For decades, U.S. government health agencies successfully hid the fact that, during the 1950s and early 1960s, millions of Americans were injected with polio vaccines contaminated by monkey viruses. Now, they are trying to cover up growing scientific evidence that some of these monkey viruses are implicated in the development of human cancers.

In an article written by government health officials and published in the Jan. 27 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the government used incomplete data in a methodologically flawed analysis to dismiss the role of simian virus 40 (SV40) in bone, brain and lung cancers in adults and children.

The day that the JAMA article appeared, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) issued a press release condemning the "inherent conflict of interest in having government officials lead investigations of health problems associated with vaccines which the government researches, regulates and promotes for universal use.

"Taxpayers should not be paying for government officials to investigate their own mistakes," the release admonished. "Government funding should be given to independent scientists to compile and analyze epidemiological data and conduct basic science research on vaccine-associated health problems without the inherent bias that characterizes so much of government-led vaccine research."

Between 1955 and 1963, tens of millions of American children and adults were given killed polio vaccines contaminated with SV40. By 1961, more than 90% of U.S. children and many millions of adults had received the vaccine. Government scientists learned by the late 1950s that the polio vaccines were contaminated with more than 40 monkey viruses and that one of these viruses, SV40, could cause cancer in rodents. Still, some of the contaminated vaccine continued to be sold.

In the past few years, independent scientists in this country and internationally have been culturing out DNA of SV40 from the tumors of children and adults suffering from rare ependymomas (brain tumors); osteosarcomas (bone tumors) and mesotheliomas (tumor of the lining of the lung and chest cavity).

After highly credentialed scientists such as Michele Carbone, M.D., Ph.D., and others around the world published reports that these rare cancers were on the rise and that SV40 DNA was being detected not only in cancers suffered by adults but also in young children, their findings were reported in such publications as Money magazine (Dec. 1996 issue).

Following this and other media reports, government health agencies quickly assembled a large conference at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in January 1997 to examine the role of SV40 in human cancers.

At the conference, it became quickly apparent that government health officials were caught without having done any meaningful follow-up of what had happened to the millions of Americans injected with the contaminated vaccines more than 40 years earlier.

Still, an NIH official, Howard Strickler, tried to dismiss the reports of SV40-human cancer links. In response, the NVIC publicly called for government funding of independent researchers to investigate this vaccine-associated health problem.

The answer by government health agencies was to put Strickler in charge of the investigation.

JAMA published the article by Strickler and his colleagues in which the government concluded that "after more than 30 years of follow-up, exposure to SV40-contaminated poliovirus vaccine was not associated with significantly increased rates" of brain, bone and lung cancers.

Pointing out that there are huge information gaps in data the government used to come up with this conclusion, the NVIC stated that the government analysis ignored the following FACTS:

1. SV40 virus DNA is being detected in cancers of children born during the past five years, suggesting that government scientists do not know how SV40 is transmitted from person to person or whether SV40 is a monkey/human chimera (hybrid virus) capable of being passed from parent to child.

2. The development of cancer is never caused by one factor (if so, all smokers would develop lung cancer) but is caused by a combination of co-factors. Therefore, Strickler's analysis dismissed the fact that SV40 and asbestos could be co-factors in the development of mesotheliomas (lung tumors). Mesotheliomas were almost unheard of before the 1950s when contaminated polio vaccines were first introduced and asbestos (which has been scientifically linked with mesotheliomas) began to be used in commercial building.

3. In addition to children, millions of adult Americans received the contaminated polio vaccines in the 1950s and early 1960s and more than 2,000 Americans today are suffering from mesotheliomas compared to very rare cases of the cancer in 1960.

4. Mesothelioma rates increase with age, therefore, children who got polio vaccine in 1955 would be under 50 years old in 1997 and would not yet have reached the high risk age for mesotheliomas.

In addition, the government's analysis depended heavily on cancer statistics provided by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) which had only begun collecting data in 1973. Thus, children who received contaminated polio vaccines and died of cancer before 1973 were excluded from the data included in the analysis.

Further, since the NCI data Strickler relied upon reflects approximately less than one-tenth of Americans, it is not a complete reflection of cancer rates in the entire U.S. population.

Howard Urnovitz, Ph.D., a microbiologist and founder of Chronic Illness Research Foundation whose father died of one of the kinds of cancers being associated with SV40 contaminated polio vaccines, called the analysis by NIH and NCI officials "a misuse of statistics that disregards important published scientific data by independent scientists contradicting the government's conclusions.

"Once again," continued Dr. Urnovitz, "the U.S. government is first making conclusions conforming with its policies and then using a civil servant to go out and find a database to support its conclusions. It is a great disservice to the American public."

Walter Kyle, author of a 1992 article in the British medical journal, The Lancet, entitled "Simian retroviruses, poliovaccine and origin of AIDS," said: "I am surprised that JAMA would publish an article written by a government official whose conclusions were basically discredited in a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) documentary that took the time to independently analyze his data.

"Canada does not use polio vaccines grown on monkey cell tissues like the U.S. uses," he pointed out. "Canadian scientists have recognized the real risk of health problems associated with inter-species transfer of viruses which humans have already experienced with 'mad cow' disease, the 'bird flu' and AIDS."

Kyle and Urnovitz have both asserted that HIV-1 was created when live polio vaccines contaminated with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) were introduced into the human population during experimental trials in Africa.

Urnovitz maintains that SIV recombined with normal human genes and created a monkey/human hybrid retrovirus now known as HIV-1 and has suggested that an AIDS vaccine would not work because it would be "built against a normal human gene."

Both Urnovitz and Kyle presented information about contaminated polio vaccines at the NVIC-sponsored "First International Public Conference on Vaccination" held in Washington, D.C. in September 1997. For information on how to obtain conference tapes or to obtain the NVIC's special polio vaccine contamination information packet, write: NVIC, 512 W. Maple Ave., Suite 206, Vienna, VA 22180.