Here’s an article about the millions of Australians who were given a contaminated polio vaccine in the late 1950s and early 1960s (“Millions given infected polio vaccine“):

Australia’s leading experts on the virus, which is known as simian virus 40 or SV40, have found traces of it in human tumour cells and are calling for urgent funding to clarify the links….

Scientists have already linked SV40, which is known to cause cancers in small animals, to a range of rare human lung, brain and blood cancers, but opinion is split on whether the virus actually causes human cancer.

The contaminated vaccines were dispensed in many other countries, including the U.S. For those interested in more information, this book looks interesting.

In the vaccine business, contamination problems are not unusual. We’ve all heard about Chiron’s problems with the flu vaccine in its Liverpool plant. Fewer people know that a second Chiron facility, located in Brazil, produced possibly-contaminated MMR and flu vaccines earlier this year. The MMR vaccine was allowed on the market, whereupon (according to the New York Times) “an unexpectedly high number of children who received it experienced serious allergic reactions…The reactions included rashes and anaphylactic shock, a potentially fatal allergic condition.”

Worth keeping in mind the next time a vaccine bully insists that vaccines are 100 percent safe.