Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #234953 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-01
• Released on: 2005-06-23
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.03" h x 6.14" w x 9.18" l, .99 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Journalists Bookchin and Schumacher argue that for nine years, from 1954 to 1963, almost every dose of polio vaccine produced in the worldâ€"and the 98 million Americans who received polio vaccinationsâ€"was contaminated with a cancer-causing virus from the monkey kidneys used to develop the vaccine. Although the polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk virtually ended polio as a threatening disease, the authors detail how "the screening techniques and observation periods that Salk and the vaccine manufacturers employed were not capable of always catching the contaminants." This sordid story spells out how repeated research studies showing that the "SV40" virus was in the vaccine were dismissed by federal health officials, so that "there would be no warning to consumers that the vaccine they and their children were receiving contained a live monkey virus whose effect on humans was entirely unknown." In the second part, the authors contend that even today such organizations as the National Institutes of Health continue to dismiss study results, even though numerous studies have shown that SV40 is capable of causing cancer in humans. The final and most horrific part of the story reports that Lederle Laboratories, the sole oral vaccine supplier in the U.S. from 1977 onward, continued to use monkey kidneys possibly infected by the SV40 virus in its manufacturing process until oral polio vaccine was removed from the market as late as January 2000. This meticulously researched, levelheaded and well-written book should stir up considerable debate. Because the authors never become alarmist, this solid work of investigative reporting carries considerable weight, and deserves to be read by a large audience.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Imagine being snatched from the paralyzing jaws of polio, only to be blindsided later by the mysterious appearance of a lymphoma, mesothelioma, or brain or bone cancer that could have been prevented. According to journalists Bookchin and Schumacher, the mightiest salvo in the U.S. war against polio seems to have been contaminated with a carcinogenic virus. What's worse, efforts within the scientific community to prevent dispensing contaminated vaccines have been systematically stonewalled from the very beginning by nothing less than the federal government, which first denied the vaccine was contaminated and then denied that the viral contaminant causes cancer in humans--a denial it continues to make. Bookchin and Schumacher document dozens of independent studies and experiments that repeatedly link SV40, a virus imbedded in the monkey kidneys that were used as a polio vaccine medium, with the above-mentioned cancers. In a page-turning narrative, they recall a nation terrorized by polio, the scramble to find a preventive or cure, and how a federal initiative led to the immunization of millions of American schoolchildren with either Salk's or Sabin's vaccine, neither of which, apparently, was resistant to SV40. Bookchin and Schumacher name names, which may bring them not only more keenly interested readers but also enemies from among the medical elite. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

“This well-researched, well-documented book unfurls a compelling scientific saga....Not only that, it’s written with the zing of a medical thriller, featuring fully realized characters, dramatic conflicts, high-level politics and scientific egos big enough to levitate Stone Mountain.”

—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“This meticulously researched, levelheaded and well-written book should stir up considerable debate. Because the authors never became alarmist, this solid work of investigative reporting carries considerable weight, and deserves to be read by a large audience.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Powerful and emotive, the book captures the joy of scientific discovery—from the dramatic fight against polio to the thrill of basic virology—with the tone of a mystery thriller.”

–Dr. Norman J. Maitland, professor of molecular biology, director of the YCR Cancer Research Unit, University of York

“A beautifully-told tale of science and a fascinating piece of medical history. The Virus and the Vaccine reveals how science can be distorted, pushed and pulled by the pressures of politics and profits.”

–Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School

“Millions of Americans are unaware that government officials and leading scientists played Russian roulette with their health in the 1960s…[This] fascinating, meticulously-researched account of the coverup, and its possible long-term health effects, is a deeply disturbing chapter in the recent history of science.”

–Stephen S. Hall, New York Times Magazine science writer and author of Merchants of Immortality