Mercury Exposure is Unhealthy? What?!

What?! Mercury exposure is unhealthy? It is a known neurotoxin and it may cause problems in little children and pregnant women? Who knew?

And yet... I think lots of people did know and would question the healthfulness of having amalgam fillings and vaccines filled with it. I know I questioned it and now the FDA is finally doing the same, albeit after much foot dragging.

This, from a recent Newsweek article:

The reason, of course, is that mercury is a known neurotoxin, especially dangerous to developing brains. For decades anti-mercury activists have pushed the industry to develop substitutes (so-called composites, or resins, are now available), and even to persuade people to have their fillings ripped out, but have made very little headway.

Now they have won a big one. In a legal settlement signed last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has changed the information on its Web site about amalgam fillings to say that they “may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetus,” and that pregnant women “should not avoid seeking dental care, but should discuss options with their health practitioner.” Previously, there was no such warning. The FDA also agreed to decide by next year whether mercury fillings need more regulation.

The FDA had been dragging its feet for so long on mercury in dental fillings that even the judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, castigated the agency: “This is your classic failure to act,” she said. (The case is Moms Against Mercury et al. v. Von Eschenbach, Commissioner, et al. The “et al” plaintiffs are other consumer and environmental groups, as well as state officials.)

Where else might exposure to mercury be unhealthy? *cough, flu shots* What about aluminum, another known neurotoxin? *cough, cough, in every single vaccine, cough* Hmmmm...

Found It! 60 Minutes Swine Flu Segment

I thought I had lost this video--that it had been removed. I'm impatient and looked again and finally found it. Here it is again, just because.

Swine Flu Vaccine, 1976: Deja Vu All Over Again?

Here is a 60 Minutes segment on the Swine Flu Vaccine program of 1976. It's pretty clear that they didn't properly test the vaccine and it caused all sorts of injuries. Further more, the powers that be knew there were neurological problems associated with the vaccine, but advised people to take it any way. It's also true that in general all vaccines aren't very well tested now. There's no testing with unhealthy kids, yet they're expected to take the shots, and there's no long term safety studies.

The government didn't realize that the monkey virus SV40 that was in the polio vaccine in the 50's and 60's caused cancer until twenty years later.

The current swine flu (H1N1) vaccine is in development right now by Baxter International Inc. and is expected to be commercially available in July. What kind of testing do you suppose it will have undergone?

By the way, this 60 Minutes segment aired only once in 1979...

Here is also the transcript, for kicks...

60 MINUTES, Sunday Nov 4, 1979

"SWINE FLU"

MIKE WALLACE: The flu season is upon us. Which type will we worry about this year, and what kind of shots will we be told to take? Remember the swine flu scare of 1976? That was the year the U.S. government told us all that swine flu could turn out to be a killer that could spread across the nation, and Washington decided that every man, woman and child in the nation should get a shot to prevent a nation-wide outbreak, a pandemic.

Well 46 million of us obediently took the shot, and now 4,000 Americans are claiming damages from Uncle Sam amounting to three and a half billion dollars because of what happened when they took that shot. By far the greatest number of the claims - two thirds of them are for neurological damage, or even death, allegedly triggered by the flu shot.

We pick up the story back in 1976, when the threat posed by the swine flu virus seemed very real indeed.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD; This virus was the cause of a pandemic in 1918 and 1919 that resulted in over half a million deaths in the United States, as well as 20 million deaths around the world.

WALLACE: Thus the U.S. government's publicity machine was cranked into action to urge all America to protect itself against the swine flu menace. (Excerpt from TV commercial urging everyone to get a swine flu shot.) One of those who did roll up her sleeve was Judy Roberts. She was perfectly healthy, an active woman, when, in November of 1976, she took her shot. Two weeks later, she says, she began to feel a numbness starting up her legs.

JUDY ROBERTS: And I joked about it at that time. I said I'll be numb to the knees by Friday if this keeps up. By the following week, I was totally paralyzed.

WALLACE: So completely paralyzed, in fact, that they had to operate on her to enable her to breathe. And for six months, Judy Roberts was a quadriplegic. The diagnosis: A neurological disorder called "Guillian-Barre Syndrome" - GBS for short. These neurological diseases are little understood. They affect people in different ways.

As you can see in these home movies taken by a friend, Judy Roberts' paralysis confined her mostly to a wheelchair for over a year. But this disease can even kill. Indeed, there are 300 claims now pending from the families of GBS victims who died, alledgedly as a result of the swine flu shot. In other GBS victims, the crippling effects diminish and all but disappear. But for Judy Roberts, progress back to good health has been painful and partial.

Now, I notice that your smile, Judy, is a little bit constricted.

ROBERTS: Yes, it is.

WALLACE: Is it different from what it used to be?

ROBERTS: Very different, I have a – a greatly decreased mobility in my lips. AndI can't drink through a straw on the right-band side. I can't blow out birthday candles. I don't whistle any more, for which my husband is grateful.

WALLACE: It may be a little difficult for you to answer this question, but have you recovered as much as you are going to recover?

ROBERTS: Yes. This - this is it.

WALLACE: So you will now have a legacy of braces on your legs for the rest of your life?

ROBERTS: Yes. The weakness in my hands will stay and the leg braces will stay.

WALLACE: So Judy Roberts and her husband have filed a claim against the U.S. government. They're asking $12 million, though they don't expect to get nearly that much. Judy, why did you take the flu shot?

ROBERTS: I'd never taken any other flu shots, but I felt like this was going to be a major epidemic, and the only way to prevent a major epidemic of a - a really deadly variety of flu was for every body to be immunized.

WALLACE: Where did this so called "deadly variety of flu", where did it first hit back in 1976? It began right here at Fort Dix in New Jersey in January of that year, when a number of recruits began to complain of respiratory ailments, something like the common cold. An Army doctor here sent samples of their throat cultures to the New Jersey Public Health Lab to find our just what kind of bug was going around here. One of those samples was from a Private David Lewis, who had left his sick bed to go on a forced march. Private Lewis had collapsed on that march, and his sergeant had revived him by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But the sergeant showed no signs of illness. A few days later, Private Lewis died.

ROBERTS: If this disease is so potentially fatal that it's going to kill a young, healthy man, a middle-aged schoolteacher doesn't have a prayer.

WALLACE: The New Jersey lab identified most of those solders' throat cultures as the normal kind of flu virus going around that year, but they could not make out what kind of virus was in the culture from the dead soldier, and from four others who were sick. So they sent those cultures to the Federal Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, for further study. A few days later they got the verdict: swine flu. But that much-publicized outbreak of swine flu at Fort Dix involved only Private Lewis, who died, and those four other soldiers, who recovered completely without the swine flu shot.

ROBERTS: If I had known at that time that the boy had been in a sick bed, got up, went out on a forced march and then collapsed and died, I would never have taken the shot.

DR DAVID SENCER: The rationale for our recommendation was not on the basis of the death of a - a single individual, but it was on the basis that when we do see a change in the characteristics of the influenza virus, it is a massive public-health problem in the country.

WALLACE: Dr David Sencer, then head of the CDC - the Center of Disease Control in Atlanta - is now in private industry. He devised the swine flu program and he pushed it.

You began to give flu shots to the American people in October of '76?

DR SENCER: October 1st.

WALLACE: By that time, how many cases of swine flu around the world had been reported?

DR SENCER: There had been several reported, but none confirmed. There had been cases in Australia that were reported by the press, by the news media. There were cases in -

WALLACE: None confirmed? Did you ever uncover any other outbreaks of swine flu anywhere in the world?

