Talk:SV40

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[edit] p53 gene

"SV40 is believed to damage the tumor-suppressing p53 gene in humans."

Sorry, but I think there is some confusion here. AFAICT (and I did my doctorate on an SV40-related subject), it is one of the T proteins -- the large T, to be exact -- expressed by SV40 which interacts with the p53 protein and thereby causes bulls*t in the cell (mostly switching it to growth mode for providing the DNA precursors which are also required for SV40 replication but caring little about potential, um, collateral damage). However, I frankly confess that I haven't followed SV40 for some ten years by now, so please correct me if SV40 has indeed been found capable of messing with the gene that encodes the p53 protein. --Sanctacaris 11:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polio vaccines

Azhyd: I don't think it's accurate to say the contaminated polio vaccines were produced by the former Soviet Union. I know they were tested heavily in the USSR but it was the original Salk and Sabin vaccines, made in the US, that were contaminated - no? Do you have a link or other reference for this?

Also, do you have a link for the "new analysis in 2004"? I'm not aware of it. Thanks --Hob 04:05, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My reference is a short article in New Scientist and so may not be completely accurate. There are explicitely talking about a Soviet vaccine. See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996116 There is no other reference I can find in this article; it's mainly a report of some very recent conference... Azhyd 20:25, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)

Ah... OK, but I think you've been slightly misled by vague wording in the article. "The Soviet polio vaccine was contaminated after 1963" means that there was some quantity of contaminated vaccine produced in the USSR after 1963. That does not mean that all contaminated vaccines before 1963 were also Soviet; the vaccine was being made in more than one place, and as I said, the Salk and Sabin vaccines (made in the US, tested in the USSR among other places) were the ones that were originally associated with SV40. So, assuming this article is your only reference, I'm going to change the wording of the first statement back to what it was. --Hob 22:42, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Indeed I assumed too much here. Please fix and thank you for the head up. Azhyd 22:52, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
OK, I hope the new version looks right... and of course, since that article is really new news (and thanks for calling my attention to it!), I hope one of us remembers to look for more external links in the next few months. --Hob 23:07, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] date question

Previous versions of the article had the virus being discovered in 1959. I think I added that, but I'm not sure where it came from, and now all the sources I can find say 1960 - so I've made it 1960. I'm also not sure why it said vaccines were contaminated up to 1962, rather than 1961, and again this may just be my sloppiness, but if someone knows of a conflicting source please let me know. (And, Lestatdelc, sorry about my snarky edit comment; I just made one more revision to that sentence for clarity and grammar, but I appreciate your fixing the date.) ←Hob June 30, 2005 19:15 (UTC)

[edit] Pop press writeup pared

I've significantly pared down a large contribution made by 68.194.61.176 detailing various allegations made in the popular press. One source was a book written by a pair of "investigative journalists" which is variously described by Amazon.com customers as "[reading] like a thriller," and "a gripping story" about "clash between the science of heroic genius and the search for shared intelligence." Another was a book written by the creator of the "Natural Cures" infomercial. A third source cited on User_talk:68.194.61.176 was Don Imus' radio show.

Let's use our critical faculties here. Wikipedia is not a dissemination mechanism for pop culture conspiracy theories. While I'm not discounting the first book, The Virus and the Vaccine, out of hand, a contribution reading like a poorly written promo for it and including a lot of information irrelevant to the article is not the standard aspired to on Wikipedia. If you want to write about a child who got a brain tumor after receiving the polio vaccine, write an article about the child and link to SV40, not the reverse -- and please think about notability before you do so. Neurophyre 11:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User: 141.158.252.27 / 151.201.157.162

Hello, please help me understand something ... Wikipedia shows no edits from either of these IPs except for SV40 and you continue to engage in an edit war with users ... what is your reasoning? If you are a medical expert on SV40 then please help us make this page better but I have yet to see you make a single constructive edit. Furthermore making malicious edits to the page and substituting references to make it look like I'm calling something else into question is a personal attack that I do not appreciate. Boston2austin (talk) 10:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

==Reasoning

The NCI article does not state what is now stated in the article, that SV40 does not cause cancer, rather they say that "that SV40 likely does not cause cancer in humans. However, additional laboratory research is needed". This is a far different statement then saying "the United States National Cancer Institute has announced that there is no evidence that SV40 causes cancer in humans". This statement is simply incorrect, and puts a a level of assuredness into the statement that simply is not there.

The removed sentence, (that was undone) "This announcement is based on two recent studies.ref", was removed because the noted references were not what the NCI article was based on. The NCI article referenced at least 6 sources, not 2. The 2 references removed are a non sequitur, and do not refer to the section they are in. In addition, there are many references on SV40, many primary studies showing cancer association with various types of tumors in human and animal models, these 2 do not have any special meaning as compared to the rest, and do not trump all these studies. The article in its current version is showing unsupported bias. To the contrary of what is being stated, there is substantial evidence that SV40 does cause cancer in humans and laboratory animals, and the greater question is to what level this is occurring. NCI calls for more study, they have not concluded, as the article implies, that this is a resolved issue. Further, there are other researchers who disagree. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.158.252.27 (talk) 21:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok what we do in these situations is you state your objections, like you did above, then we all decide what we should write the article like and change it accordingly. Although I have not checked, it sounds like your suggestions are reasonable and the text should be changed accordingly. However, we do not want to delete real research papers if they are references and relevant.--Filll (talk) 21:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

