Dr. Mary’s Monkey
Page 19
Page 1. Jim Garrison’s memo describing David Ferrie’s unintentional xeroxed personal notations.
Page 2. A description of a viral cancer experiment which transferred cancer tumors from animal to animal.
Page 3. A discussion of the work of a doctor who developed an experimental antibiotic for treating cancer.
Page 4. A chart showing different types of cancers and their tissue of origin.
Page 5. The first page of a bibliography.
Page 6. The second page of the bibliography.
At the top of each photocopied page we find:
REPRODUCED AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES Collection: HSCA (RG 233)
Garrison’s successor (D.A. Harry Connick) gave this document to the U.S. House of Representative’s Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1972, and it has been at the National Archives in Washington ever since. The U.S. government released the treatise, thanks to the JFK Records Act, on October 22, 1993, nearly a year after I started looking for it.
The first point is that this is a real document. Garrison was not making up the story about the treatise in the middle of the interview, as some people had suggested to me.
Secondly, we proceed with the understanding that this document was found in Ferrie’s apartment by investigators from the New Orleans District Attorney’s office.
What we find upon close examination is not a complete document, but fragments of a much larger document. A reference to “Chapter Nine” of the document clearly indicates the original document had at least nine chapters.
The subject of the document is cancer research. The author appears to have compiled a state-of-the-art review of both research and literature concerning viral theories of cancer from 1901 to 1955. By simplifying the bibliography we can see both the timeframe and the subject matter clearly:
1901 Parasitic Theories of Cancer (Pasteur Institute)
1911 Transmission of Malignancy thru Cell-free Filtrate
1930 Metabolism of Tumors
1940 Breast Cancer in Mice as Influenced by Nursing
1944 Electron Microscopy Study of Chicken Tumor Cells
1948 Microscope Findings in Malignant Tissue
1949 Virus-like bodies in Human Breast Cancer
1949 Induction of breast cancer... (in)... mice
1950 Virus as a Cause of Human & Animal Malignancy
1951 Virus as the Cause of Cancer
1953 Is Leukemia Caused by a Transmissible Virus?
1955 Pathogenesis of Cancer
If we reverse-engineer for a title, it would be something like:
The Case for the Viral Theory of Cancer:
A Review of Research and Literature from 1901-1955
It should be emphasized that the author obviously believed that cancer was viral:
Suffice it to say: as with Gregory’s work, so here, the Koch Postulate seems fulfilled. Cancer seems caused by a virus.
So what are the contents of the original document? What did the author know about the viral nature of cancer, and of related research that was being conducted across the country? The short answer is “as much as any person in the world.”
For starters, the author knew how to prepare cell-free extracts from cancerous tumors and use those extracts to transfer cancer from animal to animal:
Extracts were made from the malignant tumors which appeared in the test group. These extracts were then injected into other animals of the test group. A variety of malignancies appeared: leukemia, chorioepithelioma (cancer of the uterus) among them.
And the author used chemical carcinogens to induce cancer:
It was noted in the tests that the application of carcinogens does NOT always produce a malignancy. Hence, Cowdry’s “final common path” seems at work. Thus the term “carcinogen” has reservations. It is to be noted that methylcholanthrene failed to give a 100% result. Of course it could be argued that there may have been a conflict since two other items were used in the carcinogenesis.
The author reviewed his/her experience with a number of experimental anti-cancer drugs:
Merasptopterin Aminopterin
Antivin Magnesium Tracinate
The last of these, he/she explained how to prepare from scratch:
1) The following is the process for manufacturing (magnesium tracinate):
2) Obtain Bacillus Subtilis, Tracy I and grow over high protein agar.
3) Catch up the culture in solution and heat at 56 degrees C for an hour.
4) Filter with a number 11 Berkfold filter for a cell-free filtrate.
5) Combine 100cc of the filtrate with 100cc of Magnesium Sulphate.
6) Place in electrophoresis for recovery.
7) Wash out the magnesium hydroxide.
8) Catch up the crystals in normal saline. 1500 mg to 50cc saline.
And the author also tells how to kill cancerous cells and viruses in the lab:
Extracts of the malignant tissue heated to 56 degrees C for one hour and then injected into animals of the control group produced no malignancies.
Since killing viruses is the foundation of vaccine development, the author takes the opportunity to prepare the reader for such a discussion later in the treatise:
This is referred to here because of a discussion, later in the paper, on the use of vaccines in cancer prevention.
This is an extremely important point for our inquiry, as we will see later. Needless to say, the scope of the original document must have been enormous.
SO WHO WROTE THIS DOCUMENT? When was it written? Where was it written? And why?
Simply stated, David Ferrie did not write this document. Other than Garrison’s note which called the document “Ferrie’s article on cancer,” there is no evidence that Ferrie is the author. We do not have a title page, and the author refers to himself (or herself) in the third person. A careful reading provides numerous clues about the author. The most obvious one is that the author had daily access to x-ray machines and other professional laboratory supplies and equipment. Consider these sentences collected from disparate parts of the treatise:
Finally, the animals were subjected to small doses of x-ray over a period of three weeks.
Obtain Bacillus Subtilis, Tracy I and grow over high protein agar.
