The Ruth Kirschstein Page

Ruth Kirschstein is the current Acting Director of the National Institutes of Health. She was Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences from 1974 to 1993, when she was "temporarily" assigned as deputy director of the National Institutes of Health by Clinton's HHS Secretary Donna Shalala. She served as deputy director throughout Harold Varmus' term as NIH Director.

Kirschstein is implicated as an instrumental figure in the promotion of health fascism by Julius Richmond, former Surgeon General and one of the assistant secretaries of health who have run the "Healthy People" program: "Now, in order to do this, we drew very, very heavily on, of course, the research base, the knowledge base that is so critical, of the NIH. Ruth Kirschstein, who is here, played a continuing role in that process, in keeping NIH actively involved, and the CDC, and particularly the Center for Health Statistics, which I keep saying is our directional compass that really tells us what directions we ought to be going in."

According to her bio, "From 1957 to 1972, Dr. Kirschstein performed research in experimental pathology at the Division of Biologics Standards (now the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, FDA). During that time, she helped develop and refine tests to assure the safety of viral vaccines for such diseases as polio, measles, and rubella. Her work on polio led to selection of the Sabin vaccine for public use. For her role, she received the DHEW Superior Service Award in 1971." Also, according to a more detailed biography in American Men and Women of Science, she was a pathologist at DBS from 1957-60; chief, Sect Path, Lab Virol Immunol 1960-65; assistant chief 1962-65 and chief of Lab Pathol 1965-72; assistant director of the Division of Biologics Standards 1971-72; deputy director of the Bureau of Biologics of the FDA 1972-73; and deputy associate commissioner of science 1973-74.

This is a highly sanitized version of history. In fact the early polio vaccines were one of the government's most notorious screwups. The vaccines were contaminated with SV40, a polyoma virus infectious to humans, and millions of people were exposed via the contaminated vaccines. In 1997 there was a workshop sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration; the National Cancer Institute; and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the NIH; the National Center for Infectious Diseases of the CDC; the National Immunization Program; and the National Vaccine Program Office, "Simian Virus 40 (SV40): A possible human polyomavirus," to determine whether there had been any increased rates of cancer attributable to the virus, a controversy which has still not been resolved.

According to Walter Kyle, an attorney for the American Society for Microbiology: "First, I think everyone should realize, as Ratner attempted to point out yesterday but was interrupted, the inactivated polio vaccines of the 1950s were not actually inactivated. They contained live polio viruses. They caused many cases of polio. In addition, very significantly, when you mix formalin with protein you get plastic. You had plastic encapsulated polio viruses that presented themselves 30 days after inoculation. I assume the infectious SV40 was encapsulated in a lot of those early injections.

"The other comment I have is to Keerti Shah. I keep hearing this reference to 'after the vaccine was licensed in 1963, there was no SV40 in it.' You should all be aware (and I have the records) that most, if not all, the licensing lots of the oral Sabin vaccine were contaminated with SV40. Now, I would hope they removed it afterwards. The fact is that the government agencies in charge of the safety of the vaccine have been found negligent in its licensing and release. It is the only vaccine or product where the government has been sued successfully. That case was litigated for over 20 years. I was a part of the procedure. The documents we have gathered from this case may be very helpful. I would be happy to share them with the independent scientists."

Arthur Levine (of the NICHHD): "I do not think there is any question that there was live SV40 in the polio vaccines. That is not the issue. Yesterday we heard representatives from the manufacturers describe the technology they use to assure us that to the best of their ability, they cannot detect SV40 in the polio vaccines."

Walter Kyle: "I understand that what is going on now was not what happened in the past. I have the records of what Ruth Kirschstein has seen in the polio vaccine over the years, including her comments and meetings with the manufacturers. For the manufacturers to get up here and assert that there is no viable microbial agent in the vaccines belies the evidence that the NIH and the Bureau of Biologics has as to what was present over the years, into the 1970s, into the 1980s. After the 1980s they started cleaning up the monkeys because a big problem arose with AIDS. But, in spite of the retro-viruses which they actually discovered in the mid-1970s, they still permitted their release." (Brown F, Lewis AM, eds. Simian Virus 40: A Possible Human Polyomavirus. Dev Biol Stand. Basel, Karger, 1998, vol 94, pp 259-260).

Even more disgracefully, the whistleblower about this problem, Dr. Bernice Eddy, was punished for speaking out. "It had been known for years that monkeys harbor latent viruses. It was Eddy's original intention to test each of the known viruses for oncogenicity, but by 1959 there were more known simian viruses than she had space or time to test. Instead, she obtained control monkey kidney cell cultures that had been used for testing poliovirus vaccines. After further incubation, these cells were frozen with dry ice and then disintegrated by grinding. The supernatant fluid separated from the cell debris was injected into newborn hamsters. Though normal in appearance for 118 days, the hamsters began to show evidence of tumor formation thereafter. Eddy reported this information to her supervisor who showed little interest in her report.

