Three years ago today, on 2nd February 1983, Graeme Colman of Truth revealed to a horrified public that two million New Zealanders (including 832,000 children) had been injected in the 1960s with polio vaccine contaminated with SV40 virus from monkey kidney cells.

The Society's letter to Truth (reprinted below) was too late to help the maimed and crippled human victims, nor could it bring back the monkey populations ruthlessly exterminated as their kidneys were surgically removed and minced for the primary culture in a lucrative and ruthless polio vaccine racket. However it may go some way in cautioning mothers against rushing with their babies to future mass vaccination programmes.

New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society
Wellington

3 February 1983

"To the Editor
Truth

Polio vaccinations... disease time-bomb

In exposing the vivisection racket in your Polio Vaccinations articles Truth has struck a mighty blow for the anti-vivisection cause. There is great lesson to be learned as the public, concerned for its health and the health of its children opt to steer clear of vaccines and mass immunisation programmes. The World Health Organisation claims that the best form of immunisation is good nutrition. Anti-vivisectionists have campaigned for years on the premise that vivisection is not only torture for animals but critically dangerous to the health of the human consumers of animal-based vaccines and animal-tested drugs and medicaments.

On World Day for Laboratory Animals 24th April 1979 on a radio interview in Wellington I spoke of the polio vaccines being produced at the cost of hundreds of thousands of primates captured and transported to laboratories in a vile and lucrative slave-trade which has decimated several species. I spoke to the disbelieving interviewer of the polio vaccines developed in cultures of ground monkeys' kidneys (whether Salk or Sabin or otherwise) that are stated to hold grave dangers and undoubted cancerogenic potential, and that a safe vaccine cultivated on human cell cultures by Professor Leonard Hayflick of the (then) Microbiology Department of Stanford University was being suppressed because of the high cost of changing systems . Professor Hayflick's cultures were cheap and could be stored in a frozen state for years on end and thawed out when needed to provide the growth medium for vaccines anywhere in the world. They were safe - and cruelty-free.

Hans Ruesch, author of Slaughter of the Innocent and Naked Empress (or The Great Medical Fraud)... wrote in Slaughter: A synopsis of a detailed article in Science (May 19, 1972, pp 813-814) by Dr Leonard Hayflick, as follows:

"Vaccines against human viruses are mostly produced on monkey kidneys, which may be contaminated. A substantial number (25 to 80 percent) of monkey kidneys processed for vaccine manufacture must be discarded because of extensive contamination with one or more of 20 known viruses. The annual slaughter of monkeys for primary cultures has reached such proportions that several species are endangered. At least several hundred thousand people in the U.S. have been inoculated with live SV40 virus found in polio vaccines produced in monkey kidney cells."

The following facts endorse this Society's belief that vivisection is a direct threat to public health and should be abolished on these grounds:-

According to official reports 1 1/2 million people are hospitalised every year in the U.S. alone as a consequence of drugs which have been tested on animals.

Further reports claim that investigations reveal 16 percent of people in hospital in the United Kingdom are ill owing to the side-effects of various animal-tested drugs. And that the "cures" being effected are worse than the diseases for which they were prescribed.

In 1982 hundreds of patients died in the U.K. from the prescription arthritis drug Opren which had been tested (force-fed to the death) for seven years on primates, rats, mice, guinea-pigs and rabbits.

In Tokyo Clioquinol is reported to have paralysed, blinded and killed 30,000 victims.

Dwarfing the Thalidomide tragedy - 200,000 babies were reportedly born with terrible malformations during 1980... because their mothers in pregnancy had consumed medicaments which had been tested on animals.

The list is endless... the evidence is endless... vivisection kills!

The New Zealand Polio vaccine scandal will be whitewashed and covered up. Truth will be belittled by conniving politicians running for cover. I hope your readers show their appreciation of this excellent exposure and give your newspaper their full support in what lies ahead.

Yours faithfully
Bette Overell
New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society (Inc.)
3 February 1983"

A Committee of Enquiry set up by the Board of Health stated that it could not be ruled out that two million kiwis would not in thirty years' time be suffering from brain tumours as a result of the vaccinations:... The Committee's report on the safety of polio vaccine was heralded by certain politicians as... A whitewash!

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