DR SENCER: No

WALLACE: Now, nearly everyone was to receive a shot in a public health facility where a doctor might not be present, therefore it was up to the CDC to come up with some kind of official consent form giving the public all the information it needed about the swine flu shot. This form stated that the swine flu vaccine had been tested. What it didn't say was that after those tests were completed, the scientists developed another vaccine and that it was the one given to most of the 46 million who took the shot. That vaccine was called "X-53a". Was X-53a ever field tested?

DR SENCER: I-I can't say. I would have to -

WALLACE: It wasn't

DR SENCER: I don't know

WALLACE: Well, I would think that you're in charge of the program

DR SENCER: 1 would have to check the records. I haven't looked at this in some time.

WALLACE: The information form the consent form was also supposed to warn people about any risk of serious complications following the shot. But did it?

ROBERTS: No, I had never heard of any reactions other than a sore arm, fever, this sort of thing.

WALLACE: Judy Roberts' husband, Gene, also took the shot.

GENE ROBERTS: Yes, I looked at that document, I signed it. Nothing on there said I was going to have a heart attack, or I can get Guillain Barre, which I'd never heard of.

WALLACE: What if people from the government, from the Center for Disease Control, what if they had indeed, known about it, what would be your feeling?

JUDY ROBERTS: They should have told us.

WALLACE: Did anyone ever come to you and say, "You know something, fellows, there's the possibility of neurological damage if you get into a mass immunization program?"

DR SENCER: No

WALLACE: No one ever did?

DR SENCER: No

WALLACE: Do you know Michael Hattwick?

DR SENCER: Yes, uh-hmm.

WALLACE: Dr Michael Hattwick directed the surveillance team for the swine flu program at the CDC. His job was to find out what possible complications could arise from taking the shot and to report his findings to those in charge. Did you know ahead of time, Dr Hattwick that there had been case reports of neurological disorders, neurological illness, apparently associated with the injection of influenza vaccine?

DR MICHAEL HNITWlCK: Absolutely

WALLACE: You did?

DR HATIWICK: Yes

WALLACE: How did you know that?

DR HATrwICK: By review of the literature.

WALLACE: So you told your superiors - the men in charge of the swine flu immunization program - about the possibility of neurological disorders?

DR RATTWICK: Absolutely

WALLACE: What would you say if I told you that your superiors say that you never told them about the possibility of neurological complications?

DR HAJTWICK: That's nonsense. I can't believe that they would say that they did not know that there were neurological illnesses associated with influenza vaccination. That simply is not true. We did know that.

DR SENCER: I have said that Dr Hattwick had never told me of his feelings on this subject.

WALLACE: Then he's lying?

DR SENCER: I guess you would have to make that assumption.

WALLACE: Then why does this report from your own agency, dated July 1976, list neurological complications as a possibility?

DR SENCER: I think the consensus of the scientific community was that the evidence relating neurologic disorders to influenza immunization was such that they did not feel that this association was a real one.

WALLACE: You didn't feel it was necessary to tell the American people that information

DR SENCER: I think that over the - the years we have tried to inform the American people as - as fully as possible.

WALLACE: As part of informing Americans about the swine flu threat, Dr Sencer's CDC also helped create the advertising to get the public to take the shot. Let me read to your from one of your own agency's memos planning the campaign to urge Americans to take the shot. "The swine flu vaccine has been taken by many important persons," he wrote. "Example: President Ford, Henry Kissinger, Elton John, Muhammad Ah, Mary Tyler Moore, Rudolf Nureyev, Walter Cronkite, Ralph Nader, Edward Kennedy" -etcetera, etcetera, True?

DR SENCER: I'm not familiar with that particular piece of paper, but I do know that, at least of that group, President Ford did take the vaccination.

WALLACE: Did you talk to these people beforehand to find out if they planned to take the shot?

DR SENCER: I did not, no.

WALLACE: Did anybody?

DR SENC ER: I do not know.

WALLACE: Did you get permission to use their names in your campaign?

DR SENCER: I do not know.

WALLACE: Mary, did you take a swine flu shot?

MARY TYLER MOORE: No, I did not.

WALLACE: Did you give them permission to use your name saying that you had or were going to?

MOORE: Absolutely not. Never did.

WALLACE: Did you ask your own doctor about taking the swine flu shot?

MOORE: Yes, and at the time he thought it might be a good idea. But I resisted it, because I was leery of having the symptoms that sometimes go with that kind of inoculation.

WALLACE: So you didn't?

MOORE: No, I didn't.

WALLACE: Have you spoken to your doctor since?

MOORE: Yes.

WALLACE: And?

MOORE: He's delighted that I didn't take that shot.

WALLACE: You're in charge. Somebody's in charge.

DR SENCER: There are -

WALLACE: This is your advertising strategy that I have a copy of here.

DR SENCER: Who's it signed by?

WALLACE: This one is unsigned. But you--you'll acknowledge that it was your baby so to speak?

DR SENCER: It could have been from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. It could be from CDC. I don't know. I'll be happy to take responsibility for it.

WALLACE: It's been three years now since you fell ill by GBS right?

ROBERTS: Right.

WALLACE: Has the federal government, in your estimation, played fair with you about your claim?

ROBERTS: No, I don't think so. It seems to be dragging on and on and on, and really no end in sight that I can see at this point.

JOSEPH CALIFANO: With respect to the cases of Guillain Barre...

WALLACE: Former Secretary of HEW Joseph Califano, too was disturbed that there was no end in sight. So a year and a half ago, he proposed that Uncle Sam would cut the bureaucratic red tape for victims suffering from GBS and would pay up quickly.

CALIFANO: We shouldn't hold them to an impossible or too difficult standard of proving that they were hurt. Even if we pay a few people a few thousand dollars that might not have deserved it, I think justice requires that we promptly pay those people who do deserve it.

WALLACE: Who's making the decision to be so hard-nosed about settling?

CALIFANO: Well, I assume the Justice Department is.

WALLACE: Griffin Bell, before he left?

CALIFANO: Well, the Justice Department agreed to the statement I made. It was cleared word for word with the lawyers in the Justice Department by my HEW lawyers.

CALIFANO: That-that statement said that we should pay Guillain Barre claims without regard to whether the federal government was negligent, if they - if they resulted from the swine flu shot.

GENE ROBERTS: I think the government knows its wrong.

JUDY ROBERTS: If it drags out long enough, that people will just give up, let it go.

GENE ROBERTS: I—I am a little more adament in my thoughts than my wife is, because I asked - told Judy to take the shot. She wasn't going to take it, and she never had had shots. And I'm mad with my government because they knew the fact, but they didn't realise those facts because they - if they had released them, the people wouldn't have taken it. And they can come out tomorrow and tell me there's going to be an epidemic, and they can drop off like flies to - next to me, I will not take another shot that my government tells me to take.

WALLACE: Meantime, Judy Roberts and some 4,000 others like her are still waiting for their day in court.

I Thought There was no Money There...

I have read in several places that vaccines are not a money maker for pharmaceutical companies. It's all about the well being of patients and public health, I have heard said over and over again. Not true according to the Global Vaccine Forecast to 2012 put out by RNCOS Industry Solutions.

In a synopsis of the report they wrote,

“Global Vaccine Market Forecast to 2012”, our new research report, states that vaccines, which were earlier thought as a low margin, low growth industry, have emerged as one of the most lucrative segments in the pharmaceutical industry. With a projected CAGR growth of over 16% in the next five years, the industry will emerge as the fastest growing therapy area. The US and Europe represents the two largest vaccine markets (in fact, these tow countries were the largest markets in 2007) and will continue to experience healthy growth in future.

The synopsis of the report continues by forecasting the growth of the vaccine market, explaining how the pediatric market now dominates, but in the future it will be in the older population.

What kind of growth are we talking about here?