"In the autumn of 1960 Eddy was invited to address the New York Cancer Society on induction of tumors in hamsters. Granted official permission to speak, Eddy addressed the society on tumors induced by the polyoma virus and also described tumors induced by the presumed viral agent in monkey kidney cells. Her supervisor angrily reprimanded her for mentioning the discovery publicly and ordered her henceforth to submit for approval anything she was going to say before any outside group. Eddy argued for publication of her work because of the implications, but her work on this virus was not published for another two years. As it turned out the virus was known but its oncogenic potential was not recognized. It had been referred to simply as vacuolating virus. It was the fortieth simian virus in Hull's list of simian viruses, thus it became known as simian virus 40, or SV40.

"In May 1961 Eddy wrote a memorandum to the chief of the Laboratory of Control Activities suggesting that since SV40 was known to be exceedingly stable and its effect on the human population was unknown, wouldn't it be advisable to include in the regulation the requirement that the adenovirus vaccine be free of this agent. The same question could have been asked about the polio vaccines but since she had been removed from its control she did not mention that vaccine. Her suggestion was ignored...

"The demotion of Dr. Eddy continued. She argued with her supervisor to keep her laboratory space and animal facilities but her request was denied. At the same time she was denied permission to attend certain professional meetings and publish other papers. She was told by her supervisor that control work and basic research were incompatible. She argued that the polyoma virus research was carried out along with a great deal of control work and that both research and control on influenzaviruses and adenoviruses had gone on simultaneously. She expressed the wish to continue this interesting combination of activities. But she lost this argument too and was taken off control work entirely.

"One of her co-workers, Lawrence Kilham, wrote to an official in the Surgeon General's office seeking help in the matter, stating that 'Dr. Eddy's case to many of us represents a somewhat Prussian-like attempt to hinder an outstanding scientist who is making a contribution in an important field of biologics control.' This protest was to no avail.

"Eddy was demoted from head of a section to head of a small laboratory, and was moved into smaller and smaller quarters with fewer and fewer assistants. In a very small laboratory she worked for a time on the so-called slow viruses, but under conditions hardly conducive to productivity. Her last publications deal with oncogenic viruses. Despite the unfavorable climate, she stuck it out at the Division of Biological Standards until 1973 when she retired at age 70.

"She accepted her fate gracefully at the time and became involved with other research and testing. But not all involved with the DBS shakeup took it as calmly. Some written charges were exchanged and a congressional investigation followed sometime later. During the investigation, Senator Abraham Ribicoff, quoting from the allegations of Dr. J. Anthony Morris, said that in 1954 and 1955 'one of the Division's most noted scientists, Dr. Bernice Eddy, discovered that several lots of polio vaccine contained live virus capable of causing the disease itself.' He continued, 'In spite of Dr. Eddy's finding, which was known to the DBS leadership, the vaccine was released in the spring of 1955 and over 150 individuals associated with its use contracted paralytic polio.' It was further recorded that Dr. Eddy was relieved of her duties as polio control officer.

"An extensive reply from the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and his advisors in the department, at the National Institutes of Health, and the Division of Biological Standards, as well as an ad hoc Committee of Experts appointed by the director of the NIH, affirmed that no vaccine known to contain live virus was released for distribution." (EM O'Hern. Profiles of Pioneer Women Scientists. Acropolis Books, 1985. Ch 13, Bernice Elaine Eddy, pp 155-156.)

From the Houston Post, Friday, April 17, 1992: "Scientists polio fears unheeded," by Tom Curtis and Patricia Manson. "Because that scientific discovery conflicted with the scientific belief of the time that monkey viruses were harmless to people, Eddy met with a cold reception, said Dr. Herbert Ratmer of Oak Park, Ill., a former municipal health officer who now edits a small medical journal. 'Eddy is one of our great heroines and suffered martyrdom,' he said."

"Before others confirmed her work, however, higher-ups in the government were 'concerned about the accuracy' of her findings, said Dr. Ruth L. Kirschstein, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the basic research arm of the NIH. Kirschstein, who worked with Eddy, said the scientist's superiors questioned her research methods and conclusions." However, this does not excuse her continuing ostracism from 1960 until her retirement in 1973.

"Eddy's boss, Joseph E. Smadel, told her in a letter that 'you have apparently stirred up a hornet's nest, and there are some who are sufficiently credulous to believe that the use of monkey kidney tissue culture in man may induce cancer in them.'" It should be suspected that this "hornet's nest" aroused by her talk to the New York Cancer Society, which possessed such great influence over the NIH, included Mary Lasker and/or persons close to her.

