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APRIL-MAY 1996 Television newsreels ~II over Australia in January 199~ reported ~n the deaths.of Itwo five-year-old children, one m Adelaide and one m Tasmallta, from "bram eating amoebas". Listening to these startling reports, I remembered that when I was writing my book, Vaccination, and studying medicaF papers dealing with the contamination by monkey viruses of the monkey k'idney tissues used in the production of the polio vaccine, one of the articles mentioned Acanthamoeba as yet another contaminant of these tissue cultures, besides the well-known and well-publicised simian viruses SV 1 SV40. As a matter of curiosity, I lo.oked up the paper written by Hull et aJ. (1958) in my files, and there it was, Oll> page 35: "Rec.enlly an ameba was isolated from monkey kidney tis sue cultures and was identified as belonging to the genus Acantlwmoeba. It grew readily in tissue cultures... It appeared to have the ability to infect and kill monkeys and mice fol lowing intracerebral and intraspinal inoculation." Within a short period of time I was able to locate dozens more medical papers dealing with the pathogenicity of these amoebas in animals and, even more importantly, also in humans. For let's not forget that millions of children all over the world had been injected or orally administered a number of viral vaccines, and the polio vaccine in particular, cul tured on the monkey kidneys. CONTAMINATION OF BIOLOGICALS, INOLUDING VACCINES Contamination of vaccines by animal micro-organisms has been plaguing vaccine pro ductibn from the very start and has been imp.licated in a number of serious diseases, leukaemia, cancer, SSPE (subacute sclerosing pan encephalitis) and even AIDS being the most prominent examples. As recently as 1993, a journal called Vaccine publishedl an article which admitted that "Virus-contaminated cell cultures are a major problem in the bio-illdustry ... Cell cultures can be permanently vlrus-infectedl, or can become infected, usually throughl the use of contaminated sera." WHAT ARE AMOEBAS? Amoebas are one-cell organisms-protozoans. According to an excellent review by Ma et al. (1990), amoebic protozoans are classified! in the phyllum Sarcomastigophora. They also belong to Rhizopoda, meaning as equipped by propulsive pseudopodia and/or by pro· toplasmic now without produc.tion of pseudopodia. Acant.hopodina, a suborder of the order of Amoebida, form two families: Vahlkampfiidae and Acanthoamoebidae with two genera, Naegleria and Acanthamoeba respectively. A number of species havc been recognised belonging to either of these genera. Depending on living conditions, Naegleria species form three life-stages: t~opltozoito, flagell'ate and cyst. In contrast to this, Acanthamoeba species form only two Me-stages: trophozoi.te and cyst. Initially, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, amoebas were considered harmless. The first mention of "Free-living amoebae as contaminants in monkey-kidney tissue cultures" is that by Jahnes, Fullmer ana Li (11957). Jahnes et al. (1957) isolated tWQ strains of apparently the same amoeba from monkey kidney tissue cultures. They looked like rounded bodies, similar in appearance to cells manifesting changes induced by certain simian (monkey) viruses. However, on doser examination, they proved to be amoebic cysts. The cysts varied in Size, usually from 10 to 21 microns in di.ameter. In one experi ment, the cysts were treated with W% formalin, washed and inoculated into monlcey kid ney tissue culture tubes. The monkey kidney cells fagocytised the cysts. The tropho- NEXUS • 43