Owing to lower margins and the mature nature of these markets, the basic and enhanced pediatric markets are expected to show stagnant growth in future. On the other hand, launch of a number of new vaccines will make the addiction, cancer and proprietary pediatrics/adolescent vaccine market highly dynamic. On a whole, the global vaccine market is expected to register revenues in excess of US$ 30 Billion by 2012.

That's 30 billion oh-my-God-that's-more-than-some-countries'-entire-GDP dollars by 2012. Who's up for some addiction vaccines? How about more cancer vaccines, or perhaps some obesity vaccines?

You can read the synopsis here. Or, if you'd like, feel free to buy a copy of the full report. It's only $2,000.

That sounds like a lot of money for a report, however, I'm sure the pharmaceutical companies can more than recoup that from the $30 billion.

Oh, and again, it's not about the money. Don't be silly!

Vaccination Stance Poll Results

Many of you took the time to answer my recent Vaccination Stance Poll and I thank you. I realize that some of you were slightly irritated that you couldn't answer with multiple choices; that was an oversight. But, I'm going to group two sets of answers together on your behalf, after I give you the numbers.

The numbers:

53 people answered the poll.

1 (1%) of you answered that they have complete faith in it.

8 (15%) of you answered that you selectively vaccinate.

No one chose that they do no research and just do what the doctor says, although I know this is true for lots and lots of people. But, thankfully not here, you free thinkers you.

1 (1%) of you said that you have researched and vaccinated.

A whopping 33 (62%) of you said that you've researched and NOT vaccinated. There is a lot to see once you start looking, isn't there?

No one answered that they're not even comfortable questioning it. That seems really hopeful to me. There is always room for questions, isn't there?

No one answered with the question, Why wouldn't anyone vaccinate?! That seems hopeful to me too. There is a load of room for questions.

7 (13%) of you answered with the question, How could you inject those chemicals into your kids? I think you guys have researched, at least to the extent of finding out the ingredients of vaccines and probably much more extensively than that... so, I'm going to roll you guys into the researched/not vaccinating group. That brings those totals up to 40 (75%) of you.

2 (3%) of you think I am a loon. Oh yeah? What if I am? Maybe I think you are too! Did you ever think of that?! Did you?!

1 (1%) of you are all about business and would like this conversation to go back to the original idea of not buying new things. They answered with, Can we please just talk about not buying things?

Yes, we can. We can talk about not buying things. But, I include in that all of the mainstream ideas we are sold over and over again through advertising, institutions like schools, and medical organizations like the AAP. They want us to buy it, and I don't.

Thanks for voting everybody!

Rock the vote!

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny

I have a previous entry where I posted a video presentation by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny called, Vaccines: the Benefits, the Risks, the Choices. I think it might not always work for people, so I'm going to repost it here, and hopefully it will work.

If you have some time and would like to learn more about vaccines and where there may be problems or room for questions, please take a look at this video.

New Vaccination Poll

I think all of this vaccination talk may have disturbed some loyal readers out there. I think people may feel judged by me, because I have chosen a different path and have my reasons for doing so. (Yes, I am mad because I think we're being sold a bill of goods and it's not right.) I have listed some of my reasons here, and it may be that they've not considered some of these same things. Or, they just trust in science and can't believe that the whole vaccination program might be wrong, or terribly flawed. In any case, I think I've pissed some people off.

Sorry--I didn't intend that.

There's a new poll that asks about your vaccination stance. One of the choices is "Laura, you're a loon" and if you're the least bit pissed off at me, that might be a good one to choose. There are other choices as well, if you want to answer it honestly. Although, you may honestly feel that I am a loon, in which case go with that.

Please vote at the left there if you feel so inclined.

Thanks.

I Answer a Reader's Question About My Vaccination Stance

In the comments section in my recent post about vaccines shedding and what doctors say about that, if anything, a reader, Susie, wondered if I worry about diseases that vaccination is supposed to prevent. She wondered if non vaccinated kids are more at risk for catching those diseases, and wondered if that was a worry for me. She wrote,

Susie said...

Hey Laura,
I'm new to this topic. I've got an almost two year old who has been vaccinated on the recommended schedule. Her doctor is great (she's my doctor as well) and did give us information on side effects and when to not have the vaccine (during illness,etc.).
I've heard of the Dr. Sears method where you space out the shots given to your child,etc. But, how does not vaccinating your child work? Are your kids at a greater risk of developing some of these viruses,etc. because they haven't been vaccinated? As a daycare provider I'm sent letters every year that update me on what dangerous sicknesses are spring up around the state, and children in past years have even died from some of these random illnesses.
So...that was a lot of rambling :) Sorry! I'm just curious about whether you worry about your kids getting sick and how you deal with all of those worries or fears. Or..maybe you don't have them at all!! Thanks!

April 2, 2009 12:57 PM

The big answer to all of that is no, I don't worry. However, I do proactively do things that strengthen my kids' immune systems and that I think fortifies them against disease. Not that they may not catch a disease, they might (as might a vaccinated kid--the vaccines fail all of the time) but that their bodies will be able to clear a virus, or snuff out a cold easily and quickly.

I had no invasive prenatal testing. I didn't have a single ultrasound. I gave birth at home without any kind of drugs. I held my babies almost constantly and breastfed them on demand for years.

We eat very little sugar. We drink raw milk. We eat organic foods as much as possible. We eat meat from grass fed, pastured animals. We use coconut oil in smoothies and in cooking. We eat raw honey. We don't take allopathic medicines of any kind.

My son has never had antibiotics--no medicine from a doctor ever. My daughter and I both had antibiotics once together when I had a breast infection and we were both sick. That was over 7 years ago and no one since that time has had any kind of medicine from a doctor. We're not Christian Scientists and if we ever needed to take something, we would. But, we would first find out how to support the body to heal naturally. It seems to be working for all of us.

My kids do not have asthma. They have no food allergies. They have no skin ailments. They rarely get sick, and when they do they recover quickly. I think they have robust immune systems partly because they've not been tampered with.

As a pregnant woman with my first child, I knew I would have a homebirth. I already knew I would breastfeed as my mother had done. I knew that if I had a son, he would remain intact. I also knew that I didn't want to inject any chemicals into my kids.

Realizing this, I knew I should research and learn what I could and as much as I could.

What were the diseases that had vaccines? What were the current rates of infection? How were these common childhood diseases treated in the past? What were complications in these diseases? How were they treated? What was the risk of complications?

If my kids got sick, in general, how would I care for them? I read Dr. Robert Mendelsohn's book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor. I read with great interest the areas about fever. I found out that that's the body's way of burning off a bug. The body increases in temperature and the invading bug can't survive. It's curative. I knew then that I wouldn't try to treat fevers, I wouldn't ever give Tylenol. If It got crazy high, I might. But, it's never gotten crazy high in either of my kids. They get warm, briefly, and the next day they're fine.

I read Neil Z. Miller books, Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? and Immunization Theory Vs. Reality Expose on Vaccinations which both showed graphs, obtained from Vital Statistics from the government, that showed the precipitous decline of diseases, before the introduction of vaccines. Hmmm... That was very interesting to me. I saw other graphs that showed a low incidence of death from measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus well before the onset of vaccinations. Interesting.

I read the almost completely unreadable book by Viera Scheibner, Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows That Vaccines Represent an Assault on the Immune System that showed through orthodox research published in mainstream journals like JAMA and Lancet that vaccines are ineffective and are recognized as an assault on the immune system. Scientific studies showed this, but those are not what's quoted by the AAP, the American Academy of Pediatrics. These studies are also not what doctors look at. They're busy looking at patients. They're not scientists--never were--they treat patients with what they know. What they know is what they learned back in medical school. The medical school curricula is written by pharmaceutical companies. I find that interesting also.