"In another incident, according to Morris and Turner, HEW in 1960 barred Eddy from publishing her discovery that an adenovirus vaccine designed to prevent cold-like symptoms could cause cancer in hamsters. Allegations that Eddy's scientific findings had been suppressed first surfaced publicly in 1971 during a hearing before a U.S. Senate subcommittee looking into the cost and effectiveness of vaccines." As a result of these hearings, the vaccine program was taken away from the NIH and given to the Food and Drug Administration. However, Morris was fired a few years later for criticizing the swine flu vaccination program.

Bernice Eddy's story illustrates that, while it is permissible for scientists to putter around with lab animals as much as they please, certain extremely powerful people will produce extreme sanctions against anyone suggesting that polyomaviruses and/or adenoviruses could cause cancer in humans. Bernice Eddy was the object lesson to keep them all in line. And although Mary Lasker died in 1994, her old cronies and her heir are still very much in the driver's seat, in both the National Institutes of Health and in various other agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The National Institutes of Health dedicates plaza in honor of Paul G. Rogers. NIH news release 2001 Jun 12. With former Rep. Rogers, now Chairman of the Board of Research!America; NIH Director Ruth Kirschstein; former Reps. John Porter and James Symington; Steve Lawton of the Biotechnology Industry Council; and Research!America President Mary Woolley.

Alan Rabson

"Every institution has a secret wiring plan. At NIH, the circuits all seem to connect to Ruth Kirschstein. For more than 4 decades, she and her husband Alan Rabson, both MDs and civil servants, have worked and lived on NIH's tree-shaded campus in Bethesda, Maryland. That's a lifetime of service as colleague, friend, and supervisor of the government's top biomedical scientists." ("Ruth Kirschstein and Alan Rabson," by Eliot Marshall. Science 2001 Jun 15;292(5524):1989.) "The secret of their long-lived success? Instead of making waves, Kirschstein and Rabson make friends and allies." Especially the most powerful kind of friends. And it claims that "She helped identify a disease-causing batch of oral polio vaccine in trials and developed new tests which identified the Sabin vaccine as the best for public use." Sic.

As for her husband, "Rabson is deputy director of the oldest and largest part of NIH, the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Unofficially, Rabson has also been a troubleshooter for institute director Richard Klausner and counselor to scores of worried patients, including senators and celebrities." Both are natives of New York City. They have been married since 1950, and first came to the NIH in 1955. Before 1955, Kirschstein had been teaching at Tulane University School of Medicine and Rabson was a Public Health Service pathologist.

Rabson is a member of the American Cancer Society's ill-named "National Dialog on Cancer," which also includes Mohammed Akhter of the APHA, Vincent T. DeVita, Sam Donaldson of ABC, President's Cancer Panel fixture Harold P. Freeman, Sen. Bill Frist, NIH Director Julie Gerberding, LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., Charles A. LeMaistre and John Mendelsohn (of Enron infamy), former CDC Director William Roper, and John R. Seffrin of the ACS.

Office of Women's Health

Edward Brandt, one of the Assistant Secretaries of Health, established the first Public Health Service Task Force on Women's Health in 1983. It became the Office for Research on Women's Health in 1990, and Ruth Kirschstein has "served as the first and continuous cochair of the PHS Coordinating Committee on Women's Health Issues from 1983 to 1995." Naturally, all this amounts to is more of the same misdirected efforts, crassly pandering to political pressure groups who are already abundantly (dis)served. The Office of Women's Health funded the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), is "an unprecedented prospective $625,000,000 study on 165,000 women." It is intended to "evaluate the effect of a low-fat diet on prevention of breast and colon cancer and coronary heart disease, examine the effect of hormone replacement therapy on prevention of coronary heart disease and osteoporotic fractures, and evaluate the effect of calcium and vitamin D supplementation on prevention of osteoporotic fractures and colon cancer, (2) an observational study (100,000 participants) that will delineate new risk factors and biological markers in women and identify predictors of disease, and (3) a community prevention study, (20,000 participants) conducted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to evaluate strategies for the adoption of healthful behaviors including improved diet, nutritional supplementation, smoking cessation, increased physical activity, and early detection of diseases." (Agenda for Research on Women’s Health for the 21st Century. A Report of the Task Force on the NIH Women’s Health Research Agenda for the 21st Century. National Institutes of Health, Office of the Director,Office of Research on Women's Health, 1997. NIH Publication No. 99-4386.)

