For nearly 60 years it has been claimed that Simian Virus 40 infections cause cancer in humans. The prime suspect has been the polio vaccine1,2 widely used in the late 1950ies grown in green monkey kidney cell cultures, the Vero cells still used today as cell cultures to “prove” the existence of and to grow “viruses”.
There is ample lack of evidence that viruses exist. To not overextend this article, please read the Substack explaining this lack of evidence here:
https://anitabaxasmd.substack.com/p/the-questionable-virus-theory
As the same procedures,3,4,5,6,7 for virus detection have been done for SV40 as for all the other “viruses”, this too provides no evidence that SV40 exists and is a virus. The main reason why it is accused of causing cancer is that the genetic sequence attributed to SV40 has been found in various cancer cells in humans and lab animals8,9. Another reason is that when lab animals were injected with a concoction of the stuff thrown into the Vero cell cultures claimed to contain SV40, they develop cancers. The claimed mechanism is that SV40 inhibits certain genes that are supposed to suppress tumor growth. They are tumor suppressor genes such as p53 and others10. The reason is that the virus wants the cell to replicate the virus and thus needs to stop processes that would inhibit this. This is attributed to a T-Antigen that binds to these suppressor genes and thus stops their suppressing function of cell division11..
What is a T-Antigen? It’s simply a genetic sequence among the DNA strand attributed to SV40 that codes for a protein that seems to bind to tumor suppressor genes. The T Antigen of SV40 seems to bind preferably to L-1 DNA in human cells. These are also called jumping genes that use a copy – paste mechanism to propagate themselves throughout the genome. L-1 is active in the germ line during the formation of an embryo. In cancer growth they are erroneously activated and may cause instability in the genome, a hallmark for the emergence of uncontrolled cell division aka cancer12.
Now what is a tumor? It basically is the proliferation of cells by mitosis (cell division). This is what happens when a fetus grows during pregnancy for example. During this time, these tumor suppressor genes aren’t active, or cells couldn’t divide and the fetus couldn’t develop and grow.
Might there be something in monkey kidney cell cultures that can have this effect?
An unrelated study examined the mechanism by which particular kidney cells13(nephrons) multiply during the last trimester of pregnancy. A particular genetic sequence is required in order for these particular kidney cells to multiply. These genetic sequences code for proteins that inhibit tumor suppressor genes. The term tumor suppressor gene is a bit misleading. It’s simply a gene that serves to inhibit cell division when it is appropriate to do so. During fetal tissue growth such inhibition is not appropriate as the fetus grows by cell division. They examined the mechanism in monkey fetus kidneys of the same type of monkey that the monkey kidney cells (Vero cells) are derived from. They found the mechanism in humans and these monkeys is identical. Could these genetic sequences be the ones misinterpreted as the ones from SV40? It seems other “viruses” are also accused of inhibiting tumor suppressor genes such as Rotavirus14. These too would have been “found” in Vero cell cultures.