Due to the pressure of International Agencies, WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International, Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation, the Nigerian Government has politicize the polio vaccination in the country in general and in Northern particularly. In fact is subject of discussion some years back in general assembly in New York.
Origin of polio vaccine controversies is as old as the vaccines. Earlier on at the trial stages, deaths and adverse reactions to the agents being administered called to question the safety of the population exposed to the vaccines. More so, was the early realization that vaccines, being cultured from animal tissues
could be antigenic in the human subjects, and therefore likely to elicit antibodies against them.
Oral Polio Vaccine Causes Polio
Two Scientists developed the first polio vaccines, one an American called Jonas Salk, in the early 1950s, producing his from polio viruses cultured on monkey kidneys. Salk’s American compatriot known as Albert Sabin, in 1957 improved upon Salk’s work. Many people, particularly American School children on whom the bulk of the experiments were carried out had contracted polio from the first vaccines and died, so the second one by Sabin was tried outside America. The second vaccine was also found to have the potential of causing polio, which the vaccines intended to fight. This is still so till today, because the American Centre for Disease Control (CDC), noticed recently that children whose immune systems are not active enough contracted the disease by mere contact with vaccinated children. In January 2000, the CDC warned its own people against oral polio vaccine: OPV is only recommended if your child is travelling to an area with endemic polio soon, or if there is mass outbreak that requires vaccination or if the child will not accept shots.
Even the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reported that from 1980 to 1994 of 133 cases of paralytic polio reported in the U.S, the vaccine caused 125, six cases were unreported from other countries, while 2 were indeterminate. The American Academy of Pediatrics even sent out a warning “ If your physician wants to administer oral polio vaccine to your child, you need to find out why!” Scientists who investigated the early vaccine trials in East Africa also questioned the fact that exaggerated doses of the vaccines were inoculated into children, whose immune systems had barely developed enough to withstand the harmful effects, which showed deliberate attempts to cause disease in otherwise healthy children.
Nevertheless, the World Health Organisation (WHO) which is in the forefront of the campaign for eradication of polio, through its government issued plethora of statements to buttress its stand on the safety of the polio vaccines. These views mainly from a group particularly comprised of the health officials, scientists, developers of the vaccines and their sponsors. These sponsors among many others include the International Commission on Polio, World Health Assembly (the Governing Body of WHO), the UNICEF, and Rotary International which kindly contributed more than $240 million towards the polio eradication target of the WHO.
Unequivocally, they stated that “polio vaccines are very safe and highly effective in conferring immunity against poliomyelitis, that polio vaccines produce 50% immunity after the first dose, and more than 45% after the third dose. They asserted further that IRV (not OPV) does not cause VAPP or vaccine associated paralytic polio, that polio caused by the vaccine and that there is no reliable evidence that currently available vaccines are contaminated with infectious agents that cause disease. “Today, manufacturers are required to test cell lines used in the production of vaccines for the presence of a variety of infectious agents, to prevent contamination of vaccine products”. That is what the WHO and the agents say. But, the WHO admits that polio vaccines “surely causes vaccine associated paralytic polio (VAPP). This is a situation where healthy individuals when vaccinated develop poliomyelitis, and now this incidence (accounting for about 0.00003%) is almost the main source of the disease in USA (between 1980 and 1998 out of the 150 cases of paralytic paralysis, 144 cases were due to VAPP)”.
And “ the use of OPV is no longer worth the risk. This is because OPV causes polio and it is no longer recommended in the USA……today and it is still used in other parts of the world. Because of the serious and obvious dangers of OPV, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, National Immunization Programme, on the vaccine information statement polio 2000, categorically made the statement above, that can make every God fearing person shudder with fright. This communication report alone set justifies the title of this presentation. It is unfortunately, highly reproachable and very contradictory that WHO International position statement which was presented by National Programme on Immunization, NPI, through a publication in TELL Magazine, October 12, 2003 announcing that “….OPV IS SAFE AND EFFECTIVE AND RECOMMENDED FOR GLOBAL EFFORTS TO ERADICATE POLIO”. This surely contradicts the CDC statement mentioned above.
