Was the hepatitis B vaccine contaminated with HIV and the KS virus?
Largely forgotten in AIDS history is the hepatitis B vaccine trial that also took place with 685 gay Dutch volunteers in Amsterdam between November 1980 and December 1981. Unlike the American vaccine makers, the Dutch researchers heated their experimental hepatitis B vaccine for added safety. A 1986 report of the trial clearly states the AIDS virus “was not transmitted by the heat inactivated hepatitis B vaccine.” Of the 685 participants, five were already infected with HIV when the trial began. The researchers theorized that HIV entered the Dutch gay population at the end of the 1970s. Another follow-up Dutch report of this trial in 1993 again suggests the efficacy of heating the vaccine for safety. (The experimental vaccine was not heated in the U.S. until after all the gay experiments were completed.) At the end of 1982, one year after the Dutch experiment had ended, only As stated previously, a 1986 report in JAMA showed 20% of the men in the experiment were already infected with H
