Introduction
First of all this is a controversial subject which is surrounded by ‘Factination’ and ‘Fictination’ if you will excuse my distortion of the English language. Most people if not all (except for those that have researched vaccines) are sold on the idea that vaccines have saved millions of lives especially during the outbreak eras of Polio and Small Pox back in the day. These next series of articles will touch on a slice of vaccine history and a discussion on the 16 or so vaccines that are part of the vaccine schedule and what is contained within the vaccine themselves.
Poliomyelitis
“We can see polio more clearly than most diseases because its rise and fall took place within a single lifetime”
-John Rowan Wilson- Margin of safety (1963)
Pre-Vaccination History
We can only surmise the long history of Poliomyelitis (Polio) where in one form causes ‘infantile paralysis, because the virus attacks the nerves in the spine blocking the nerve impulses from the brain to the muscle causing the muscle fibers to die. A similar occurrence is depicted on ancient Egyptian stone slabs showing a young man with withered legs leaning on a stick but we have no way of telling if this was caused by polio or not. We do know that Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) a famous Scottish novelist, playwright and poet contracted polio at 18 months of age and was crippled in one leg. By the end of the 19th century Polio epidemics began in the US,Denmark,Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. It is hypothesised that before this period most people lived in squalid and filthy conditions and thus lived in symbiosis with the polio virus and the majority of children were self immunising, contracting the disease without any effect or symptoms, but in these countries conditions were gradually being cleaned and hygiene was improving which provided an ‘ideal clean’ environment for the virus to take hold.
Public health initiatives enforced to contain the disease
Great chunks of the population throughout the western world in the early part of the century became scared and panicked, witnessing the rise in the epidemic seeing young children in leg calipers (as portrayed by the young Forrest Gump who supposedly had been crippled with polio only to eventually kick his leg calipers off to run around the planet), hard plastic waistcoats as back supports, iron lungs (a device resembling a small one man submarine that provided assisted breathing to those polio victims that suffered the virulence of the virus in their lungs). During the pre-vaccination eras such as in the 1916 polio outbreak in New York, quarantine procedures prevailed forcing children to be kept in hospitals, the middle class kept their children at home, while the poor children were sent to hospital and their parents worried that they were sending their children to die or to be crippled and some refused.
Prevailing theories on the origins of the virus
In one instance 3 policeman armed with guns raided one house forcibly removing a 2 year old and passed him out through a window to a waiting doctor. In the hot summer mothers were so afraid that they refused to open the windows to ‘keep the virus out’ while the children lay saturated in sweat with flies sticking to them. The rich families attempted to remove some 50,000 children out of NY city but neighboring areas did not want to receive them so roadblocks were set up on every access out of the city. Helpless, ignorant health officials suspected the cats and dogs as being carriers of the virus so began the hunt for the ‘virus carriers’ destroying 300-450 cats & dogs/day. The other 230 theories of the origins of this ‘modern plague’ included the inhalation of the poisonous gases being used in the great war (1914-1918) by sharks that swam to the shores of the US and exhaled the germs and dead body debris.
Therapies to Combat the Disease
Dr Simon Flexner (author of the infamous Flexner report that changed the history of medicine by ‘blackballing’ the more dominant alternative medicine schools of the time to Pharmaceutical driven schools under the financial leadership of the Rockefeller foundation) actually proposed a new immune serum by extracting blood from a recovering patient of infantile paralysis, and then spinning the blood in a centrifuge. The result of which would be the antitoxin (this blood spinning is not unlike the modern blood spinning process which is used to separate a person’s blood into constituent parts of Plasma (55% of the blood sample), the buffy coat made up of leukocytes and platelets (<1%), and Erythrocytes (45%) the red blood cell component. The platelets and plasma would then be combined and then injected to increase wound healing time). However, a George Draper from Willard Park Hospital who tried this on 4 patients wrote to Flexner saying 4 patients treated with this ‘antitoxin did not develop paralysis while 3 others are all paralyzed and dead. It would be the mid thirties before analysis of Flexner’s immune serum would be proven to be worthless, however the idea was sound and its methodology became the forerunner of the vaccine that Dr Jonas Salk perfected in the fifties. The polio epidemic raged on crippling approximately 2000 children/year.