This edit: [1],in addition to introducing bad English, removed two sources. I agree that more content is needed with caveats from the NIH press release, but this is not the way to do it. Sorry. I do not mean to offend you.--Filll (talk) 16:34, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


Based on the above, I think we need to put a flag stating "The neutrality of this article is disputed." I believe this article states unsupported positions, and draws unproven conclusions. While arguing "bad English" and "reference removal", undoing changes has reintroduced a bias to this article.141.158.252.27 (talk) 19:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Please propose a version of the text you would suggest here and we can discuss it and propose and counterpropose to see if we can reach a consensus. Fair?--Filll (talk) 19:48, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I already did, but it was undone. Look the changes in the undone version, and tell me what you object to.141.158.252.27 (talk) 19:55, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is the version you suggested:


Some have hypothesized that SV40 can cause cancer in humans. This hypothesis is supported by studies indicating that SV40 is present in an increased subset of human tumor tissues, such brain tumors, bone cancers, malignant mesothelioma, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, as compared to controls.[1]. In addition, SV40 may act as a cocarcinogen with crocidolite to cause mesothelioma [2] (review [3])

However, the United States National Cancer Institute has recently stated SV40 "likely does not cause cancer in humans", but they went on to say "additional laboratory research is needed to better define methods for SV40 detection, as laboratory studies looking for SV40 DNA in human tumors have offered conflicting results." In addition they have stated "There is also a need to conduct additional studies evaluating cancer patients and controls for antibodies to SV40, which would be present in cancer patients if SV40 causes cancer."[4]

The phrase "This hypothesis is supported by studies indicating that SV40 is present in an increased subset of human tumor tissues" makes no sense.

We also do not remove cited reliable sources.

That is a start. There is probably more. But that is a start. --Filll (talk) 20:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Useful sources:

  • Shah KV (2007). "SV40 and human cancer: a review of recent data". Int. J. Cancer 120 (2): 215–23. PMID 17131333. 
  • Lowe DB, Shearer MH, Jumper CA, Kennedy RC (2007). "SV40 association with human malignancies and mechanisms of tumor immunity by large tumor antigen". Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 64 (7-8): 803–14. PMID 17260087. 
  • Poulin DL, DeCaprio JA (2006). "Is there a role for SV40 in human cancer?". J. Clin. Oncol. 24 (26): 4356–65. PMID 16963733. 

Hope you find these useful, probably best to use reviews to deal with this issue, since it is pretty controversial and, as noted in the reviews, some of the earlier data are now seen as unreliable. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:15, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


I think the recent changes make for a more balanced discussion. But I still have a problem with the following statement:

"However, the United States National Cancer Institute has announced that there is no evidence that SV40 causes cancer in humans.[8] This announcement is based on two recent studies.[9][10]"

I dont think that is necessarily NCI's position. They state that these several studies do not did not find clear evidence that SV40 causes cancer, but I don't believe that is there final position. They call for more study of the issue in the article, and recognize there is already certain information indicating these viruses do cause cancer. Further I do not believe that it can be stated without reservation that a US government agency has an unbiased view of the situation. I believe it is a medical doctrine that vaccines are good for society, not necessarily individuals. As such, criticisms of vaccines based on individual adverse reactions is frowned upon. Therefore there is a general attitude in medical circles and in the government that questions of safety of vaccines should be made by authorities, and once they decide, individuals should be encouraged to abide by these decisions. Further, since Merck possibly exposed millions of people to these viruses in the late 1950's, with the governments blessing, the liability level of Merck and the US Government, if the vaccines were found to be carcinogenic, could surpass the GNP of the nation. Any such statement by any US government agency would never pass US government lawyers without 100% proof, which is impossible. Therefore, any such talk of mass exposure of the public to cancer causing vaccines is discouraged by the pharmaceutical industry and the US government.68.163.8.183 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 15:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


As the result of a scientific study, you can report

  1. no evidence
  2. evidence
  3. the study protocol was bad and the study needs to be redone

The studies found no evidence. Of course, scientists will always want to do more study, whether they find evidence or not. If there was a big conspiracy like you say, they would have reported their results differently.--Filll (talk) 16:16, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I replaced the summary of the results with a direct quote from the conclusion of the report. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:21, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


I never used the word conspiracy, and don't claim it’s a conspiracy. Any entity will minimize its risk of liability by claiming, "no evidence", "not enough evidence", and they may or may not be correct, since the weight of evidence is always an opinion in the eye of the beholder. When one's liability is at stake, one will always lean toward the idea that the evidence is incomplete, insufficient, or just simply confuse the issue by referencing to various conflicting results. Look at cigarette companies, they did it for years. This is not a conspiracy as you describe it; it’s simply the result of all interested parties taking the position that suits them best.

As far at the results of scientific studies, you can either support a hypothesis or not support it. Not supporting it by any design doesn’t "prove" that the hypothesis is incorrect, it simply adds weight in that direction, to possibly be over ridden by a subsequent study. Things are never as clear as "evidence" or "no evidence". Probability and statistics can be made to prove many inaccuracies based on levels of certainty etc.151.199.230.59 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 15:40, 15 February 2008 (UTC)