Years later, after both of my healthy kids were born, I came across Dr. Sherri Tenpenny. As a conventionally trained doctor, Dr. Tenpenny has turned around on her understanding of routine vaccination. She has conducted thousands of hours of research into disease and vaccination and has produced an informative video explaining her change in thinking. She used to believe that vaccinations were a panacea, an answer to all that ails...she no longer believes this.

If you have some time, please view this video and see what you think.

As Louis Pasteur said on his deathbed, "The germ is nothing the terrain is everything."

No, I do not worry.

What do Doctors Tell Parents About Vaccination?

I'm wondering what doctors tell the parents in their practice who are going to vaccinate their children. Do they talk about side effects? Do they explain about the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and that they should report any kind of side effect? Do they talk about contraindications to vaccination--allergies, immunocompromised kids, illness?

Do they ask that parents keep their kids at home for the length of time that the live vaccines in them will be shedding? Do they explain what that means? For all the fervor a while ago with the actress Amanda Peet calling non-vaccinating parents parasites, do doctors tell parents that the live viruses injected into their kids will be excreted through feces, saliva, and nasal secretions for weeks at a time? Do they tell them to stay away from babies, or the elderly in their concern for their weakened systems which may not be able to fight off exposure to live viruses? Do they tell them that vaccines are not 100% effective and that they shouldn't risk exposing people to the live vaccine? Do they explain how negligent that is or how irresponsible or selfish?

I know doctors tell people that vaccines are well tested, but do they tell them that they're not tested for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or potential to impair fertility? Not that they've been found safe, rather that they're not even tested for that possibility? Do they tell them that Merck and other vaccine manufacturers aren't even looking? You can see that if you read Merck's package insert for MMR II (mumps, measles and rubella vaccine)


That's kind of amazing to me in light of SV40. I guess if you don't look, you don't find. Maybe that's enough of a scientific standard for some, but it seems a little bit shoddy to me.

Do doctors share the package inserts, as they're instructed to do in the package inserts?

Here's some information about the live nature of viruses in some vaccines. There's also some good information in the comments section. Which raises another question for me, has your doctor talked to you about nutrition for you or your kids?

Maybe your doctor should...

Secondary Transmission: The short and sweet about live virus vaccine shedding.

February 24, 2008 by generic
Filed under: Parents' Pages, Vaccine/Disease Analysis

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A child gets vaccinated and is from that moment on protected from the vaccine virus, correct? We all realize that vaccines are not 100% failproof, but is that the only concern?

If it only were that simple. The fact is that once a child is injected with a live virus vaccine (and let’s assume that this child is immune as a result of it) there are still other things to consider which most parents do not know about and most pediatricians fail to warn about - which is shedding!

Shedding is when the live virus that is injected via vaccine, moves through the human body and comes back out in the feces, droplets from the nose, or saliva from the mouth. Anyone who takes care of the child could potentially contract the disease for some time after that child has received certain live vaccines. This was a huge problem with the oral polio vaccine, and was one of the reasons why it was taken off the market in the US.

The OPV is still used in developing counties.

Secondary transmission happens fairly often with some of the live virus vaccines. Influenza, varicella, and Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) are the most common. On the other hand it may happen very seldom or not ever with the measles and mumps vaccine viruses.

Here are the vaccines that shed or have been known to result in secondary transmission:

Measles Vaccine - Although secondary transmission of the vaccine virus has never been documented, measles virus RNA has been detected in the urine of the vaccinees as early as 1 day or as late as 14 days after vaccination. (1)

In France, measles virus was isolated in a throat swab of a recently vaccinated child 4 days after fever onset. The virus was then further genetically characterised as a vaccine-type virus. (2)

Rubella Vaccine - Excretion of small amounts of live attenuated rubella virus from the nose and throat has occurred in the majority of susceptible individuals 7-28 days after vaccination. Transmission of the vaccine virus via breast milk has been documented. (3)

Chicken Pox Vaccine - Vaccine-strain chickenpox has been found replicating in the lung (4) and documented as transmtting via zoster (shingles sores) (5) as well as “classic” chickenpox (6) rash post-vaccination.

Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) - In areas of the world where OPV is still used, children who have been vaccinated with it pass the virus into the water supply through the oral/feces route. Other children who then play in or drink that water pick up the vaccine viruses, which can pass from person to person and spark new outbreaks of polio. (7)

FluMist Vaccine - The mist contains live attenuated influenza viruses that must infect and replicate in cells lining the nasopharynx of the recipient to induce immunity. Vaccine viruses capable of infection and replication can be cultured from nasal secretions obtained from vaccine recipients.

Transmission of a vaccine virus from a FluMist recipient to a contact was documented in a pre-licensing trial. The contact had a mild symptomatic Type B virus infection confirmed as a FluMist vaccine virus. (8)

Rotavirus Vaccine (RotaTeq) - There is a possibility that one strain of rotavirus which is presently circulating may be an “escaped” vaccine strain, from an old Finnish rotavirus vaccine. (9)

Following are excerpts from the discussion by the FDA Advisory Committee on RotaTeq vaccine shedding: (10)

Page 50:

The latest shedding that we saw was 15 days from dose one.

We had no subjects that shed after dose two, and only one subject shed after dose three. He shed four days from dose three.

Page 51:

A: The quantities were low, similar to what we saw in phase 2 studies, as well.

We also had two placebo recipients that shed, and of course, this raised a red flag for us.

B: Could this have been transmission of vaccine virus from vaccine recipients to placebo recipients?

A: We did a very thorough investigation looking for opportunities for a vaccine transmission to occur and did not find anything. These children were not siblings of a vaccine recipient. They didn’t attend day care with vaccine recipients. They didn’t have a common caretaker with the vaccine recipient, and in the office and clinic in which they were vaccinated, they were not exposed to vaccine recipients.

So going on then to summarize general safety, Rotateq was well tolerated….

Page 70:
Question and answer section -

Then with respect to the possibilities of how these children ended up with vaccine strains in their stool, we really could not find the answer for that. We even went so far as to look and see like on the day that that child was in the clinic, were other children getting vaccine, you know, right before or after them?

And that was not the case. So it has been a puzzle, and we don’t have an answer as to why these children had vaccine strains in their stool.

(One has to ask: Could the reason have been that someone mixed up the placebo with the actual vaccine vials and consequently some kids of the control group got the real vaccine?)

Source:
(1) Detection of Measles RNA
(2) Detection of measles vaccine in the throat of a vaccinated child.
(3) MMR II
(4) Vaccine Oka Varicella-Zoster Virus
(5) Chickenpox Attributable to a Vaccine Virus
(6) Genetic Profile of an Oka Varicella Vaccine Virus
(7) Polio Outbreak in Nigeria
(8) Flumist
(9) Human and Bovine Serotype G8 Rotaviruses
(10) Products Advisory Committee

Tags: bumps, causing sickness with vaccines, diarrhea, fever and rash, fine rash, german measles, impfen, Impfkontroverse, Impfung, Impfungen, infecting others with the vaccine virus, lacy rash, passing the vaccine virus, rash, spreading vaccine virus

Comments

2 Comments on Secondary Transmission: The short and sweet about live virus vaccine shedding.

jules on Mon, 25th Feb 2008 10:18 am


I believe the titer test(blood test) for Measles can also tell if it was the vaccine-type Measles or wild Measles. Someone feel free to correct me if I am wrong:)

Some people never develop an immunity-vaccinated or not. That is why some people get chicken pox more than once, or some women get repeated Rubella vaccines and still show no immunity. Reinfection is also always ‘possible’ if vaccine or natural immunity wears off over time due to NOT being exposed which helps keep immunity level up.

