Dear List Members,
K. Weber kindly posted a message regarding ongoing
research on stealth virus encephalopathy as a cause of chronic fatigue
syndrome. The work is described at the Web site
http://www.usc.edu/hsc/medicine/virus
A virus repeatedly isolated from a CFS patient
has a high degree of sequence homology to African green monkey
cytomegalovirus. Primary kidney cell cultures from these animals are used
to produce live polio virus vaccines. It has been known but never
publically disclosed that the monkeys used in polio vaccine production
harbor cytomegalovirus and that this type of virus can be grown out from
monkey kidney cultures. It was also known, since I did the studies while
working at the FDA, that polio vaccines contained DNA which could not
hybridize to the DNA from normal monkey cells.
An important issue concerning polio vaccines is,
therefore, not whether they were effective in diminishing the incidence
of polio, but whether they inadvertently introduced pathogenic
monkey-derived viruses into humans. Although this important topic has
been presented at both an FDA sponsored vaccine safety meeting and an
Institute of Medicine Workshop on vaccine safety, neither FDA nor CDC has
been willing to engage in any meaningful dialogue.
Additional information can be found on the Web site.
