The Cutter Incident

With the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine worldwide, it's timely to recall the so-called Cutter Incident that I became aware of today when watching the initial two episodes of 1986: The Act that are available for free. To watch the entire film costs $9.99 but it's money spent in a good cause because these types of movies that question the safety of vaccines are never going to feature on Amazon Prime, Netflix or any similar platforms.

The movie is promoted as: 

Man and microbe, from Polio to COVID19... a never more relevant forensic examination of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and its consequences. What happens when an ancient wisdom – a mother’s intuition - is pitted against powerful interests in a race against time?

And yes, the Andy J Wakefield, who directed the movie (and also Vaxxed), happens to be the much maligned doctor who dared to link vaccines with autism. An unforgiveable sin. To quote from the site:

One of the most controversial, misrepresented figures of recent times, Dr. Andrew Wakefield has been maligned in Wikipedia, the press, science journals and other mainstream outlets - all stemming from his challenge to claims that MMR vaccine is safe. In doing so, he has threatened one of the most powerful corporate cabals in history. 

The British medical establishment deregistered him in 2010. The mainstream media continue to denigrate Wakefield at every opportunity, depicting him as the arch-villain who has single-handedly undermined confidence in vaccines around the world. Thankfully, he has had the courage of his convictions and refuses to be cowed by the vitriol. This July 2018 article in The Guardian is typical of the sort of press he gets. It's titled:

How disgraced anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield was embraced by Trump's America

I managed to find a 2005 book specifically written about the Cutter Incident. The book's title is THE CUTTER INCIDENT: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis and its author is Paul A. Offit, M.D. It should be an interesting read but it's interesting how even I, who have been skeptical of vaccines for several years now, hadn't heard of it. I knew that the polio vaccine that I'd received as a child in the late 50's had been contaminated with a simian tumour-causing virus. 

Review of Book: January 11th 2021

Here is what I wrote in GoodReads:

The book, written in 2005 by a doctor who is very much pro-vaccines, nonetheless lays bare the awful catastrophe that unfolded in the United States in 1955 when over four hundred thousand people, mostly children, were injected with a polio vaccine. The vaccine should have contained only killed virus but instead it contained, alive and well, the most virulent of all the polio strains. It shows how dangerous vaccines can be and how cautious we should be allowing ourselves and our children to be injected with them. The book is a timely read in light of the rolling out of the experimental and untested Covid-19 vaccines around the world.

I must add that the author shows no concern for the thousands of monkeys on which the vaccine was tested. Primate testing continues unabated to this day. Back in the 1950's inmates of institutions for the mentally retarded were also made guinea pigs. Primate farms are big business of course and I should make a future post on this topic.