The Curious Situation on Barren Island
Again the question of hygiene was staring the department of health with a report that 350 children on Barren Island Brooklyn, a garbage dump island containing an abundance of flies, mosquitoes and rats, no public water supply, no sewage system, inhabited by poor unskilled Poles, Italians and Negroes at a very low standard of living, and yet not one case of Polio has been reported. Finally, Dr Frost an epidemiologist from the US Public Health concluded:
“ ..That an epidemic of 1-3 cases/1000 or even less immunizes the general population to an extent that the epidemic declines spontaneously, due to exhaustion or thinning out of infectible material. Apparently an endemic incidence relatively small in comparison to that prevailing in an epidemic may produce a population immunity sufficient to definitely limit the incidence rate in a subsequent epidemic”
The New York 1916 Polio Epidemic
New York 1916 experienced 8.900 cases with 2,400 deaths (Nationwide 27,000 cases and 6,000 reported deaths). So we can conclude here that since it is a viral infection and we naturally have vast amounts of microbial creatures some of which are viral by nature, but with the delicate microbiota balance they and other pathogens are forbidden by our friendly microbial neighbors to overrun the show. Since the dogma from Pasteur that all bacteria should be destroyed, medicine today and yesteryear spent their lives trying to eradicate bacterial colonies by unnecessary hygiene in some cases, and drugs tipping the balance. A reason to conclude why the garbage colonies of Barren Island had no cases of polio while the disinfectant wielding middle class suffered many infantile cases. This by the way goes for most diseases..I am not saying it’s good to be dirty..because your social calendar would be a little sparse…but I am saying it’s good to be dirty because the pathogens are not going to pick on you because of a maintained microbiome balance.
President Franklin Theodore Roosevelt
The 32nd President of the US, Franklin Roosevelt (FDR, 1882-1945) was struck down with polio himself as a young man of 33 in 1921, or at least that is what is reported, but he actually had Guillain-Barre syndrome (acute ascending polyneuritis) an autoimmune disease that attacks the nerves. Thinking that his political life was over, he found a new lease of life when he was introduced to a mineral springs in Warm springs Georgia, a 18th century Spa town, in 1924 to try the constant temperature of the 88 degree F natural spring. He found that bathing in the spring eased his pain (he actually died there in 1945). He ended up buying the place to attract other polio sufferers. In 1926 the spa site received an endorsement from the American Orthopedic Association (AOC) in Roosevelt’s new hydrotherapeutic centre. Roosevelt raised money to combat polio in the local community and 30% went to the newly formed President’s Birthday Ball Commission for Infantile paralysis (PBBC) to be used for research into polio prevention.
Roosevelt’s PBBC research spawns an Experimental Vaccine
The prime individual for the research was Paul de Kruif (who became the secretary of the PBBC) a trained microbiologist (author of the 1926 book Microbe hunters, the book that inspired Albert Sabin to change careers from dentistry to medicine) and an arch enemy of Simon Flexner. Since the epidemic in New york in 1916 until 1935 very little research had been done into polio since the virus was invisible with the optical microscope (the electron microscope was not yet available). Eventually a vaccine was developed by Drs Park and Maurice Brodie (born in Britain and trained at Mcgill Montreal) from New York’s health department labs and John Kolmer of Philadelphia. It was this vaccine that was used during a polio outbreak in Raleigh North Carolina in 1935. The vaccine injected an inactivated virus using Formalin (commercial grade formaldehyde) creating synthetic antibodies in the bloodstream. Park and Brodie injected it into themselves followed by 9000 children without any proper safety study (by today’s standard that’s nothing new). However, the `vaccine`killed several children which marked the end of their careers and the vaccine (2 deaths..huh..that’s `chump change..what’s all the fuss about, other vaccines have killed thousands), was scuttled.