OPV Trials Linked with AIDS
Aside from being possibly responsible for causing polio, relationships were being found between the vaccination exercise(s) and other diseases and infections. Notable among these were HIV/AIDS. A microbiologist from California, known as Howard B. Urnovitz, provided compelling evidence at the Eighth Annual Houston Conference on AIDS in America that the human immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) is a monkey-human hybrid that was created after more than 320,000 Africans were injected in the late 1950 with experimental live oral polio vaccines contaminated with the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). According to Dr. Urnovitz: “Endogenous retroviruses can easily recombine with fragments of other viruses, both human and animal, and form new hybrid viruses called chimeras”.
Dr. Urnovitz explained how SIV have recombined with the normal genes of the Africans, who received the contaminated vaccines, and created a monkey-human hybrid now known as HIV-1. This is how he narrated his own experience.
“The one virus which we were able to isolate and characterize is unmistakably African green monkey cytomegalovirus. I had notified Centers for Disease Control by way of a manuscript and a request to transfer some of this information when I first had it, which was back in 1994, without any real success, but when the data was unequivocal, which was in 1995, we contacted the Bureau. At that stage, we were really just trying to get some reassurance that they no longer used monkey kidneys to make polio vaccines and were told that unfortunately they still did then issue of interest with HIV vaccines and so forth. It is known that African green monkeys have a retrovirus called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, SIV. There is a general relationship between SIV and HIV, though they are not that closely related by normal kinetic mechanisms, one could see that they were both coming together. What is of interest is the fact that the African green monkeys brought out in the early part of the century to America were SIV negative….The question is as to whether or not infections in the monkeys in Africa may have in fact been introduced in this century and were not an infection that predated hundreds of years but rather was introduced into the monkeys in some of the early experimentation done in vaccine development, and there is a rest interesting argument that, in fact man may have infected African monkeys which then, in turn processed the virus and returned it back to man in the form of HIV”.
These, coupled with the cover up and conspirational silence that scientists with alternative findings regarding the virus were met with, demonstrated to cynics that something was wrong somewhere reports of researchers that did not tally with positions of the scientific authorities and the governments that supported them were censored and/or not published, sometimes the researchers and authors lost either livelihoods or their lives. This stimulated a rise in anti-vaccination sentiments and movements, particularly as news filtered out about attempts to embark on fertility control in less developed countries using the immunizations as entry points into the communities.
The American government’s National Security Study Memoradum 200, usually called the NSSM 200, of 1974 and the President Jimmy Cartel’s Global 2000 report that aimed to control the World population lent credence to the fears being expressed. Combination of these reports seems to be the official policy of the USA, which suggests the trim of the world population by elimination of 2 billion human beings by the year 2000. Unethical and immoral efforts at forcing various people to take vaccination and forced sterilizations in Third World Countries reinforced these fears. When a virus from one specie is able to survive in a different specie, at first it is of teniquite virulent in the new species. For example, the mxyomavirus causes little problem in the South American forest rabbit, its long standing host, but it was devastating when introduced among European rabbits in Australia. As the virus rampages through the new species, susceptible individuals are killed, whereas the resistant ones survive and reproduce, eventually virulence declines, as in the case of myxomatosis in Australia (1994).
Thus, when a new viral disease springs unannounced on human, one possible suspect is animal viruses. In the case of AIDS, this soon became the most favoured explanation among scientists, in 1983, Luc Montagnier and his colleagues reported isolation of a virus, later called human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, linked to AIDs. Two years later, a type of virus very similar to HIV was found in African monkeys, it was called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus or SIV. Many SIVs cause no obvious disease in their host species, though they can be virulent. If transmitted to a different unaffected monkey species. The obvious explanation for AIDS was that SIV somehow was transmitted to humans, where it became, evolved, or mutated to HIV. The next question was how the SIV might have been transmitted from Simians to humans. Before looking at the possible explanations, it is worth mentioning some other evidence. First, there are two major types of HIV, called HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is the type found throughout most of the world, HIV-2 is found mostly in Africa. There is one known SIV that is very similar to HIV 2, but none yet proven to be highly similar to HIV-1.