NIH Names Three New Members for Advisory Committee on Women's Health, April 10, 2000. Advisor Ruth Katz, J.D., Associate Dean for Admission at the Yale University School of Administration, is prominently anti-smoking: "Previous to becoming Associate Dean for Administration in 1997, Ms. Katz served on the Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health, where she conducted policy analysis and produced interim and final reports for the public health committee that had been formed at the request of Members of Congress and charged with developing a comprehensive national policy on tobacco. She was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the Second Congressional District of New Jersey in 1996. She has also served as Director of Public Health Programs of the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation and as counsel to the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the early 1980s, she was Legislative Aide for Health Affairs for Congressman James Scheuer of New York and Policy Analyst and Staff Attorney for the Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She has a Masters of Public Health degree from the Harvard University School of Public Health, a Juris Doctor degree from Emory University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania."

Low-fat dietary pattern and risk of invasive breast cancer: the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial. RL Prentice, B Caan, RT Chlebowski, R Patterson, LH Kuller, JK Ockene, KL Margolis, MC Limacher, JE Manson, LM Parker, E Paskett, L Phillips, J Robbins, JE Rossouw, GE Sarto, JM Shikany, ML Stefanick, CA Thomson, L Van Horn, MZ Vitolins, J  Wactawski-Wende, RB Wallace, S Wassertheil-Smoller, E Whitlock, K Yano, L Adams-Campbell, GL Anderson, AR Assaf, SA Beresford, HR Black, RL Brunner, RG Brzyski, L Ford, M Gass, J Hays, D Heber, G Heiss, SL Hendrix, J Hsia, FA Hubbell, RD Jackson, KC Johnson, JM Kotchen, AZ LaCroix, DS Lane, RD Langer, NL Lasser, MM Henderson. JAMA. 2006 Feb 8;295(6):629-642. "CONCLUSIONS: Among postmenopausal women, a low-fat dietary pattern did not result in a statistically significant reduction in invasive breast cancer risk over an 8.1-year average follow-up period."

Low-fat dietary pattern and risk of colorectal cancer: the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial. SA Beresford, KC Johnson, C Ritenbaugh, NL Lasser, LG Snetselaar, HR Black, GL Anderson, AR Assaf, T Bassford, D Bowen, RL Brunner, RG Brzyski, B Caan, RT Chlebowski, M Gass, RC Harrigan, J Hays, D Heber, G Heiss, SL Hendrix, BV Howard, J Hsia, FA Hubbell, RD Jackson, JM Kotchen, LH Kuller, AZ LaCroix, DS Lane, RD Langer, CE Lewis, JE Manson, KL Margolis, Y Mossavar-Rahmani, JK Ockene, LM Parker, MG Perri, L Phillips, RL Prentice, J Robbins, JE Rossouw, GE Sarto, ML Stefanick, L Van Horn, MZ Vitolins, J Wactawski-Wende, RB Wallace, E Whitlock. JAMA 2006 Feb 8;295(6):643-54. "Intervention group participants significantly reduced their percentage of energy from fat by 10.7% more than did the comparison group at 1 year, and this difference between groups was mostly maintained (8.1% at year 6). Statistically significant increases in vegetable, fruit, and grain servings were also made. Despite these dietary changes, there was no evidence that the intervention reduced the risk of invasive colorectal cancer during the follow-up period. There were 201 women with invasive colorectal cancer (0.13% per year) in the intervention group and 279 (0.12% per year) in the comparison group (hazard ratio, 1.08; 95% confidence interval, 0.90-1.29)."

Low-fat dietary pattern and risk of cardiovascular disease: the Women's Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Dietary Modification Trial. BV Howard, L Van Horn, J Hsia, JE Manson, ML Stefanick, S Wassertheil-Smoller, LH Kuller, AZ LaCroix, RD Langer, NL Lasser, CE Lewis, MC Limacher, KL Margolis, WJ Mysiw, JK Ockene, LM Parker, MG Perri, L Phillips, RL Prentice, J Robbins, JE Rossouw, GE Sarto, IJ Schatz, LG Snetselaar, VJ Stevens, LF Tinker, M Trevisan, MZ Vitolins, GL Anderson, AR Assaf, T Bassford, SA Beresford, HR Black, RL Brunner, RG Brzyski, B Caan, RT Chlebowski, M Gass, I Granek, P Greenland, J Hays, D Heber, G Heiss, SL Hendrix, FA Hubbell, KC Johnson, JM Kotchen. JAMA 2006 Feb 8;295(6):655-666. Randomized controlled trial of 48,835 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 years, 1993-98. "The diet had no significant effects on incidence of CHD (hazard ratio [HR], 0.97; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.90-1.06), stroke (HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.90-1.15), or CVD (HR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.92-1.05). "Over a mean of 8.1 years, a dietary intervention that reduced total fat intake and increased intakes of vegetables, fruits, and grains did not significantly reduce the risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD in postmenopausal women and achieved only modest effects on CVD risk factors..." After finding no effect, they nonsensically declare that "more focused diet and lifestyle interventions may be needed to improve risk factors and reduce CVD risk."

cast 09-19-07