"Dr. Mary's Monkey"

[Jan Klimkowski]

... the contamination of polio vaccine with SV-40 has been known since 1960. Here's a mainstream scientific account. Full version in the Journal of Clinical Oncology here:

Well, my wife and I asked our primary school librarians to get us a copy of that journal when that article was published, but they couldn't find one. In the intervening years, of course, secondary school, college, family, employment and raising two kids to adulthood took precedence. My wife could now, as director of medical policy for a major health insuror, find a copy or ask her staff to hunt it down.

But I think I'll refrain from forwarding the link to her. :nurse:

Ed - for me the importance of that Journal of Clinical Oncology article does not lie so much in its conclusions about the role of SV40 in cancer, but in the mainstream scientific chronology that it establishes for awareness of the contamination of polio vaccine with SV40.

The article establishes that SV40 contamination was known by 1960. It does this by citing published clinical literature such as:

Sweet BH, Hilleman MR: The vacuolating virus, SV 40. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 105:420-427, 1960

Thus, it is possible that Dr Sherman knew of the SV40 issue at the time of the supposed Ferrie/Sherman/Oswald/Baker exchanges.

However, since I've personally destroyed peer-reviewed articles published in major clinical journals (eg The Lancet), and since I have not been able to study in detail all the relevant scientific literature around mutagenicity, and the credibllity of the design of epidemiological studies, etc etc etc, I merely note the article's conclusion that "there is inadequate evidence at this time to suggest widespread SV40 infection in the population or increased tumor incidence among those individuals who received contaminated vaccine".

The language is most important. In particular the use of the phrase "inadequate evidence" which can be translated as noone really knows.