Unscientific methods to keep the virus out
In the natural environment humans become infected by inhalation of the virus (inoculation is a foreign mechanism which would never occur in nature unless you pricked yourself with a contaminant) so researchers tried to block childrens noses (I don’t quite understand this since we can inhale through the mouth as well..so where are you going with this ?) to prevent inhalation of the virus using picric acid (which is an explosive..hum interesting..safety study anybody ??) and zinc sulphate (a dietary supplement but how does that block the nasal passage ??) which they installed in a nasal spray which was used in an epidemic in Alabama in 1936 and it was a failure (surprise, surprise) causing in some participants permanently losing their sense of smell. Our bodies are designed to breathe and in doing so they are going to inhale contaminants, but our body is designed for such assaults, which is why we have an immune system and detox organ (the liver) to protect us. However, George Draper was obsessed with the notion (a real fact) that certain people were more susceptible than others in contracting the infection but instead of concentrating his efforts on the status of the immune system itself of the individual (and there were published texts on the subject of bacteria such as virus hunters by Greer Williams), he homed in on varying physical appearance of people, hopelessly searching for the ‘Àchilles heel’ (did he seek out people who resembled Theodore Roosevelt). He even convinced certain people of this ridiculous notion, and he received a research grant to look into it. Poor old George, his request for a second grant was denied..I wonder why, since nobody understood the reports he submitted from his first research.
The Polio Vaccine
It is always reported that the great saviour Jonas Salk (1914-1995) a US medical researcher and virologist who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines that was introduced in 1955. Prior to that in 1952, the US had recorded 58,000 polio cases that year and 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis, most being children. In 1948 Salk working at the University of Pittsburgh undertook a project funded by the Roosevelt’s National foundation for Infantile Paralysis (known also as the `March of Dimes Foundation) to develop a polio vaccine with the help of 20,000 physicians and public health officials, 64,000 school personnel, 220,000 volunteers and 1.8 million children used for vaccine trial purposes. In fact about 440,000 received one or more injections, about 210,000 received a placebo and 1.2 million children received no vaccine and served as the control group to see if anyone contracted polio.
Salk vs Sabin
Salks vaccine was an Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine (IPV) based on 3 wild virulent strains Mahoney, MEF1 and Saukett grown in monkey kidney tissue and inactivated using formaldehyde, and was administered intravenously. Due to the insistence of the Bureau of Biologics Salk added merthiolate (trade name for Thimerosal a mercury based antiseptic) to his vaccine to neutralize any bacterial contaminants despite Salk’s reluctance based on his claim that it would dilute and weaken its potency. Joseph Bell from the Public Health service, who had previous experience from pertussis vaccine evaluation, advocated for the field trials in 1954 that, instead of using a saline solution placebo, Salk should use a live influenza virus on the control group, but Salk disagreed stating that you would potentially cause harm within the control group.
While Salk was testing his vaccine, Albert Sabin and Hilary Koprowski were developing their own vaccine which was an attenuated vaccine version referred to as an Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) which was administered orally. This type of vaccine is attenuated meaning that the initial live virus is removed from its original host and then applied to a foreign host which it will infect mutagenically, By reapplying the now mutant viral strain it will proliferate less efficiently in the original host since it has been changed and therefore less virulent but still alive. Although Sabin’s vaccine was tested outside of the US (in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia), by 1961 Sabin’s vaccine supplanted Salk’s vaccine,since, by all accounts, the Sabin vaccine was easier and cheaper to produce. In an interview with Salk in 1977, obviously with a bias, stated that Sabin’s vaccine actually harmed children by giving them the live virus.