Marconi on Mon, 25th Feb 2008 10:45 pm


The titre blood test cannot differentiate between vaccine-type measles or wild measles. In order to do that, the virus would have to be typed with a test called Polymerase Chain Reaction, and the “bar code” compared with the reference viruses for either the vaccine virus, or the wild virus. Furthermore, the vaccine virus varies slightly with every new attenuation, so each batch of vaccine might show a slight genetic variation from each other.

To say some people never develop immunity, vaccinated or not is very simplistic. If you mean, some people never show antibodies on a titre test, that too is very simplistic. The current titre test offered to parents is a crude measure. Using other tests such as ELISA, antibodies can be picked up, which the standard titre test does not.

It is “normal” for some people to develop antibodies, for antibotides to subside over time, and for a titre test years later to show no antibodies. However, if you vaccinated those people, or blood tested them before and after a known exposure and subclinical infection during with the person shows no signs of infection, the immediate rise in detectable antibodies over a period of days is a specific curve which shows an anamnestic response. What that means is that the person actually did have immunity, but it was “memory” immunity. Just because a person doesn’t have “detectable” immunity according to a titre test, doesn’t mean they have lost their immunity.

What it means is that immunologists have not yet devised a method for detecting permanent “memory” immunity.

Virology texts are also interesting, in that they point out that many children who don’t have antibodies cope very well with diseases like measles. The reason for that is that the key to survival of a first exposure to disease in any person, isn’t antibodies anyway. When you first come in contact with any disease, how well you survive that is due to your “cellular” immune system, which does utilise IgA, and IgM at some point if you have a normal immune system. But most textbooks, even older ones by ‘greats’ like McFarlane Burnett, describe in great detail, children who have no antibodies, who cruise through measles and polio. The rate of paralytic polio in normal children (using the most virulent strain as a reference point) is one case of paralysis, per 100 children with mild symptoms. The historical rate of paralysis in children with no antibodies is 6 per 100. So while children with no antibodies are 6 times more likely to get paralytic polio, the cellular immune system of those children guarantees that 94 out of 100 of them will not.

Yes, some children with no antibodies will get sick and die. But not all of them will.

The key to fighting an infection for the first time, in everyone, normal or not, is a well functioning cellular immunity is nutrition, nutrition, and nutrition. A person can have a normal immune system, but if they have malnutrition or bad nutrition, their immune system will not work properly, and they can die regardless. Anyone working in Africa can tell you that. The connection between nutrition, infection and immunity has been, and is very strong in the medical literature.

A huge amount of “immunity” is based on the integrity of the gastro-intestinal system, and the person’s nutritional status. Antibodies are essential the net at the bottom of the cliff, which while vital, isn’t the most important factors.

Using Tetanus as an example, were antibodies the most important part of the immune system with regard to protection against tetanus, then the human beings on the earth would never have got past the first generation. Even in the western world, civilians had no access to a tetanus vaccine until around 1960 (at least in the country in which I live). You just have to look at your own family tree to realise that your great great grandparents probably died of other things rather than tetanus during childhood.

So the use of antibodies as a measuring rod of “immunity” is not only a very crude measure, it’s inaccurate. But it’s a very useful “weapon” with which to create fear.




Note: I didn't bold or enlarge the font in the first two paragraphs on purpose. I don't really mean to be yelling with my post up there. I'm just trying to talk and I can't correct it, darn it. Sorry about the bold and the large... that's a soap opera, right?

Who's up for Some Light Reading? Adventitious Agents in Vaccines

Occasionally, I check out the Vaccines forum at Mothering.com. There are all sorts of varying points of view, but more importantly there are great links to government sites where you can read things that aren't generally written for the public--in other words, they're not dumbed down, or written to scare people into compliance with certain public health agendas. They are minutes from meetings, or information compiled for doctors (the CDC Pink Book for example).

You can read the source material yourself and see what you can glean from it all.

I came across this link in a woman's signature at the bottom of her post. It is a set of meeting minutes from the fda.gov site from a workshop for government agencies dealing with infected animal tissues which are used to grow diseases which are then harvested and used to make vaccines. Whew--did you get that? Monkey kidneys, the sides of calves, eggs have all been used to grow diseases. This workshop speaks to contaminants (adventitious agents) in the cells of monkey kidneys, the sides of calves and eggs that inadvertently get mixed into the vaccines themselves.

A well known contaminant is SV40. It was a monkey virus that was in polio vaccine for years and years before anyone realized it was in there. It has shown up in various cancerous tumors even now. Millions of people were exposed to this monkey virus through vaccination.

This workshop speaks to trying to control these kinds of contaminants.

Let's read some together, shall we? I'll have the minutes in blue so you can differentiate between what they said and what I will say. After you read this post, you might want to go and check out the original minutes from the meeting for yourself.

Welcome:

              U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES


                       PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE

                   FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

           CENTER FOR BIOLOGICS EVALUATION AND RESEARCH

             INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR BIOLOGICALS


                 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND
                        INFECTIOUS DISEASES

                  NATIONAL VACCINE PROGRAM OFFICE

                     WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION


                             + + + + +

        EVOLVING SCIENTIFIC AND REGULATORY PERSPECTIVES ON
       CELL SUBSTRATES FOR VACCINE DEVELOPMENT

                             + + + + +


                             WORKSHOP

                              + + + +

                              Friday,
                         10 September 1999

A Dr. Phil Minor was introduced to open up the meeting and to give an overview of the issues involving cell substrates in vaccine production.

10                I would like to introduce the first

 11    speaker, Dr. Phil Minor, from the National Institute

 12    of Biological Standards and Control, who will be


 13    giving us an introduction to adventitious agent

 14    issues, both reviewing the past and current experience

 15    with adventitious agent contamination of biologicals


 16    in vaccines.

 17                DR. MINOR:  Thanks.  Thanks very much.

 18    Can I have the slide on, please, or do I just press it

 19    here?


 20                What I am going to do is to review firstly

 21    all of biologicals, if you like, from an adventitious

 22    agent point of view.  So it won't just be vaccines.


 23    In particular, I will be talking about the range of

 24    source materials that people have used in preparing

 25    biologicals.  There will be a clear message that comes


                                                                       5

  1    out of that, which is that the more you use well-


  2    characterized cells, the better.

  3                I will also be talking about the SV40

  4    story in some detail, which has been gone through a

  5    number of times, but I will be going through it from


  6    a particularly regulatory point of view because again,

  7    there is a message there which says that if you get it

  8    wrong, you will still be working on it 40 years later.




Let's read more.



11                So there are a variety of source materials

 12    that you can use if you are preparing biologicals.


 13    They are sort of listed here, if you like.  There are

 14    biological materials which are made from whole

 15    animals.  That would include things like blood and


 16    blood products.  I will describe that in a moment.  So

 17    you can just go to a whole animal and take something

 18    out and make your biological from that.

 19                You can use your whole animal as a


 20    substrate for growth.  I will discuss that in the

 21    context of things like influenza vaccines and the

 22    like.


 23                You can grow material on primary cells.

 24    This was the main starting point for things like polio

 25    vaccines in the early days, where the SV40 issue


                                                                       6

  1    arose.  Finally, you can grow materials on well-


  2    characterized cell preparation.

  3                The further down the list you go on this

  4    thing, probably the happier you are from the

  5    adventitious agent point of view.


  6                This shows some examples of contaminants

  7    which have arisen when whole animals have been used as

  8    source materials or the origin of the source material.


  9    Most of these will be human rather than anything else,

 10    but really an awful lot of the serious adventitious

 11    agent problems that have arisen have arisen because of

 12    materials sourced from whole animals or using pooled


 13    preparation.

