Suzanne Humphries on sv40: what the evidence says · JRE #2294
SUBJECT: SV40
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
So how this affects me is that I'm a kidney specialist, and I looked at the curve of kidney cancers that have gone up since the inception of polio vaccines and SV40 introduction. So what this virus does is it enhances two cancer promoting genes and it inhibits two cancer suppressors, okay? That's why it's called the perfect war machine.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The suggestion that rising kidney cancer counts trace to polio vaccination and SV40 is not supported by the epidemiology. The Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review found that studies of people who received polio vaccine during 1955 to 1963 provide evidence of no increased cancer risk (though it judged the studies too flawed to firmly accept or reject causation), and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia states epidemiologic studies do not show an increased risk of cancers in recipients, concluding the data do not support the hypothesis that SV40 in these vaccines caused human cancers; a plotted rise in kidney cancer incidence over time is an ecologic correlation, not evidence of causation. The molecular half of the claim is closer but imprecisely stated: SV40 large T antigen does inactivate two tumor suppressors (p53 and Rb), and small t antigen targets the PP2A phosphatase, but SV40 transforms cells chiefly by disabling tumor suppressors via its own viral oncoproteins rather than by enhancing two host oncogenes. Overall the mechanism is loosely accurate while the kidney-cancer causation framing is unsupported.