Once Salk’s field trial was complete; as it turned out due to many no-shows to the trials, or their consent was withdrawn or consent forms were lost, and some children moved away, the final double blinded field trial design which began in June 1954 included 455,474, children from 11 states second and third graders split up to receive either 3 shots of the vaccines or 3 placebo shots (the experimental part of the study). An additional 567,210 children were recruited from 33 states in a second study with observational controls where 221.998 second graders received 3 shots of the vaccine while the balance from the first and second grade served as controls (the observational part of the study). By April 12 1955 Thomas Francis jr Professor of Epidemiology University of Michigan presented the final analysis:
In the experimental part of the study 57 cases of polio ( 28/100,000) in the vaccinated group vs 142 cases (71/100,000) in the placebo control group.
In the observational part of the study 56 cases (25/100,000) among the vaccinated vs 391 cases (54/100,000) among the control group. In both study parts poliomyelitic severity were in the control group (15 in total). So the vaccine was deemed a success.
The Cutter Incident
Salks successful trial was mired by a tragedy that occurred in April 1955, soon after the vaccine was released for mass use, where two vaccine manufacturers Cutter and Wyeth pharmaceuticals released batches of vaccines that were not fully inactivated unleashing vaccines (100,000 doses) that had live strains in them which caused paralytic polio in 250 children out of 400,000 and several children lost their lives in the north eastern US. Lawsuits began erupting and the director of the NIH resigned and the secretary of Health, education and welfare stepped down and Nixon was given the task to restore the reputation of the NIH.
Simian Virus 40 (SV-40 Virus)
Discovery of the not so safe Salk vaccine
This is yet another big story that became entangled in the polio vaccine production tied to the Cutter incident (there is enough ‘meat’ to write another article, but I will attempt to cut a long story short, the fascinating story is documented in a book called ‘Dr Mary’s Monkey). The factual story unfolds in 1954 when a Virologist/epidemiologist Bernice Eddy (1903-1989) was working at the NIH who was testing Salk’s vaccine and as a result the Cutter vaccine ended up paralyzing and killing some 18 monkeys in their cages, but officials who were convinced of the safety of the vaccine tried to downplay the findings, including Dr Alton Ochsner (1896-1981) a surgeon and medical researcher from Tulane University who was also a major shareholder in Cutter labs and dismissed what Eddy had found and to prove what he thought was a safe batch of vaccine he vaccinated his grandchildren and within 48 hours his grandson was dead, and his granddaughter permanently paralyzed (..such arrogance..that blew up in his face..).
Discovery of the SV-40 Virus
The story gets much worse, Eddy gets transferred to the Influenza department where she meets Sarah Stewart in 1957 and together by 1959 they had discovered that some cancers are caused by viruses which they would go on to name Polyoma and DNA recombination. At the time more blind arrogance surface when Dr Joseph Smadel chief of the NIH’s Biologics division dismissed the tumors that Eddy and Stewart had witnessed in the monkeys as ‘harmless lumps. However it was confirmed by a Merck vaccine scientist Dr Maurice Hilleman (1919-2005)*, since it was he and the collaboration with Dr Ben Sweet who had just found the 40th simian virus common in the African green rhesus monkey. In 1960 Merck wrote to the US Surgeon General saying :
Our scientific staff have emphasized to us that there are a number of serious scientific and technical problems that must be solved before we could engage in large-scale production of live poliovirus vaccine. Most important among these is the problem of extraneous contaminating simian viruses that may be extremely difficult to eliminate and which may be difficult if not impossible to detect at the present stage of the technology.
It was suddenly realized by all that the polio viruses were grown from monkey kidneys that also contained other viruses, and were confronted with overwhelming evidence that the country has just inoculated an entire generation with a cancer causing virus, The research later identified an Asian monkey who was a natural host to the polyoma virus renamed SV-40 (Simian virus). On the CDC website that was subsequently removed contained the following:
Cancer, Simian Virus 40 (SV40), and Polio Vaccine Fact Sheet
- SV40 is a virus found in some species of monkey.
- SV40 was discovered in 1960. Soon afterward, the virus was found in polio vaccine.