Filter with a number 11 Berkfold filter for a cell-free filtrate.
Place in electrophoresis for recovery.
Ferrie would not have had this type of equipment at his disposal.
Secondly, the author of this treatise personally performed experiments with experimental antibiotics for treating cancer, and lamented that an antibiotic had not yet been released to the medical community for general trials:
Antivin is an antibiotic, developed by a mold, by Dr. John E. Gregory. This author has had the happy opportunity of using it with small laboratory animals with happy results... Antivin has not as yet been released for general trial, however.
David Ferrie would not have had access to an unreleased antibiotic developed by a top medical researcher.2 It is clear that this document was written by a professional cancer researcher working in a well-equipped medical laboratory at the highest levels of American medicine. Minimally, someone on Mary Sherman’s level. Perhaps someone even higher in the national research network.
Garrison made the assumption that finding a typewritten document in Ferrie’s apartment alongside his caged mice meant that Ferrie had written it. It appears that he was wrong in that assumption. But proving Garrison wrong on this detail gives us little relief. What made Ferrie dangerous was the combination of his capabilities and his motives, not his originality. It would have been far better for the world if Ferrie had written this document based on his original theories and his home-brewed experiments. Knowing that he had access to the techniques of the leading edge of cancer research makes the situation even more volatile, and raises some very serious questions about the other doctors involved in his laboratory.
When was the document written? It was not written before 1955, since it
quotes articles published that year. Any review of a fast-changing field like medicine would normally concentrate on the most recent articles published on the subject. Since the last date on the bibliography is 1955, it is reasonable to conclude that this document was written shortly thereafter, in late-1955, 1956, or 1957. The time frame ends in 1957 because that year two researchers from the National Institute of Health announced a major discovery about viral cancer. Sarah Stewart and Bernice Eddy discovered a virus which caused multiple cancer tumors in a variety of small mammals. It was the first time one virus caused cancer in several different species. They named their virus “polyoma.” This was a watershed event in cancer research, and it shifted the focus of cancer research toward viruses. It is highly unlikely that a treatise on viral cancer would have been written following the announcement of Stewart and Eddy’s research without referring to it in the bibliography. Therefore, this treatise appears to have been written in 1956.
For whom was this treatise written? It was an internal document for a large organization which was heavily involved in cancer research. And it was not published. It is typewritten, but not typeset. The pages are not numbered. Despite the fact that it is written in clear and concise language by a highly educated person, there are about a dozen minor errata in the few pages we have. Any reader would have noticed this one:
Reads: “None of the animals developed malignancies.”
Should read: “None of the control animals developed malignancies.”
“Control” is a curious omission for a document written by an experimental laboratory researcher. It is hard to imagine that this error was not noticed in the author’s own proofreading, since the seven spaces for the word “control” were left blank. Is the omission of the word “control” deliberate? Is it an indication that the researcher had some objection to the concept of control groups? This will become significant in our attempt to identify the author.
The author also recommends that his/her organization take certain actions:
Dr. Gregory is available to come to any part of the country to demonstrate Antivin. From this writer’s experience, to invite Dr. Gregory to demonstrate the antibiotic is well worth its while.
This sounds like a recommendation written by a subordinate for the explicit purpose of extending an invitation to Dr. Gregory to demonstrate his antibiotic. It is unlikely that Dr. Gregory would have traveled across the country on the invitation of David Ferrie, but he would probably have been eager to accept an invitation from a reputable medical school, a drug company, or one of the government’s research laboratories. Was this document written by a frontline researcher at one of the U.S. government’s laboratories which had the specific mission of battling cancer? A facility of the National Institutes of Health or National Cancer Institute?
It is there we find the mission, the equipment, the techniques, the personnel, and the budget to conduct an industry-wide review of progressive theories like virally-caused cancer, a subject that in 1956 was still on the fringe of medical knowledge. The appropriate question: How would David Ferrie have gotten his hands on an internal document from such an organization? From Mary Sherman perhaps? But how would Mary Sherman have come by the document? Just what connections did Mary Sherman (and those around her) have with the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health? And what could have motivated these contacts to send her a copy of such a document?
To answer these questions, we must peek behind the curtain of respect and gaze upon the mishaps of politically-controlled science, especially the enormous upheavals that rocked the National Institutes of Health in the 1950s. We begin by digging through the wreckage of the disastrous introduction of the polio vaccine in order to understand what followed.
TODAY, MANY AMERICANS DO NOT REMEMBER what a terrible curse “the polio epidemic” was upon the land. At its crest in the early 1950s over 33,000 Americans fell crippled or died slow, terrible deaths from polio each year. Most were children. The word “polio” struck fear into the hearts of parents across America. It was a casually transmitted virus that first infected the lining of the intestines, then the blood stream, and finally the nervous system, where it destroyed the victim’s brain stem. The difference between crippled and dead was determined by the extent of the damage to the brain stem. Cavernous hospital wards full of hideous looking machines called “iron lungs” awaited patients who became too weak to breathe for themselves. President Franklin Roosevelt himself was crippled by polio before he entered the White House. The search for a polio vaccine became a national scientific effort supported by the most powerful political forces in the land. The problem was this: Polio was caused by a virus, not a bacteria, and viruses do not respond to antibiotics. So, despite the spectacular success of antibiotics introduced to the American clinical scene in 1942, the medical community was powerless to stop this virus from crippling and killing.
