Contamination of vaccines with murine leukemia viruses

Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD:

One objection to considering XMRV a pathogenic virus is that there was previously no explanation as how a murine leukemia virus could have entered the human population. However, early vaccines were prepared by passaging human virus through mice for the purposes of viral isolation and for attenuation.

This would have allowed for contamination of vaccines with murine leukemia viruses.

The original Yellow Fever Vaccine was made in the early 1930’s by culturing the virus in mouse cerebral tissue. Some patients received both the Yellow Fever virus and infected mouse cerebral tissue.

The YF17D strain was used to immunize over 400 million people world-wide over the next 65 years. It was the policy of the U.S. Armed Forces to vaccinate service men for Yellow Fever from the 1940’s through the 1970’s. The polio vaccination trials in the United States started in 1952. The polio virus was passaged through mice, cotton rats and primates to achieve attenuation. Although ... Read more>>