- More than 98 million Americans received one or more doses of polio vaccine from 1955 to 1963 when a proportion of vaccine was contaminated with SV40; it has been estimated that 10–30 million Americans could have received an SV40 contaminated dose of vaccine.
- SV40 virus has been found in certain types of cancer in humans, but it has not been determined that SV40 causes these cancers.
- The majority of scientific evidence suggests that SV40-contaminated vaccine did not cause cancer; however, some research results are conflicting and more studies are needed.
- Polio vaccines being used today do not contain SV40. All of the current evidence indicates that polio vaccines have been free of SV40 since 1963.
Additional Facts
- In the 1950s, rhesus monkey kidney cells, which contain SV40 if the animal is infected, were used in preparing polio vaccines. Because SV40 was not discovered until 1960, no one was aware in the 1950s that polio vaccine could be contaminated.
- SV40 was found in the injected form of the polio vaccine (IPV), not the kind given by mouth (OPV).
- Not all doses of IPV were contaminated. It has been estimated that 10–30 million people actually received a vaccine that contained SV40.
- Some evidence suggests that receipt of SV40-contaminated polio vaccine may increase risk of cancer. However, the majority of studies done in the U.S. and Europe which compare persons who received SV40-contaminated polio vaccine with those who did not have shown no causal relationship between receipt of SV40-contaminated polio vaccine and cancer.
*Dr Maurice Hilleman will feature in future articles since he was also instrumental in developing the vaccines for Measles, Mumps, Hepatitis A & B, Chickenpox, Meningitis, Pneumonia and Influenza
Secrets Behind the SV-40 Virus
The final threads to this story, as claimed by Edward Haslam, who investigated the SV40/Polio vaccine story and authored the book Dr Mary’s monkey, involved Dr Alton Ochsner who had an orthopedic surgeon and cancer researcher working for him Dr Mary Sherman (1913-1964). Haslam states that Sherman was researching the development of a vaccine to prevent an epidemic of soft tissue cancer caused by SV-40 which involved the use of linear particle accelerator( used between 1950-1964) located in the Infectious Disease Lab in New Orleans. A friend of Sherman was David Ferrie (a partially paralyzed ex pilot in reality who supposedly..etc ( used between 1950-1964) was involved in the plot to kill president Kennedy, and was played by Joe Pesci in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK) was running a second lab and also a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Murder of Dr Mary
Dr Sherman had an accident with the accelerator causing severe burns on her body, and to prevent any knowledge of this secret research to leak out Sherman was stabbed to death at the lab and then moved to her apartment which was set alight so as investigators would have an explanation of why her body was burnt. Haslam found a living witness to these events when Judyth Vary Baker the lover of Oswald claimed that she was recruited in 1963 to work with Sherman and Ochsner on a clandestine CIA project to develop a biological weapon to assassinate Fidel Castro..the real reason for the cancer research. Phew..what a conspiracy story. It appears that there were 2 targets JFK and/or Castro..but from history we know who ended up being the target.
Cancer Connections to the SV-40 Virus
What we do know is that some 200 million Americans were vaccinated with the contaminated polio vaccine between the years 1955-1963 An update to the Salk vs Sabin chapter of this article is that both vaccines were contaminated with SV40, the most virulent of the 2 is obviously Sabin’s vaccine since the virus (or viruses) are still alive though attenuated which means that 10 million Russian citizens and approx 93% of the entire children population of Czechoslovakia potentially received the contaminated vaccine. It is estimated however that only 10-30% of the vaccines contained the SV-40 virus However, in terms of SV-40 causing cancer in humans Dr Hillleman states in an abstract paper Discovery of simian virus 40 (SV40) and its relationship to poliomyelitis virus vaccines published in 1998 on NCBI:
“There has been no evidence to implicate SV40 virus of vaccine origin in long- or short-term consequences in human subjects.”