There is, enough, a theory available that explains both the transmission and the timing: polio vaccination campaigns in Central Africa in the late 1950s. Many of the monkeys would have been carrying SIVs, and many of them would have shown no symptoms and thus not been rejected as ill. Thus it would not be too difficult for some batches of vaccine to be contaminated with SIVs. Since the SIVs were not discovered until 1985, there was no way to screen for them in the 1950s.
Finally, some of the earliest known cases of AIDS were near to the time and location of major polio vaccination campaigns in Africa in the late 1950s. but this theory was not investigated by the medical research establishment. There is one obvious reason for this: theory, if accepted as true, would be extremely damaging to the image of medical science.
To validate the veracity of above claims, offer was made in 1991 to test stocks of polio for SIV presence, only in 2000 were some samples tested and those of USA origin only (Brian, 1993). But the World Health Organisation admits that vaccines produced using chick embryo may contain an enzyme known as reverse transcriptase (RT) which is necessary for retroviruses (the group to which the HIV belongs) to replicate. They contend and we are not convinced yet that this enzyme imported retroviruses to transmit to human immune deficiency virus (HIV).
OPY Causes Cancer Through SV40 Contaminants
SV40, a polyomavirus, WHO contend, has no relationship to HIV or simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV, the virus that causes AID in monkeys) but that SV40 can cause cancer in laboratory animals. SV40 is simian virus number 40, a pollutant of OPV. The World Health Organisation does not mention the many cancers that SV40 cause in humans, which is common knowledge and the CDC completely dismisses the claimed association between polio vaccine, SV40 and cancer. This is unethical and grossly misleading. Researchers have cultured SV40 from lung, brain and bone cancers.
But here now is the WHO’s official position on this virus….Simian virus 40 was discovered in the early 1960s to be present in some lots of polio vaccines, it was found in the inactivated (injectable) polio vaccine (IPV) and some experimental lots of oral polio vaccine (OPV). The polio vaccine in those that had seen manufactured in kidney cells from simian (monkeys) that harboured SV40. The control methods used before this time if not identify this adventurous agent. The formalin inactivation process used to kill the poliovirus was found not to inactivate the SV40 completely.
Further WHO said:
………….This virus has no relationship to HIV on simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV; the virus that causes AIDS in monkeys) in the early 1960s, some lots of polio vaccines were discovered to contain SV 40. Since 1961, manufacturers have been required by the Food and Drug Administration to test for SV 40. There is limited evidence that SV 40 can infect humans, but there is no evidence it causes human health problems.
SV 40 is a polymomavirus. It has no relationship to HIV or simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) but can cause cancer in laboratory animals. Limited evidence suggests that SV 40 can infect humans, but there is no evidence that it causes human health problems. Recent publications have identified SV 40 sequences in samples of tissue from rare human tumor, including choroid plexus tumors, mesothelionias, ependymomas, and osteosarcomas, as well as in apparently normal (non neoplastic) human tissue. The entire SV 40 geiome has been isolated from one human choroid plexus tumor.
As for the claim above that SV 40 was an adventitious contaminant that could not be detected, this quote may suffice establish how much truth is told by the WHO:
In 1960, Dr. Ben Sweet and Mr, Hilleman Pharmaceutical Researchers for the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research, were credited with discovering this intedous agent-SV 40, a monkey virus that infected nearly all rhesus monkeys, whose kidneys were used to produce polio vaccines. Hilleman and Sweet found SV 40 in all three types of Albert Sabin’s live oral polio vaccine and noted the possibility that it might cause cancer “especially when administered to human babies”. According to Sweet, it was not a frightening discovery because back then, it was not possible to detect the virus with the testing procedures we had….we had no idea of what this virus would do…..”sweet elaborated; first, we knew that SV 40 had oncogenic properties (cancer-causing) in hamsters, which as bad news. Secondly, we found that it hybridized with certain DNA, viruses, such that would then have SV 40 genes attached to them….when we started growing the vaccines, we just couldn’t get rid of the SV40 contaminant we tried to neutralize it but couldn’t. Now with the theoretical link to cancer it just blows my mind” (Miller, 2002).