A New York City lawyer close to President Roosevelt organized The March of Dimes, and collected millions of dollars of coins from grade school children across the country to finance the research effort.3 The progress was encouraging. By the early 1950s, American scientist Jonas Salk came forward with a brave new idea to eliminate all three strains of polio at once: Grow the polio viruses in the lab, kill them, then inject healthy children with the dead viruses. The dead viruses would not be able to reproduce, so they would not harm the children, but their immune systems would detect the presence of the invading viruses and would rally to defend the body, producing a hefty supply of antibodies in the process. Then the children’s fully-armed immune systems would be ready to repel any live polio virus that attacked them in the future. His trials in 1953 and 1954 were successful.4 Optimism about Salk’s vaccine reached its peak.
Five laboratories began producing the vaccine from a procedure Salk designed, and accumulated a large enough supply for a mass inoculation beginning in April I of 1955, touched off by an official ceremony on the tenth anniversary of Roosevelt’s death that confirmed Salk’s success. The results of years of research, millions of dollars of investment, and the fate of thousands of crippled children were ready for the most publicized and anticipated event in the history of medicine.
At the eleventh hour a bacteriologist at NIH was told to safety-test the new polio vaccine. Her name was Bernice Eddy, M.D., PhD.5 When she injected the polio vaccine into her monkeys, they fell paralyzed in their cages. Eddy realized that the virus in the vaccine was not dead as promised, but still alive and ready to breed. It was time to sound the alarm. She sent pictures of the paralyzed monkeys to NIH’s management and warned them of the upcoming tragedy. A debate erupted in the corridors of power. Was the polio vaccine really ready? Should the mass inoculation proceed on schedule?
A handful of prominent doctors across the country stepped into the fray to throw the weight of their reputations on the side of the vaccine. One of these doctors was Mary Sherman’s boss, Dr. Alton Ochsner. To demonstrate his conviction that the vaccine was really ready, he inoculated his own grandchildren with it.
The mass inoculation proceeded on schedule. Within days, children fell sick from polio, some were crippled, some died. Estimates vary dramatically. Ochsner’s grandson died. His granddaughter contracted polio but survived. An enormous lawsuit erupted. Heads rolled everywhere.6 The Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare (Oveta Hobby) stepped down. The Director of the National Institutes of Health (Dr. William Sebrell) resigned. It was the biggest fiasco in medical history. A second, safer vaccine developed by Albert Sabin was deployed. It used a weakened live virus instead of a dead virus. It worked. Polio was history. The future was safe ... or so it seemed.
In the aftermath of the debacle, Bernice Eddy was taken off polio research and transferred to the influenza section by the thankless NIH management. She shared her frustrations with a small group of women scientists who ate brown-bag lunches on the steps of one of the laboratories. There Eddy met a tenacious scientist named Sarah Stewart, M.D., PhD., who was waging her
own battle against the official paradigms of bureaucratic medicine. Bernice Eddy and Sarah Stewart became close friends.7
Sarah Stewart’s name remains virtually unknown today, despite her huge contribution to modern medicine. Not only did she prove that some cancers were caused by viruses, but subsequent research on the virus she discovered led to the discovery of DNA recombination, which is one of the most powerful tools in medical research today.
Raised in the fertile Rio Grande Valley on the Mexican border, Stewart’s educational odyssey ranged from the New Mexico Agricultural College in 1927 to a Ph.D. in bacteriology from the University of Chicago in 1939. Next, Stewart went to work for the National Institutes of Health as a bacteriologist for five years. Believing that having a Ph.D. instead of an M.D. was holding back her career advancement, she entered Georgetown Medical School and earned her M.D. in 1947. Then she joined the National Cancer Institute, and stayed there until reassigned to the U.S. Public Health Service in 1960.
From the beginning, Sarah Stewart promoted the idea that cancer was caused by viruses. Due to this, she was not well accepted by the NIH or NCI staffs, who described her as “an eccentric lady” determined to prove her theory was right: “No one believed her ...”8 Finally, she was given access to an NCI laboratory in Bethesda, where she could try to prove her theories. In 1953, she almost succeeded, but her work was not accepted by the ruling crowd at NIH. They found her methods sloppy, and objected to the fact that she did not culture her viruses.
In 1956 her lunch partner Bernice Eddy showed Sarah Stewart how to grow her viruses in a culture of mouse cells.9 She now had all the ingredients she needed, and began a series of experiments which are called “classic” by modern day NIH researchers.10
As her work progressed, she realized that she, stood on the edge of an extremely important discovery and became very protective of her techniques.11 In staff presentations, she would bewilder NIH pathologists by showing them slides of things they had never seen before. Then when they asked how she produced her results, she would giggle and say, “It’s a secret.” To quote her supervisor Alan Rabson: “She drove everybody crazy.” One of her procedural anomalies was that she never did control groups, saying, “They only confuse you.”12