Although in October 2002 the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine Immunization Safety committee published a document saying:
“The committee concludes that the biological evidence is strong that SV40 is a transforming [i.e., cancer-causing] virus, . . . that the biological evidence is of moderate strength that SV40 exposure could lead to cancer in humans under natural conditions, [and] that the biological evidence is of moderate strength that SV40 exposure from the polio vaccine is related to SV40 infection in humans.”
So who really knows, Cancer has reached epidemic proportions but there are various reasons that cause stem cells to abnormally grow anywhere in the body where there are nests of stem cells.
The Big Question:
Which vaccine was most effective?
Salk or Sabin?
Vaccine advocates believe that the polio vaccine eradicated polio in the fifties and of course anti-vaccine advocates said that the polio epidemics that ravaged the western world blew itself out by natural acquired immunity and as we said above ran out of ‘infectiles’. David Rutstein MD who wrote an article in the Atlantic in 1957 tends to concur with both sides of the story..it was a bit of both. In the first 49 weeks of 1956 15,128 cases of polio were reported (7,911 paralytic, 566 deaths), whereas over the corresponding period in 1955 28,816 cases were reported (13,850 paralytic, 1043 deaths). Mass vaccination began in April 1955. By early summer of 1956 30 million had been inoculated (based on the number of vaccines distributed). In 1957 a total of 5,485 cases in the US (2499 paralytic, 2896 non-paralytic and 299 deaths) were reported ( the remaining 100 cases were unspecified). Strangely enough the number of paralytic cases increased in 1958 (3,697, and 266 deaths) and in 1959 it increased again (6,289 paralytic, 454 deaths), then the number decreased appreciably in 1960 and in 1962 (762 paralytic 60 deaths) and in 1963 (396 paralytic, 41 deaths) and continued decreasing and by 1980 (22 paralytic, 1 death).
Bear in mind the Sabin vaccine was introduced in 1961, so you could say the the Sabin vaccine continued to reduce the numbers significantly. So did the the virus just blow itself out or was it the efficacy of the vaccine. I believe both were contributing factors as I stated above. If you look at the pre-vaccine periods of 1944 for example 19,029 cases were reported and in 1947 only 10,000 cases were reported without a vaccine. These wild fluctuations occurred not only in the US but in England and Wales as well in the same years 1944 and 1947. Prior to the introduction of the Sabin’s vaccine he conducted his own trials chiefly in the Soviet Union which at that time were experiencing polio rates of 2.8/100,000 in 1954 (still low compared to 25/100.000 in the US) to 8.7/100,000 in 1955 and 9.4 in 1957 compared to incidence rates of 0.54/100,000 in 1929 compared to 1.7 in Germany, 6.3 in Denmark and 15.4 in Sweden for the same year. Sabin who was born in the Soviet Union knew of Dr Chumakov who was head of the viral disease section of the Institute of Neurology and then became director of the newly established Poliomyelitis Research Institute set up in 1955, and with his cooperation began the field trials of his vaccine inoculating some 10 million Russian citizens all under 15 years of age:
Table 1: Number of Russian citizens vaccinated by Soviet Union republic
| Soviet Union Republic | Approximate number Vaccinated |
| Estonia | 716000 |
| Lithuania | 547952 |
| Kazakh | 1500000 |
| Uzbek | 1867000 |
| Khirgiz | 500000 |
| Tadzhik | Unknown |
| Russian federation | 2250000 |
| Ukraine | 1000000 |
| Trans-Caucasian Republics: | |
| Georgia | |
| Armenia | |
| Azerbajan | 1600000 |
| Total | 8380952 |
It was noted at the time that Estonia had the highest rates of polio in the Soviet Union (in 1958 89/100,0000). By September 1 1959 716,000 of the total population of 1.1 million were vaccinated in Estonia (60-70% children up to the age of 15), while Uzbekistan had the lowest rates. Sabin repeated these trials in Czechoslovakia in the winter of 1958-1959 vaccinating some 140,000 children aged 2-6 years and then the entire population in the spring of 1960 vaccinating 3,500,000 children aged 2 months to 14 years (approx 93% of the entire children population of Czechoslovakia)
Conclusions
It was reported in the Chicago tribune in 1961 that Herald Cox SC D, Director of virus research at Lederie Labs and president elect of the society of American Bacteriologists who had worked with viruses since 1929 stated that in the US, Israel, England and Denmark the Salk vaccine has done a good job of producing antibodies against Type II poliovirus (MEF1). However, this represents only about 3% of paralytic cases across the planet, but in terms of Type I (Mahoney) this strain causes 85% of the paralytic cases and type III (Saukett) causes about 12%, which means the vaccine is doing the best job against the least important strain. He also said that a ‘killed’ (Salk) vaccine does not immunize against infection in the intestines, and although it induces antibody production in the blood this does not prevent a patient from becoming a carrier and spreading the virus.
