Concerns raised over possible polio vaccine contamination

The Independent Blood Council remains concerned that Australians could have contracted the ‘monkey virus’ from polio vaccinations in the 1950s and 60s.

Melbourne newspaper The Age is reporting almost three million doses of polio vaccine contaminated with the virus were released.Professor Bruce Robinson from the University of Western Australia says much more research is needed before a link can be confirmed between a contaminated dose of the vaccine and cancer.Independent Blood Council president Charles Mackenzie remains sceptical.”The most terrifying thing about those experts is the same thing was said – haemophiliacs in the 1980s, about hepatitis C and the HIV/AIDS virus,” he said.”They were told all of those things and some of them are now terminally ill.”The Independent Blood Council is a charity organisation which represents the interests of people who have been given contaminated blood.Despite the council’s concerns, a University of Tasmania study has found no link between contaminated polio vaccines and cancer.One hundred Tasmanians took part in the trial, many of whom received polio vaccinations during the 1950s and 60s.The University of Tasmania conducted a study of 100 Tasmanians after reading about similar concerns overseas.Oncologist Ray Lowenthal says half of the study’s participants had the type of cancer supposedly associated with the virus.”We didn’t find any traces of this monkey virus in any of the subjects – neither those who have the particular cancer in question nor the controls,” he said.Professor Lowenthal says the findings should be reassuring for people who received the vaccine more than 40 years ago.Meanwhile, Dr Roger Riddell, head of the Cancer Research Unit in the Children’s Medical Research Institute at Westmead Hospital in Sydney says there should not be a great deal of concern over the issue.”I would summarise the evidence … as saying it was quite inconclusive at the moment,” Dr Riddell said.”What is incontrovertible is that if you take SV40 genes and put them into human cells under laboratory conditions you can get pre-malignant changes,” he said.”I think there is a case to be answered [but] I don’t regard there to be a definitive link at the moment.”The research community is divided as to whether there is a link or not.”(Source: ABC Health, Oct 2004)