FTR-199 The Politics of SV40 (Two 30-minute segments) $8.50
Supplementing the subject material of FTR-198 (see above), this program consists of the reading of an Atlantic Monthly article from February 2000. A consummately important analysis, the article sets forth compelling information confirming discussion about the cancer-causing monkey virus SV40. Originally discussed in programs dealing with Ed Haslam's work in his book Mary, Ferrie and the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory (Wordsworth Press, copyright 1995), the SV40 contaminated the polio vaccine administered between 1955 and 1963. (Evidence suggests that the virus is still a vaccine contaminant. Some of that evidence is presented in the analysis that follows.) Centering on the work of Michele Carbone on SV40's role on mesothelioma (a rare and deadly lung cancer), the broadcast presents detailed scientific discussion of research that strongly suggests that SV40 is involved in the formation of cancers of the bones, nervous system, kidney and uterus. (Ed Haslam has presented data indicating that SV40 may very well underlie an under-reported epidemic of soft-tissue cancers: cancers of the breast and prostate, as well as lymphoma.) Carbone's findings have been confirmed by a growing number of researchers, including several who were initially skeptical of his results. Significantly, these researchers have impressive scientific and medical credentials. The article highlights the institutional opposition to the work of Carbone and others, centered in the National Cancer Institute's Viral Epidemiology Branch and the Centers for Disease Control. (In RFA-16, FTR #'s 4, 16, 25, 35, 55, 132, the National Cancer Institute is implicated in the development of AIDS. In RFA-16, the CDC is also discussed in connection with the cover-up of AIDS.) Contending that the research of Carbone and his peers was the result of laboratory contamination by SV40 (a major tool of cancer experimentation for many years), the NCI sponsored a fallacious (and probably biased) study that attempted to discredit the work showing that SV40 was oncogenic. The Atlantic Monthly article is very readable and readily comprehensible to the lay person. Program Highlights Include: detailed presentation of the statistics reinforcing SV40's oncogenic role; analysis of why asbestos is (in all probability) no more than a co-factor in the development of mesothelioma (it was previously believed to be the cause of the disease); information that the SV40 found in tumors is active (expressing cancer-causing proteins); confirmation that the SV40 present in tumors is the same virus that contaminated the polio vaccine (critics had charged that it was a different variant); discussion of a second, more deadly variant of SV40 that contaminated the vaccine; disturbing indications that the virus may escape the fourteen-day cell cultures tested for viral contaminants in contemporary vaccines (the slower-growing variant takes 19 days to become detectable); detailed discussion of large T-antigen (the cancer-causing protein in SV40 that appears to be the most oncogenic protein ever discovered); analysis of how large T-antigen causes cancer (it neutralizes the anti-cancer gene p53, anti-cancer proteins called rb's and disrupts whole DNA sequences of chromosomes whose nuclei it has invaded); analysis of how SV40 escapes detection by the immune system; proof presented by Adi Gazdar that SV40 found in tumors is not a contaminant (as charged by NCI and CDC); indications that a type of RNA called "anti-sense" can neutralize the oncogenic properties of SV40. (See also: FTR #'s 17, 24, 25, 56, 89, 144, in addition to the above-mentioned programs.) (Recorded on 3/5/2000.)