Similarly, the American Journal of Medicine June, 1, 2003 published that SV40 has been shown to be a potent oncogenic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) virus and in animal models, the neoplasias by SV 40 included primary brain cancers malignant mesotheliomas, bone tumors, and systemic lymphomas. Analysis of molecular biology data shows that polymavirus SV40 is associated significantly with primary brain and bone cancers malignant mesothelioma and non-hodgkins tymphoma”.
A separate report also, indicated that SV 40 exposure could lead to cancer in human under natural conditions (Cancer Research, 1996). Can the World Health Organisation then claim that it had no knowledge of SV 40 or its link to common cancers, when since 1960 other researchers have proved this? And there are about 20 more viruses identifiable from the monkey, one of which a researcher referred to as ‘Stealth’ virus. And once again ‘almighty’ WHO says: “there is no evidence that polio vaccine, or any other vaccine has been contaminated with a stealth virus. The existence of this virus as suggested by one researcher has not been confirmed by other investigators. Interestingly, when evidences are unfavorable to the World Health Organisation’s stance on issues, they describe it with adjectives such as unreliable, unsubstantial, unlimited and the like. For instance, unscientific utterances such as there are no reliable scientific data which indicate that the AIDS virus originated from monkey retroviruses. Or, “the theory that links the polio vaccine to the origin or spread of AIDS does not make much sense from a virology stand point” and “the existence of this unsubstantiated theory should not deter people from receiving the much needed polio vaccinations’. It is amazing how such words are pandered in WHO position statements. The WHO and its sister agencies have reacted to the allegations with a blanket statements, sweeping generalizations and over simplification, depending on which approach serves their purpose. They talk of the need for independent investigators, or when a limited research supports their posture, amid a plethora of findings to the contrary they say, “this finding has not been confirmed by some investigators”.
What makes the African, and particularly the Nigerian situation as regards polio vaccination so worrisome? If this vaccine has been shown to have all these defends and the American government warns its own people against OPV, why shouldn’t we take greater care with ours?
Regulating and Licensing the Vaccines
The second target of this paper is to show that the cries about the dangers posed by polio vaccination exercise cannot be assuaged by the certificates shown to people by the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) nor the so-called tests by a consultant, sponsored by the WHO. With all sincerity, NAFDAC is working within the confines of its available funds and resources, but we may do well as persons and institutions that intend to protect our people by admitting shortcomings when our resources do not enable us to perform certain tasks, we are not saying that the vaccines may transmit hepatitis, HIV, or anything of the sort, through routine teaching for them is commendable. We are however saying that the vaccines may contain SV 40 and several other simian viruses, which can cause cancers and other ailments, and the virus can only be detected with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which NAFDAC cannot conduct due to the absence of necessary equipment neither can any other institution, in the country. Also, having seen the certificate issued by the agency; can say authoritatively that NAFDAC did not conduct tests for SV 40, or BSE and other virulent viruses.
According to Regis Vilchez, who has studied the SV 40 Virus, there are no commercial tests to evaluate SV40 infection. Serologic assays such as ELISA for SV 40 have a low sensitivity. In addition, a recent FDA panel concluded that none of the current EUSA tests for SV40 are reliable for research or diagnostic. While the serum neutralizing antibody test is the recognized gold standard serologic test for SV40, it has low sensitivity and requires great labour.
Therefore molecular assays such as polymerase chain reaction (quantitative and qualitative) have been used to study the relation of SV 40 infections and human malignancies. These tests are currently for research purposes but different laboratories (including ours) are working to establish them for commercial and diagnostic use. Indeed, this is one of the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine for studies of SV 40 in humans. We hope they will be available to patients in the near future.
Additionally, the test is not performed by medical institutions because there is no therapy that can be offered to individuals who may test positive.
The Minister of Health and the National Programme on Immunization have made press statements to the effect that the vaccine were manufactured by companies according to food manufacturing practices (GMP) approved by the WHO. This is the same statement made by the WHO itself using the same verdict in fact, in the Philippines, when the same circumstance arose that vaccines were contaminated with HCG, the Bureau for Food and Drugs (BEAD) said the vaccines were made by companies approved by the World Health Organisation and therefore reputable. But we know that the WHO has been involved in researches to use vaccines as anti-fertility agents.