My take away at this very early point in the presentation is acknowledgment of problems in vaccine production. Carry on.

14                The first one on this list here is CJD,

 15    Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease, which was transmitted by


 16    growth hormone.  The growth hormone was produced from

 17    human cadaveric material.  A very unpleasant disease.

 18    It's almost impossible to detect the agent other than

 19    by standing back and waiting for the incubation period


 20    to go.

 21                In France, there are still a large number

 22    of cases coming through as a result of this.  It may


 23    well be that around 10 percent are recipients of

 24    human-derived growth hormone, will actually wind up

 25    going down with CJD in France.

Whoa, whoa whoa! Hold on a minute. A disease is passed on to people in France from growth hormone which was derived from producing it in human cadaveric material. "A very unpleasant disease." he said. "Almost impossible to detect the agent other than by standing back and waiting for the incubation period to go." You can't detect it except after the people have it?!? Around 10% of people receiving growth hormone in France will come down with this disease?!

Huh. Sounds a little sloppy. Let's continue.

  
6                Scrapie was first shown to be a

     7    transmissible agent by the use of a TBE vaccine, which

     8    was grown in the brains of sheep.  TBE being tick-


     9    borne encephalitis, which then transmitted scrapie to

    10    a large number of the sheep that were actually

    11    inoculated with it.  So again, this is a whole animal

    12    source material, if you like, that had quite serious


    13    consequences, especially if you were a sheep.

Good one doc, "...especially if you were a sheep." Ha, ha.

Back to humans.

14                Over the last 15 or 20 years or so, one of

 15    the best examples of serious or disease-causing


 16    transmissions of infectious agents has been through

 17    human blood and blood-derived materials, clotting

 18    factors in particular.  In all of these things, the

 19    entire alphabet soup of hepatitis viruses has been


 20    transmitted by blood product.

 21                In the early days at least, some of these

 22    were really regarded as really a hazard, if you like,


 23    of being a hemophiliac.  So, for example, hepatitis C,

 24    in the days when there was a non-A, non-B hepatitis,

 25    it was really regarded as an inevitable consequence of


                                                                       8

  1    using factor 8 to treat hemophilia.  I am not sure


  2    that that is an acceptable way of actually doing

  3    things any more.  I am sure that hemophiliacs would

  4    agree with that.  B-19, paravirus B-19 is still

  5    transmitted by clotting factors.

Continuing on...

6                Finally, this one down at the bottom here

  7    is a classic example of a transmission by a vaccine,

  8    if you like, where hepatitis B was transmitted by


  9    yellow fever vaccine back in the 1940s.  The hepatitis

 10    B actually came from the stabilizers of the albumin

 11    that was actually put in there to keep it stable.

 12                There is a story that Fred McCallum, who


 13    is head of the Public Health Service in the United

 14    Kingdom tells to the effect that he basically won the

 15    war because he prevented Winston Churchill having a


 16    yellow fever vaccine when he was going off to talk

 17    with Stalin around 1944.

 18                So most of the serious consequences really

 19    come from whole animal source materials, if you like.


 20    You can use whole animals as substrates.  I'm using

 21    the term "whole animals" in a fairly broad sense.

 22    Eggs in the definition of the Animal Regulated Use Act


 23    in the United Kingdom count as an animal because they

 24    are embryonated.

Yikes. Glad Churchill skipped that vaccine too. Albumin are the egg whites that were in there. Let's continue.

25                For many years, rabies vaccines were


                                                                       9

  1    produced in mouse brain or sheep brain.  They have


  2    quite serious consequences, but not necessarily

  3    associated with adventitial agents.  You can get

  4    encephalitis as a result of immune responses to the

  5    non-invasic protein.

Wait. Wait just a minute. Hold it right there. "You can get encephalitis as a result of immune responses to the non-invasic protein." The protein that's in there can cause encephalitis?! Not some additional contaminant causing it?! (Adventitial agents. Unknown pathogens that are present in the cell lines that are used to produce vaccines and that can become part of the final vaccine.) Your body's natural immune response can bring on the encephalitis?!

I wonder if there are other proteins in other vaccines that can cause this kind of response. Hmmm.

Do they still use mouse brains?

6                The Japanese  encephalitis vaccine, which

  7    is used for travelers in the United Kingdom, is still

  8    made in mouse brain.  So it's not an unusual source of


  9    material, if you like.  Smallpox for a long time was

 10    made on the scarified flanks of calves.  Like I said,

 11    isn't any more.  However, while these things seem

 12    really quite primitive, in terms of how you make


 13    vaccines nowadays, you still have a number of vaccines

 14    that are made in eggs.  Yellow fever is the classic

 15    example, and influenza.

Reading on...

4                Influenza is an actuated vaccine.  Again,

  5    it's not made on SPF eggs, that is, specified


  6    pathogen-free eggs.  They are avian leukosis free, but

  7    they are not free of all the other variety of

  8    pathogens that you would choose to screen for measles


  9    vaccine production system, for example.

 10                So even today then you have to bear in

 11    mind that a large amount of vaccine that's made is

 12    made on really quite crude materials, from an


 13    adventitious agent point of view.  It's not a trivial

 14    usage.  In fact, when you go through and consider what

 15    vaccines are actually made on these days, they are


 16    quite primitive, if you like, in some respects.

What are SPFs? What's that you say? It means Specified Pathogen Free? So if a vaccine is made from eggs that are not SPF it means that there may be pathogens in there?! "It's not a trivial usage." The doctor said. Meaning, a LOT of vaccines are made on materials where they don't know whether there are any harmful pathogens in there or not... The doctor continued, "In fact, when you go through and consider what vaccines are actually made on these days, they are quite primitive, if you like, in some respects." Huh, ya think?! Yeah, I've got to agree on this one. It sounds like a noxious witches brew. (Not to offend Wiccans. I think they would use some nice herbs or something. Nothing noxious...)

"Oh, but that's crazy." you're thinking. Yep, it is.

Onward to SV40.

24                SV40 is one that I'm going to talk about

 25    in some detail in a minute.  This was in polio


                                                                      11

  1    vaccines in the 1950s and very early 1960s, probably,


  2    a source from rhesus monkey kidney.  Polio vaccines

  3    are still made on monkey kidney, though they are not

  4    usually on rhesus monkey kidney.  It would be

  5    cynomologous or something like that, for reasons which


  6    I'll describe in a moment.

  7                Nonetheless, a great deal of vaccine is

  8    still made in primary monkey kidney cells.  There are


  9    reasons for that.  There's a deep conservatism I think

 10    about changing the vaccine production process if you

 11    have a vaccine that works, largely because you are

 12    dealing with a prophylactic material rather than a


 13    therapeutic material.  So you don't want to mess about

 14    with anything if it's reasonably safe and effective.

OK. So no one wants to change things that they think are working. Some might argue about the whole "reasonably safe and effective" thing, in light of SV40. Nonetheless, let's hear you explain about SV40 *cough, harmful, cough*--let's hear more about that. But before that, let's hear about some other problems first.

15                I'll mention very briefly the defective


 16    retrovirus story in chick embryos.  I think Jim

 17    Robertson will probably mention this in more detail,

 18    but I will mention that just as I go by.  Finally

 19    recently, the FDA released a talk paper on a


 20    preparation of urokinase, which is used in treating

 21    the heart.  This material was grown from primary

 22    cultures made from aborted fetuses.  I think it was


 23    aborted fetuses or miscarriages, or whatever.  There

 24    were quite a variety of infectious agents were

 25    actually found in this.  I believe this one has now


                                                                      12

  1    been suspended.

Ah!! Suspended one because, "There were quite a variety of infectious agents were actually found in this." Great. But, what about the infections that aren't found right away, like SV40? What's your point here?

