Good The Virus and the Vaccine: Contaminated Vaccine, Deadly Cancers, and Government Neglect

Over All Rating Reviews :

This book is terrific. Despite the complexity of the subject, the writers maintain a very clear voice as they tell this compelling story. The prologue to the story instantly engaged me, as they recount the tragic story of little Alexander Horwin, who died of a medullablastoma when he was 2 years old -- a cancer that may have been caused by his exposure to a Polio vaccination.

The writers give a detailed account of the history of polio and the creation of the Polio vaccine by Jonas Salk in the late 1950s. The account clearly shows what a horrible disease Polis was (and still is), and how desperate the world was for a solution. When the vaccine was created, it quickly eradicated the disease in the US. But there was a cost...and it turns out, it was a calculated risk on the part of our Federal government and the pharmaceutical companies who manufactured the vaccine. They quickly knew that the vaccine had been contaminated with live monkey virus, but dismissed the possible consequences of that contamination on the human population. (In today's world, where the CDC and the World Heath Organization are extremely concerned about viruses that go from animal to human -- like SARS and the Avian flu -- you think that such a vaccination would not be permitted. But after reading the book, you can see how science is diluted by the hard realities of immediate needs for "cures" and by the costs of manufacturing the vaccines).

In the months and years after the vaccine was manufactured and injected into millions of men, women, and children, a number of concerned scientists began to gather a body of information about the dangers of the vaccine. People like Bernice Eddy, a scientist at the NIH. Her career was destroyed when she tried to alert the public. Others suffered similar experiences.

This story talks about how some scientists fought against the political pressures to suppress their scientific data. And it's a great story (one which still isn't finished). I couldn't put the book down!

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