It is clear that Cox was not happy with the outcomes of the Salk vaccine and was more pro-live virus (Sabin) vaccine and he went on to say that patients receiving the live modified oral vaccines eliminate the polio virus from their body for several weeks after vaccination, but these are tame modified strains and through contact with others they can acquire immunity without being vaccinated themselves. A Dr Roderick Murray commented at the time that there still exists the risk of virus strains as they are passed within a community that may revert to a more virulent type and using a live viral vaccine is the only one way to eliminate this risk.
One can also argue that the way the Sabin vaccine was administered is synonymous to the more natural way any virus or pathogen makes its way into the human body, by entering our defense system (Immune system) rather than bypassing it through an intravenous injection directly into the bloodstream. Oral administration guarantees the training of our immune system to build proper antibodies and subsequent acquired immunity. A Dr Tenpenny, an ex ER doctor who has followed the vaccine trial for at least 16 years is convinced that the Vaccines Salk and Sabin did not eradicate the disease back in the 50’s and 60’s like the media is always reporting and she says:
“Polioviruses are transient inhabitants of the gastrointestinal tract. Up to 95% of all polio infections are completely asymptomatic. Approximately 5% of polio infections consist of a minor, nonspecific illness consisting of an upper respiratory tract infection (sore throat and fever) and gastrointestinal disturbances (nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea). This influenza-like illness, clinically indistinguishable from the myriad of other viral illnesses, is characterized by complete recovery in less than a week with resultant life time immunity. Less than 1% of all polio infections result in paralysis. Most importantly, the vast majority of individuals who contract paralytic poliomyelitis recover with complete—or near complete—return of muscle function. Any weakness that is still present 12 months after onset of paralysis is usually considered permanent.”
She is correct in her assertion that < 1% of all polio infections result in paralysis since the worst year of 1955 there were the highest recorded paralytic polio cases of 13,850 which is <1% of a population of 165 million in the US at that time.
Suzanne Humphries MD who practiced conventional medicine from 1989 to 2011 and is a certified board member of internal medicine and nephrology (pediatrics medicine specializing in the Kidney), and now author of several books, has also done some extensive research into vaccines. She advocates that she does not consider it her place to tell anyone whether to vaccinate or not, but to give people a better understanding from which to make their choices. She references on her site Bruce Goldman of Stanford Medicine who asks the question “so how’s your immune system doing?”, but as always conventional medicine want to find a ‘yardstick’ to assess immune system efficiency without so much as a mention toward diet, stating that we can’t be sure how to tell when the immune systems is not working right, let alone why not. Well I say go and read my articles on the Microbiome which may give you a clue. Anyway Dr Humphries quite rightly points out, and as confirmed from article written in the early 60s that other viruses can cause polio (or polio symptoms) and prior to 1954 the following conditions could have been hiding behind Poliomyelitis:
Transverse Myelitis (Inflammation of the spinal cord)
Viral (aseptic) meningitis (viral infection causing inflammation of the lining of the brain (Meninges)
Guillain-Barre Syndrome (Autoimmune condition where the host immune system attacks the nerves)
Chinese Paralytic syndrome (also known as acute motor axonal neuropathy (attacking motor nerves) and is diagnosed as a variant of Guillain-Barr Syndrome, probably an autoimmune condition
Chronic Fatigue syndrome (Autoimmune condition)
Epidemic cholera (Bacterial intestinal infection from bacterium Vibrio cholerae.)