2                The point is that there are still a large

  3    number of materials which are made on really quite

  4    basic culture systems, if you like, where adventitious

  5    agents are a serious consideration, if you like.  So


  6    it's not all continuous cell lines versus the rest.

  7    I mean there are -- most of the vaccines that are made

  8    in the world probably come from other primary cultures


  9    or eggs or things of that nature.

"Primary cultures"? Oh you mean animals and animal parts where infectious agents can get mixed in? Wait, I skipped that part. Let's look again:

17                Primary cultures as been described

 18    previously around here, are really cultures that are

 19    made directly from the animal.  So they are not one


 20    pass.  They are directly from the animal, if you like.

 21    Here are a number of examples where agents are

 22    actually being found or at least located in these kind


 23    of cultures.

And you said that, "most of the vaccines that are made in the world probably come from other primary cultures or eggs or things of that nature." Well, I see why that would be a concern, certainly. Animals and eggs have their own viruses and infections and they just get mixed into the vaccines don't they?

Tell us about SV40.

10                I will now talk about SV40.  I'm sure in

 11    this audience there are people who know far more about

 12    SV40 than I do.  But nonetheless, I'll talk about this


 13    from what you might call the regulatory adventitious

 14    agent point of view, if you like.

 15                So it's a very common polyoma virus of old


 16    world monkeys, and particularly rhesus macaques.  The

 17    difficulty with this was that when the rhesus macaque

 18    monkeys are sacrificed and a primary monkey kidney

 19    culture is made from him or her, as the case may be,


 20    a silent infection is set up.  So there is on evidence

 21    of infection just by looking at the cultures.  In

 22    fact, these cultures can throw out as much SV40 as


 23    they do polio, when you start infecting it with polio.

 24    So you wind up with a culture that's just stiff with

 25    adventitious agent which you really don't want.


                                                                      13

  1                It's able to transform non simian cells in


  2    vitro, and it can be tumorigenic if you have the right

  3    kind of animal that you put it into.  Between 55 and

  4    62, probably at least a third of all the vaccines that

  5    were made on these kind of cultures, because they were


  6    pooled and the like, were almost certainly

  7    contaminated with SV40.  It wasn't a trivial

  8    contamination.  It was really quite a serious


  9    contamination.

 10                Because it was mainly an activated polio

 11    vaccine, there wouldn't have been that much live SV40

 12    in it perhaps.  But SV40 is more resistant to formalin


 13    than polio is.  So almost everybody who received the

 14    shot of inactivated polio in the 1950s, which would

 15    include me, would have received live SV40 in some form


 16    or another.

 17                So the concern is really summarized here,

 18    which is basically that everybody, I mean this is my

 19    own take on it, that everybody -- I mean you can argue


 20    that it might not have been sort of everybody, but I

 21    think it probably was.  But almost everybody who

 22    received the full course of polio vaccine between 1955


 23    and 1965, also got live SV40 stuck into them.  That's

 24    millions of people basically.

Wow. That sounds awful. An entire generation exposed to Sv40. I wonder if there was some kind of carcinogenic effect with that additional monkey virus. Was there? Surely vaccine safety standards would have ensured that that was studied for years and years.

25                There were epidemiological studies that


                                                                      14

  1    were done at the time which really didn't cause much


  2    concern, but they can all be criticized.  Some of the

  3    studies were really quite short-term, about two or

  4    three years or so, looking to see if there were cancer

  5    effects basically, as a result of SV40.  It may be


  6    that two or three years is not enough to actually find

  7    such an effect, if it actually exists.

Such adverse conditions may not show up for years and years afterwards? But, vaccines have no long term studies like that...

16                So while the studies were reassuring, the

 17    most reassuring thing was that there was no sudden

 18    surge of cancers that you can actually trace back to

 19    polio vaccine usage in the United States or in Europe


 20    where these things were used in a big way.  So it

 21    really did seem that in the long term, over about 19

 22    to 20 years, there was no real cause for alarm.

OK. So maybe a little monkey virus between friends is no big deal. No problem! Wait, what?

23                However, in 1992, Michaili Carboni and

 24    colleagues and others, a number of others, including

 25    Janet Butelle down in Texas and the like, identified


                                                                      15

  1    SV40 sequences which were present in a variety of


  2    relatively rare tumors.  So mysathelia, which is the

  3    asbestos tumor, osteosarcomas, pendymonas, actually

  4    the young chorioid plexus tumors of children, these

  5    sequences do appear to be genuine SV40 sequences.


  6                Where they come from is really not quite

  7    clear.  Part of the argument was that you could get

  8    similar types of tumors in experimental animals, like


  9    hamsters.  I think that is probably the only example

 10    where a hamster is cited as a good model for a human

 11    being perhaps.  But who knows?  In fact, this might

 12    actually be an argument that this has got nothing to


 13    do with it.

 14                So the question then arises as to where

 15    did the SV40 sequences come from.  Of course the


 16    classic response really would have been it must have

 17    come from the polio vaccine because why not?

Say, I have a question--how did SV40 cancer causing monkey virus show up in kids if the contaminated polio was discovered in the early 60's? How is it effecting kids and giving them cancer? You did change the monkeys to the ones without SV40, right? Let's read.

18                Now SV40 was discovered around 1961 or

 19    1962 or thereabouts, 1960 perhaps.  Directly it was


 20    discouraged.  There were precautions put in place to

 21    exclude it from polio vaccines, because it was known

 22    to be a tumor kind of virus, if you like.  These were


 23    the kind of things that were put in place.  They are

 24    listed in WHO requirements from about 1962 onwards.

 25    They reached their final fully flowered form, if you


                                                                      16

  1    like, by about 1965.  A number of countries certainly


  2    had put this in place before that.

  3                The first thing you can do is to use

  4    seronegative animals as the source of cells.  So you

  5    can use animals that have no evidence of SV40


  6    infection as your source.  That really is something

  7    which is now very firmly in place, which manufacturers

  8    now do.

Good. We're listening. Continue.

9                The second thing is, you remember I said

 10    that it was the rhesus macaques with the problems.

 11    The problem was that the cell cultures didn't show any

 12    sign of having defect, when they were actually


 13    infected with SV40.  What you can do then is you can

 14    use species, such as cynomolgus or pattus monkeys,

 15    where the primary monkey kidney culture cell, when


 16    infected with SV40, will actually wrinkle up and die

 17    on you.  So at least you know you have got something

 18    nasty and you can throw it away.

 19                Finally, you can test your control of


 20    production cultures for SV40 by the same kind of

 21    procedure.  That is why using sesetral cells to see if

 22    anything comes through.

Gotcha. Go on.

23                Around the period that this was taking

 24    place, wild caught monkeys were being used extensively

 25    in vaccine production.  Up to a half of the cultures


                                                                      17

  1    would have been thrown away because of adventitious


  2    agent contamination, mainly foamy virus, but certainly

  3    other things as well.  I think that just illustrates

  4    the kind of lack of control, if you like, over the

  5    source materials that was going on, and the extent to


  6    which adventitious agents are really a serious problem

  7    in finding monkey kidney cultures or primary cultures

  8    in general.

Yeah, I again have to agree with you--it all sounds sloppy and impossible to control. But, I'm not a doctor--what do I know?!

9                An alternative way of doing this is to

 10    actually use a validated cell bank.  Certainly many

 11    manufacturers use MRC5, and Mary of course used vira

 12    cells, as we heard last night.


 13                Nonetheless, a significant, if indeed not

 14    a large proportion of the world's supply of polio

 15    vaccine is still made on primary monkey kidney cells,


 16    which should really fit this kind of criteria for

 17    excluding SV40.

