Responsibility for truth in research

For over half a century, cell cultures derived from animals and humans have served researchers in various fields. To this day, cross-contamination of cultures has plagued many researchers, often leading to mistaken results, r etractions of results, cover-ups and some out-and-out falsification of data and results following inadvertent use of the wrong cells. Also, during yea rs of examining cultures for purity we learned that many virologists were n ot too concerned about the specificity of the cultures they used to propaga te the particular virus under study as long as the substrate (whatever it m ight have been) gave optimal virus yield. Polio virus propagates in primate cells, and much research has involved cells from man and various species o f primates. In the 1950s a large number of chimpanzees were held in captivi ty in Africa for extensive studies of the efficacy of polio vaccine in prod uction at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and elsewhere. Chimpanzee ti ssues, particularly kidneys, were thus readily available and could have als o provided substrates for polio virus production, since little was known ab out the purity of substrates and little attention was paid to their specifi city at that time.