole oral vaccine supplier in the U.S. from 1977 onward, continued to use monkey kidneys possibly infected by the SV40 virus in its manufacturing process until oral polio vaccine was removed from the market as late as January 2000. This meticulously researched, levelheaded and well-written book should stir up considerable debate. Because the authors never become alarmist, this solid work of investigative reporting carries considerable weight, and deserves to be read by a large audience.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Imagine being snatched from the paralyzing jaws of polio, only to be blindsided later by the mysterious appearance of a lymphoma, mesothelioma, or brain or bone cancer that could have been prevented. According to journalists Bookchin and Schumacher, the mightiest salvo in the U.S. war against polio seems to have been contaminated with a carcinogenic virus. What's worse, efforts within the scientific community to prevent dispensing contaminated vaccines have been systematically stonewalled from the very beginning by nothing less than the federal government, which first denied the vaccine was contaminated and then denied that the viral contaminant causes cancer in humans--a denial it continues to make. Bookchin and Schumacher document dozens of independent studies and experiments that repeatedly link SV40, a virus imbedded in the monkey kidneys that were used as a polio vaccine medium, with the above-mentioned cancers. In a page-turning narrative, they recall a nation terrorized by polio, the scramble to find a preventive or cure, and how a federal initiative led to the immunization of millions of American schoolchildren with either Salk's or Sabin's vaccine, neither of which, apparently, was resistant to SV40. Bookchin and Schumacher name names, which may bring them not only more keenly interested readers but also enemies from among the medical elite. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A Must Read
This story is incredible and likely to disturb readers to the core. There are so many ways to go with writing a review. First, there's the readability factor: Scores a 10 there - it's a page turner as others have written. I read it over the course of 3 nights and found, like others, that it reads like a thriller or perhaps even a Grisham novel - only this story is TRUE.

Second, there's the important lessons for all of humankind factor: Scores a 10 in this department as well. Polio vaccine is a human invention; human beings are not infallible, they have never been infallible, and by extension there never has been nor will there ever be a human invention that is not prone to errors in human thinking, reasoning, and judgment and not subject to continuous improvements and/or great change as human knowledge advances.

Despite this undeniable truth, large health organizations and government health agencies would like the public to believe a very one-sided message about polio vaccine: that it is a medical milestone worthy of great praise and worship as it has delivered mankind from the evils of the childhood affliction of polio. Amen.

But that's only half the story. This book is about the other half - the one you won't read about in the press and that's about a great trade off of the polio vaccine. In exchange for reducing the rate of paralytic polio instances in childhood, has this wondrous medical marvel cut decades off many of our friends' and neighbors' lives? We all know people, some of them really great people, who died of rare and mysterious cancers in their 30s, 40s and 50s. They were diagnosed with cancer and as soon as treatments began their tumors spread fast and they succumbed quickly to their strange form of cancer. They left behind spouses, children and parents who will never be cared for by them in youth and old age.

I'm not suggesting that all, most or even some of these deaths are a result of SV-40 contaminated polio vaccine, but we are not in a position at present to ever know for sure as the party-line from the organizations who are supposed to protect public health continues to be that SV-40 in polio vaccines has not been proven to cause harm to man.

Please read this book and encourage other thinking people to read it too. There are many lessons that can be and should be learned from the polio vaccine history and SV-40 story. You'll also come away with new modern-day heroes who, unlike so many of the icons of today, are truly worthy of your respect and admiration. There are the scientists and researchers like Bernice Eddy, Michele Carbone and others who did and continue to do the right thing despite the many pressures to not stir up this pot. And then the biggest heroes of all in my mind are the authors for taking the time and dedicating years of their lives to accurately tell this great story...the true story that plain and simply has to be told.

A patient speaks out
I'm glad that someone has finally gone public, really public, about the contamination of polio vaccines with SV40. I was 25 when I was diagnosed with collapsing variant Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis, and immediately sought out research to try and find some help, and hope for my situation. The researcher I found is mentioned in the book as being one of the lucky few who is funded for SV40 Research. He has found the virus in a high percentage of patients with this kidney disease, including me. What the book doesn't say is that at the time he focused on SV40, he was searching for possible viral causes for the disease, and that's what his grant was for. When he sought a grant to focus on SV40 exclusively as a cause, his grant was denied.

I, too, am a researcher, and will soon be attending medical school. For the most part, I have been fortunate. I have recovered fully, while most of those afflicted with this disease don't, even with transplants. It recurs in the new organ. There is no telling whether my recovery is temporary or permanent. The researcher in question has come to regard me as a colleague, and even though he has lost his funding, he firmly believes SV40 plays a role in the disease, and has the data to support it. He will not give up on trying to find further funding for research in this area. It is my hope that people will not only read this book, but also be prompted by their curiosity to read the scientific papers cited in it, as I had already done prior to even knowing this book was coming. This book is the first to compile all of the data together and to reveal the overall conclusion- An error was made in the rush to find a way to prevent polio. One can accept that error in the short term for the benefit vs. risk during the polio epidemic. However, rather than making the small effort necessary to resolve that error and create a safer vaccine, our government decided to bury the data and continue manufacture and distribution of the contaminated materials. I may not be a physician yet, but I have read the Hippocratic Oath. Here are excerpts from that oath:

"Above All, Do No Harm"

"I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice."

"I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect."

It is shameful that the very people who took this oath have gone to such great lengths to continue administering a preventative measure against polio known to contain a harmful virus, knowing that it can easilly be made safer, and at the same time ensuring the prolonged and painful deaths of thousands from the variety of cancers and other diseases SV40 has been indicated to cause.

We'll never be prepared for a flu pandemic let alone biochemical warfare!
A powerful book, page-turning read and extremely well-organized for nonscientists - well-balanced, reminded us all to be aware of what goes into our bodies and to educate ourselves about our own health care choices. As a parent, I now wonder what our children received in their vaccines in the 1980s and 90s that I so blithely took them to receive.

After reading of one more example of our government's collusion with the pharmacentical industry as well as our government's inability to adapt to changing medical research, I am hopeless about our ability to prepare for the possible flu pandemic or any kind of biochemical warfare that may be in our future.