Cholera morbus (Gastrointestinal infection)
Spinal meningitis (Infection of the fluid and membranes around the brain and spinal cord)
Spinal apoplexy (Stroke)
Inhibitory palsy (affecting muscle movement due to an injury to the Central nervous system)
Intermittent fever
Famine fever
Worm fever
Bilious remittent fever
Ergotism Long term poisoning from a fungus (Claviceps Purpurea) that infects cereals
Post polio syndrome
acute flaccid paralysis (Muscle weakness/paralysis known also as acute polio)
We are also aware now that other viruses like Coxsackie, Echo and Enteroviruses, can also cause polio, and scientists knew this even in 1954.
What about the huge trials in the USSR and Czechoslovakia?. Well the actual statistical numbers in terms of how many polio cases were found paralytic or not elude me, but only to know that Dorothy Horstmann a well known virologist at Yale University was sent to the Soviet Union for 6 weeks to evaluate the outcome of the trials and she wrote:
“It was clear that the trials had been carefully carried out, and the results were monitored meticulously in the laboratory and in the field. By mid-1960 approximately 100 million persons in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany had received the Sabin strains. Of great importance was the demonstration that the vaccine was safe, not only for the recipients, but for the large numbers of unvaccinated susceptible who must have been exposed as contacts of vaccines.”
Which does not say much, but in closing, in my humble opinion there is merit that the Salk and Sabin vaccine must have made some impression alongside the natural course of the polio epidemic or there would have been reports of mass paralysis and death certainly in the USSR and Czechoslovakia considering the millions of children that were vaccinated,
“I have studied the effects of our new lots of polio vaccine in 100 adult volunteers and during the next few days shall give it to my wife and 2 children as well as to our neighbors and their children.”
-Albert Sabin
“When I worked on the polio vaccine, I had a theory. Experiments were done to determine what might or might not occur. I guided each one by imagining myself in the phenomenon in which I was interested. The intuitive realm is constantly active—the realm of imagination guides my thinking.”
–Jonas Salk
References/Acknowledgments:
- Polio the deadly summer of 1956 Patrick Cockburn 1999/Oct 2010
- A summer plague:Polio and its survivors Book 1995 Tony Gould
- Blood Spinning Wikipedia
- The 1954 Salk Poliomyelitis vaccine field trial Harry Marks Institute of the history of medicine (Johns Hopkin) 2008
- The Sabin live poliovirus vaccination trials in the USSR 1959 Dorothy Horstmann 1991
- From emergence to eradication:The Epidemiology of Polio deconstructed Nathanson & Kew 2010
- The truth about Joan Beck Chicago Tribune March 1961
- The Polio vaccine myth: The vaccine stopped polio Joe Martino Feb 2012 Collective evolution
- Smoke Mirrors & the disappearance of polio Suzanne Humphries MD Nov 2011 International Medical council on vaccinations
- Why do we still use Sabin poliovirus vaccine Vincent Racaniello Sept 2015 Virology Blog
- Polio vaccine developer Bernice Eddy predicted the cancer epidemic Dr Tent Oct 2015 Vaccines the outliers
- Discovery of the Simian virus 40 (SV-40) and its relationship to poliomyelitis virus vaccines Hilleman MR NCBI 1998
- Simian Virus 40 (SV-40): A cancer causing monkey virus from FDA Approved vaccines Micheal Horwin 2003 SV40 Cancer foundation
- A zombie mem rises from the grave, Maurice Hilleman,the polio vaccine, SV40 & Cancer Orac 2013 Science blogs
Author: Eric Malouin