In 1959, Dr Bernice Eddy who was conducting polio vaccine safety studies discovered that an extract of monkey kidney cells used to propagate the polio vaccines was causing tumors in newborn hamsters. She surmised that the monkeys carried a cancer-causing virus which would later become known as SV40 – the 40th simian (monkey) virus discovered. Despite efforts to silence her new revelations, as it’s public knowledge would threaten vaccine confidence, she went ahead and presented her data at an annual Cancer Society conference in New York in October 26, 1960. The NIH actively blocked her from publishing her findings and eventurally she was eliminated from vaccine research. Her treatment was considered a scandal. [3]
She did manage in 1962 to publish in the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology reporting that the Salk polio vaccine contained SV40, which was confirmed to be the cause of cancer tumors in hamsters. [1, 2]
Prior to this in 1955 when the Salk polio vaccines were launched, Dr Eddy ‘s screening of polio vaccines revealed they inconveniently contained amounts of live polio virus, in an alledged “inactivated” vaccine, she was demoted and fired for this finding!
Soon after, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, Merck’s Chief vaccine expert, published similar tumor results, leading Merck voluntarily withdrawing its killed-virus polio vaccine.
In 1961 federal health officials ordered vaccine manufacturers to screen for SV40 and eliminate it from the vaccine. But they kept the discovery of SV40 cancer risk under wraps and never recalled existing contaminated vaccine stocks.
Dr Suzanne Humphries on SV40 – WATCH