AIDS in America: HIV to Mad Cow Disease

Although Koprowski's experiment may have contributed to the rise of AIDS in Africa, what might have contributed to the spread of the disease to the homosexual community in America?

In 1974, clinics in New York and California began experimental treatments for gay men afflicted with herpes. Therapy consisted of multiple doses of the live polio vaccine.

The vaccine was produced in the kidneys of the African Green monkey, a known reservoir for SIV, a likely precursor to HIV.

Beginning in the early 1980s, simultaneous outbreaks of Kaposi sarcoma and serious opportunistic infections (later associated with AIDS) were reported among homosexual men, especially in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. This time span coincides with the average incubation period between HIV infections and the development of AIDS.

In 1982, the CDC concluded that such outbreaks “strongly suggests the occurrence of a single epidemic of underlying immunosuppression....” The next year, HIV was identified as the causative agent.

In 1992, Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736%2892%2990876-5/fulltext) published the first scientific explanation showing how repeated doses of SIV-contaminated polio vaccines may have seeded HIV among American homosexual men.

In the 1980s, hundreds of people diagnosed with AIDS had no identified risk factor, in other words, they didn't engage in risky behaviors associated with AIDS infection. Many children were listed as NIR. Some parents even claimed that HIV-contaminated polio vaccines infected their children.

On February 12, 1994, Bruce Williams filed a civil suit against the American Cyanamid Company, claiming its polio vaccine caused his daughter's illness. The suit alleges that “the live oral poliovirus vaccine was produced, tested, and approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration pursuant to measures inconsistent with accepted standards of medical practice.”

The lawsuit also asserts that “the product was FDA approved despite the known presence of contaminants, including retroviruses such as HIV.”

The Williams' lawyer even identified the specific lots of vaccine the child received, but the CDC and federal health officials refused to test them. According to their lawyer, “The CDC could disprove my entire hypothesis by testing the vaccines they have in their possession. The fact that they haven't done so is evidence there's something wrong with the vaccine.”

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, was first noticed in the mid-1980s. Mad cow disease is a progressive nerve disorder of cattle that's similar to scrapie, a disease that affects sheep.

Authorities believe it spread to cows from sheep when they were fed scrapie-infected bone meal. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD and vCJD (a newly discovered variant) are the human equivalents of mad cow disease. They cause a comparable wasting of the brain leading to muscle incoordination, sensory loss, and mental confusion. It is always fatal.

Mad cow disease and the newly discovered variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob may be caused by the same infectious agent. A study published in Nature showed that monkeys injected with BSE developed very similar symptoms to vCJD. They also have similar molecular characteristics.

Mad cow disease can be passed from cows to humans if they ingest BSE-infected beef, or if they receive vaccines contaminated with BSE.

BSE-associated infectious agents are capable of contaminating polio vaccines because polio vaccines are not only grown in monkey kidneys, but in calf serum as well. In fact, many parts of the cow are used in vaccine production. Glycerol is derived from cow fat; gelatin and amino acids come from cow bones; and the growth medium for viruses and other microorganism may require cow skeletal muscle, enzymes, and blood.

Authorities knew that vaccines could be infected with BSE-associated transmissible agents as early as 1988. Yet, in England, vaccine manufacturers waited months before switching to cows less likely to be infected and refused to removed current stock off the shelves and out of doctor's offices until it was all sold, or expired five years later toward the end of 1993.

According to one British legislator, “The Department of Health was potentially criminally negligent in not requiring the immediate withdrawal or cessation of use of vaccines from potentially contaminated sources. It is also beyond belief the Department should not even have monitored those who were injected, and is now trying to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.”

Finally, in October 2000, the Department of Health became so concerned about the likelihood of children being infected with BSE-contaminated vaccines and falling prey to vCreutzfeldt-Jakob disease—dozens of people, including children, had already contracted it—that they issued a recall of hundreds of thousands of polio vaccines made using fetal bovine serum extracted from British cows.

In the United States, the FDA issued a “warning” to manufacturers in 1996 instructing them to “take whatever steps are necessary to reduce potential risk of transmission of BSE agent.” By 2000, the FDA realized that its “recommendations” were being ignored, for vaccines were still being made in bovine materials from countries reporting BSE. These vaccines wouldn't be removed from the market until 2002, when all existing stock had been purchased.

Although cows in America don't exhibit “mad cow symptoms,” tens of thousands of cattle are severely incapacitated each year in what some have suggested may be related to BSE. These “downed” animals have not been ruled out of vaccine production by the FDA.

Dr. Richard Marsh of the Department of Animal Health and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, conducted research providing evidence that down cattle in the U.S. may harbor a new variant of mad cow disease. He inoculated cows with TME, a variant of BSE. They became “downed” instead of “mad.”

Other scientists inoculated cows with scrapie from U.S. sheep. They, too, became “downed” instead of “mad.”

According to Farm Sanctuary, a national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing irresponsible agricultural practices, “We are concerned that, like in Britain, there is a powerful economic incentive to ignore evidence that BSE, or a variant of BSE, exists in the U.S.”