Correspondence to: Stanley P. Kops, Esq., 210 West Washington Square, Third Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106 (e-mail: stankops{at}aol.com).
The news article by Nancy J. Nelson (1) repeats the current scientific dogma that simian virus 40 (SV40) was removed from all oral polio vaccine sold and administered in the United States. In a recent article (2), however, I have challenged this accepted "fact" based on legal documents and the absence of test results from at least one of the principal vaccine manufacturers, Lederle. As noted in that article, internal Lederle documents indicate that the company has not been able to document that it tested all vaccine seeds to confirm the absence of SV40 contamination. Therefore, statements in Nelson's article, such as "[p]eople most likely to have received contaminated vaccines were born from 1941 through 1961," are inaccurate and potentially misleading.
Dr. Strickler's statement that "[m]esotheliomas are developing in people who are too old to be vaccinated, and brain tumors [are developing] in children that are too young to have been vaccinated," may be explained by the presence of SV40 in the oral polio vaccine and the fact that oral polio vaccine can spread from the recipient to those who come in contact with the excretions (oral and fecal) of the recipient within a defined period of time (3). There has been no investigation of whether SV40 can be transmitted from individuals vaccinated with the live oral polio vaccine to unvaccinated individuals because everyone has assumed that SV40 was never in that product from the inception of its being sold in the United States.
Every scientist who is attempting to determine the role of SV40 as a cause of cancer in humans and every news reporter who is interested in this issue should demand all of the records of both the government and the vaccine manufacturer so that there can be a full scientific and independent investigation as to whether there was full compliance with the removal of SV40 from all oral polio vaccine used in the United States from 1962 until 2000. Oral polio vaccine is no longer sold in the United States, and only enhanced inactivated vaccine is now allowed for routine immunization.
REFERENCES
1
Nelson NJ. Debate on the link between SV40 and human cancer continues. J Natl Cancer Inst 2001;93:12846.
2 Kops SP. Oral polio vaccine and human cancer: a reassessment of SV40 as a contaminant based upon legal documents. Anticancer Res 2000;20:47459.[Medline]
3 Henderson DA, Witte JJ, Morris L, Langmuir AD. Paralytic disease associated with oral polio vaccines. JAMA 1964;190:418.[Medline]
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