 18                One of the questions that then arises is

 19    were these precautions good enough?  What we did at


 20    NIBSC, because we happened to have about 150-odd

 21    batches of vaccine archived from the years, was to go

 22    back and look at them by PCR.  PCR of course is the


 23    cat's pajamas.  It's really the best technique that

 24    anybody ever invented in terms of sensitivity.  It's

 25    probably about as good as infectivity, at least in our


                                                                      18

  1    hands anyway.


  2                But nonetheless, we went back and we

  3    looked by PCR at 133 preparations of polio vaccine

  4    which had been used in the United Kingdom between 1966

  5    and about 1997.  What we had done was looked at all


  6    batches of vaccine which had been used since 1980, and

  7    all of those were free of SV40 sequences.  So that

  8    gives you some reassurance that these precautions were


  9    actually appropriate.

 10                In fact, the only preparation which had

 11    any SV40 sequence in it at all was a seed virus which

 12    was used by a manufacturer for making vaccine from.


 13    The amount that was in there was around two logs worth

 14    of genome as opposed to seven logs of genomes in a

 15    really full-fledged infected preparation.  So there


 16    wasn't that much in there.  The manufacturer had also

 17    treated this stuff with toluidine blue, which is

 18    supposed to kill of SV40.  This was done on the advice

 19    of Albert Sabin back in 1960-something or other.


 20                But nonetheless, it does seem to me that

 21    it's rather a foolish thing to have a seed that's got

 22    SV40 sequences in it at all.  I think the WHO


 23    requirements have now been changed so the seed has to

 24    be checked to see if it does have SV40 sequences in

 25    it or not.

You think it's foolish for the seed virus to have SV40 in it--even if it's a little, teeny, tiny bit?

Tell us more about the kids and their cancer. If there was no more SV40, how did they get it?

1                This particular seed was not infectious


  2    SV40.  We did some quite serious studies on it, like

  3    transvecting the DNA into cells to see if it would

  4    work, infecting monkeys with it to see if we could

  5    actually get seroconversion.  There was no


  6    seroconversion.  So there was no infectious virus

  7    there that we could actually detect.  But nonetheless,

  8    the seed did have material in it.


  9                If on the other hand you look at materials

 10    from around the 1960s or from other parts of the world

 11    a little bit later than that, you can pick up SV40

 12    sequences quite easily.  So the method would have


 13    picked it up had it been there.

 14                So our conclusion from that was then that

 15    really as soon as these kind of precautions were put


 16    in place, no SV40 would have been present in all polio

 17    vaccines used, at least in the United Kingdom and I

 18    would guess in the United States as well, because it's

 19    after the same kind of precautions were put in place.


 20    So the precautions were adequate.  Which means that

 21    SV40 exposure of the population through polio vaccines

 22    would have stopped around 1962.


 23                So what you then have is the problem of

 24    the chorioid plexus and appendinoma tumors, which

 25    occur in children who are around two years of age or


                                                                      20

  1    maybe less.  You have to say well how did they get a


  2    hold of the SV40 sequences?  One possibility, which is

  3    mooted with some enthusiasm is that maybe you are

  4    getting passage of SV40 from parents who did receive

  5    the SV40 contaminated polio vaccine to their children.

What?! Are you telling me that it's possible that parents who were infected with SV40 in the polio vaccine that they got before the early 60's could be passing it down to their kids?

6    So how this stuff gets around is quite important.

  7                One of the things that we have been

  8    involved in is doing serological surveys of


  9    populations to see who has got SV40 antibodies and who

 10    hasn't.  It is about a five percent seropositivity by

 11    the assay that we're using at least.  It seems to peak

 12    at around age 10 or thereabouts, and doesn't arise


 13    after that.

 14                So what you could argue then is that you

 15    are seeing vertical transmission from parents down to


 16    their children. 

Vertical transmission? Where a mother passes on an infection while the baby is in utero? It's continuing to another generation? Cancer causing monkey viruses are being passed from generation to generation?

What other known or unknown infections, viruses or other contaminants will be passed from generation to generation?

2                The point about this long story which I

  3    have just been telling you about SV40 is that SV40 was

  4    a problem between 1955 and 1962, and it's now 1999,

  5    and we still don't really know what was going on.

Yeah, that seems patently obvious...

So


  6    if you actually make a mistake, it's really quite

  7    serious.  It may keep you occupied for the rest of

  8    your working life.


  9                One last quick thing or two last slides

 10    here.  One is about reverse transcriptase of vaccines.

 11    Dr. Schuepbach will be talking later and Jim Robertson

 12    will be talking in a moment about detection of reverse


 13    transcriptase in chicken cell grown vaccines, such as

 14    flu or yellow fever or measles, mumps, rubella.

 15                This appears to be due to the presence of


 16    defective non-infectious particles.  There are

 17    sequences from EAV and ALV both in these things, a

 18    ratio of about nine to one as I understand it.  It

 19    does seem to me that you are not really quite sure


 20    what the AV sequence is in there and what ALV sequence

 21    is in there.  It's probably going to vary from chicken

 22    to chicken in so far as these chickens have not been


 23    bred.  In other words, every egg is a new experiment.

 24    You are really not quite sure what you are dealing

 25    with in that.  I think that is quite an unfortunate


                                                                      23

  1    position to be in.  I'm not sure how you control it.

I'm not sure what "reverse transcriptase" is. It doesn't sound good and the doctor explained it's involved with chicken cell grown vaccines: flu, yellow fever, measels, mumps and rubella. As he said, "In other words, every egg is a new experiment. You are really not quite sure what you are dealing with in that. I think that is quite an unfortunate position to be in. I'm not sure how you control it."

It doesn't sound to me like any of these vaccines grown and harvested on living animal tissues or cadaveric tissues is controlled or understood very well. Of course I'm not a doctor, but I just read the words of one--he sounds concerned.

2                Finally, this is my last slide, and this

  3    has to do with characterized cells.  The issues that

  4    I have been dealing with really have been to do with

  5    primary cells and primary cell problems where the


  6    virus comes in direct from the animal origin.  I think

  7    there is no doubt in my mind that that's the main

  8    source of concern in terms of human health.


  9                Nonetheless, there are clearly problems

 10    which also arise with characterized cells and the

 11    continuous cell lines, in particular.  We have some

 12    down here.


 13                Now the regulatory authorities in the room

 14    will be well aware of a large number of other examples

 15    of this type which don't actually get published.  I


 16    think that's not so good.  I think this stuff really

 17    should be out there in the public literature.

Wow, "...a large number of other examples of this type which don't actually get published." A large number? How big a problem is this? Why don't they get published...

I'm glad to help out. I'm spreading the word here. You can count on me.

That was all the presentation of Dr. Minor. If you look at the index,

 I N D E X


       SPEAKER                      PAGE

       Philip Minor, Ph.D.            4

       James Robertson, Ph.D.        32

       Jorg Schuepbach, M.D.         51


       Jens Mayer, Ph.D.             66

       Thomas Broker, Ph.D.          78

       Neil Cashman, M.D.           102


       Panel Discussion             129
             Dr. Onions, Chair

       John Sedivy, Ph.D.           176

       Frits Fallaux, Ph.D.         199


       Panel Discussion             212
             Dr. Coffin, Chair

you see that it continues on for some time. I didn't read the rest. I'm going to. You might take a look at it too.

This is all public record. Not surprisingly, it is not the kind of thing that's included in the flu vaccine public service announcements I've seen recently. They're not talking about flu vaccines being produced from eggs that may or may not have viruses that may or may not be harmful to humans when injected into their blood streams that may or may not be transmitted vertically to the next generation. It just doesn't come up.

Maybe it should.