WHO’s Anti-Fertility Experiments
Efforts to reduce the population of developing countries have been an agenda of developed countries for decades, various reports and policy documents have shown that that the developed nations, particularly the United States of America, consider unmitigated population growth in the less developed countries threatening to the interests and safety. They thus have devised multi-pronged approaches to solving this problem. These include the family planning initiatives to be undertaken ‘voluntarily’ by less developed countries, anti-fertility campaigns, as well as convert operations, the National Security Study Memoradum 200 of December 1974 and particularly a later Pentagon study stated that the American government should take population reduction as seriously as devising new weapon system. They must employ all the instruments of shatecraft at their disposal (development assistance and population planning every bit as much as new weapon systems).
As far back as 1970, the American Department of Defence requested $10,000,000 (at a time when a dollar was about fifty kobo) for “a five year study to develop immune system ravaging viruses for germ warfare” (Pinalcall. Com E-store, January 29, 2003). This led theorist to the possibility that the virus is HIV, more so that the places with the highest levels of HIV infections in the World are in East Africa where the first polio vaccination trial took place and that concerns the direct attempts at population reduction.
The following journal citations however will demonstrate that the World Health Organisation had involved its researchers in developing anti-fertility vaccines using tetanustoxoid as carrier:
Clinical profile and toxcilogical studies on four women immunised with Pr-B-HCG-TT, contraception, February, 1976, pp.253-268.
Observations on the antigencity and clinical effects of a candidate anti-pregnancy vaccine: B-subunit of human chronic gonadotropin linked to tetanus toxoid, fertility and sterility, October 1980, pp. 328-335.
Phase 1 clinical trials of a World Health Organisation Birth Control Vaccine, The Lancut, 11 June 1988, pp. 1205-1208.
Vaccines for fertility regulation, chapter 11, pp.177-198, research in Human Reproduction, Biennial Reports (1986-1987) WHO special programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (WHO, Geneva, 1988).
Recommendations
Nigeria is in agreement with the World Health Organisation objectives of giving good life to our people. We also agree in effective health interventions for infectious diseases that have potentials of affecting large populations. But there are fears, rounded fears, which the World Health Organisation and her subsidiaries must not ignore if there is a sincerity of purpose Nigeria to not the only country where there is rejection of vaccination when such fears were identified, in the U.S, the oral polio vaccine being given to our children today is not allowed, officially in Europe and the US is also rejection of the MMR vaccine because it is found to cause autism in children due to the high content of thiomersal, a preservative in the vaccine. It is based on these observations that recommend the same thing that have been recommended which are as follows:
i) The immediate discontinuation of the polio immunization exercise currently being embarked by the National Programme on Immunisation.
ii) That the Federal Government should order the purchase and immediate delivery of a polymerase chain reaction apparatus with which the vaccines can be assayed and screened for public use.
iii) Henceforth, screening of the vaccines must be carried out in the presence of representatives of the skeptical groups in the society.
iv) A public debate among medical scientists, pharmacists, doctors, nurses and other interested groups instituted to discuss the veracity of the issues surrounding the vaccine controversy.
v) There are increasing incidences of hitherto rare diseases such as (leukemia and other cancers), and the Federal Ministry or its agencies should institute probes into these to ascertain their causes, prevalence and effects as well as possible epidemiological approaches to curtailing the diseases.
vi) Random epidemiological screening of Nigerians for SV 40 should be carried out.
vii) In the event that the first three recommendations are not implemented, Nigerians must feel free to exercise their God-given and constitutional right to refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated, because scientists in this country are not convinced about their safety.
Baba Ali Mustapha is of Ngrannam Ward, Near 7up Junction, Bolori II, Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria.
Reference:
This article was being excerpt from the research work, “Why Polio Vaccination should be suspended in Nigeria by Dr. Haruna A. Kaifa of Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. Published by AL-ISLAH Vol. 5 No. 7.
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