Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science

by Kent Heckenlively

While two drug companies, Merck and Parke-Davis, recalled their polio vaccine in 1961, NIH officials refused to pursue a total recall of the rest of the supply, fearing reputational injury to the vaccine program if Americans learned that PHS had infected them with a cancer-producing virus. As a result, millions of unsuspecting Americans received carcinogenic vaccines between 1961 and 1963. The Public Health Service then concealed that “secret” for forty years. In total, ninety-eight million Americans received shots potentially containing the cancer-producing virus, which is now part of the human genome. In 1996, government researchers identified SV-40 in 23 percent of the blood specimens and 45 percent of the sperm specimens collected from healthy adults. Six percent of the children born between 1980 and 1995 are infected. Public health officials gave millions of people the vaccine for years after they knew it was infected. They contaminated humanity with a monkey virus and refused to admit what they’d done.