Polio: 100-year wild goose chase?

[arissa]

Damning four-part set of articles by the UK's The Ecologist. Incredible reads, everyone should take the time to read these articles.

http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=456
Polio Special Part 1: A shot in the dark

Author: Janine Roberts

Polio is a devastating disease; the preferred method for fighting it is vaccination. Yet there is a mass of historic evidence that suggests it is not caused by a virus but by industrial and agricultural pollution.
During the first half of the 20th century infantile paralysis surged like a bush fire, moving from place to place, afflicting large numbers of children, but only in the industrialised West. Prior to these outbreaks it affected very few and was often called `palsy'. In the 19th century scientists gave it the name `poliomyelitis', referring to the inflammation of the grey nerves of the spinal column in cases of paralysis. Poisonous metals were suspected of causing this disease, particularly lead, arsenic and mercury. In 1824 the English scientist John Cooke stated: `The fumes of these metals, or the receptance of them in solution into the stomach, often cause paralysis.' (2)

In 1878 the link between palsy and toxins was strengthened when Alfred Vulpian found that dogs dosed with lead suffered the same damage in their motor-neurone cells as found in the human victims of infantile paralysis.(3) The Russian Popow discovered in 1883 that the same damage could be done with arsenic.(4) This should have sent shockwaves through the medical establishment as the arsenic-based pesticide Paris Green had been widely used since 1870 to stop Codling moth caterpillars ruining apple crops. But strangely it didn't.

In 1892 Paris Green was replaced in Massachusetts by the more toxic pesticide lead arsenate. Two years later the first recorded epidemic of infantile paralysis struck in Massachusetts' neighbouring state of Vermont. The outbreak was investigated by Dr Charles Caverly, who reported that it was probably caused by a toxin rather than a micro-organism. Caverly said: `It usually occurred in families of more than one child, and as no efforts were made at isolation it was very certain it was non-contagious.' (5)

-snip-

In 1941 the work of the virus hunters received a potentially fatal setback. Dr John Toomey reported in The Journal of Pediatrics that it was not passed between individuals `no matter how intimately exposed.' (12) If the disease was non-infective, then it could not be caused by a virus and thus a vaccine would not work.

Other holes started to appear in the virus theory. During WWII army doctors found widespread immunity to the suspected poliovirus, and no evidence of infantile paralysis epidemics, in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. In Turkey they found people who called infantile paralysis `the American disease'. The doctors were surprised: immunity to the virus presumably meant that it had infected the population. So, how come it caused no epidemics in these countries?

-snip-


http://www.theecologist.co.uk/archive_article.html?article=457&category=61
Polio Special Part 2: Polio: Are pesticides to blame? and The case against the polio virus

Author: Janine Roberts

Polio: are pesticides to blame?

The first epidemic of poliomyelitis in a tropical nation was contemporaneous with the introduction of the pesticide DDT in that country. Towards the end of WWII, US military camps in the Philippines started to be sprayed daily with DDT in order to kill flies.(29) Writing in The Journal of the American Medical Association two years after the war, Albert Sabin reported that poliomyelitis became, after conflict, the major cause of death among the troops stationed at these camps. And yet unsprayed neighbouring populations were not affected by the disease.(30) At the end of the war, the US military's stocks of DDT were sold onto the public - despite the gravest warnings from establishment scientists.

In 1944, the US federal research centre the National Institutes of Health reported that DDT damaged the same part of the spinal cord (the anterior horn cells) that is damaged in infantile paralysis. Endocrinologist Dr Morton Biskind further described in 1949 how DDT caused `lesions in the spinal cord resembling those in human polio in animals'. He commented: `Despite the fact that DDT is a highly lethal poison for all species of animals, the myth has become prevalent among the general population that it is safe for man in virtually any quantity. Not only is it used in households with reckless abandon so that sprays and aerosols are inhaled, the solutions are permitted to contaminate skin, bedding and other textiles.' The same year in Germany, Daniel Dresden found that acute DDT poisoning produced `degeneration in the central nervous system' that seemed identical to that reported in severe cases of infantile paralysis.(31)

Yet DDT was used to replace lead arsenate as a pesticide in fruit farming and with which to wash dairy cows. Heavy levels of DDT were soon reported in milk supplies. The organochlorine pesticide DDE (which is several times more dangerous than DDT) was also widely used in the US. Both were known to penetrate the blood-brain barrier that protects the human brain from viral invasion. Housewives were actually advised to spray DDT to stop infantile paralysis. Children's bedrooms had wallpaper pre-soaked in DDT. Epidemics of infantile paralysis started to occur every year.

By 1952 the number of cases of infantile paralysis was three times higher than the figure for 1940.

-snip-

Poliomyelitis researcher Dr Ralph Scobey suggested in 1954 a reason why viruses might be found on damaged motor neuron cells in cases of infantile paralysis. He posited that the body itself might activate or produce these viruses, perhaps when under threat or to clean up cellular damage. While `the fundamental cause of human poliomyelitis appears to be a poison or toxin', Scobey said, `the virus is synthesised or activated within the human body as a result of the poisoning'. He suggested that the virus might remain `dormant' within cells until something activates it. We now know that the poliovirus can be dormant. It is also widely known that toxic-damaged tissues attract viruses. One of the standard tests for toxins, the Ames Assay, utilises the fact that if viruses mutate and multiply in the presence of a certain amount of a chemical then that amount is dangerously toxic. Scobey went on to list anti-toxins that had proved effective in curing polio, citing 11 scientific papers written between 1936 and 1949.(28)

-snip-


http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=458
Polio Special Part 3 : The hidden epidemic

Author: Janine Roberts

The hidden epidemic

-snip-

Take the WHO's figures for the east Asian/Pacific region as an example. They reveal that the incidence of AFP went up between 1994 and 1998 by 50 per cent in China, 400 per cent in Malaysia, and 1,500 per cent in the Pacific islands. But other than providing these statistics, WHO pays little attention to any of these cases in which the poliovirus is absent - meaning nearly all of them. These cases are left without a cure -and even without a vaccine! They become effectively a hidden epidemic.

WHO makes even bolder claims for Europe and the Americas. It states that they are now free of both polio and AFP. On closer inspection, WHO's figures do not bear much scrutiny. It declares that there is `no data' for the number of cases of AFP in the UK and the US. It then interprets `no data' as if it means `zero'.(41) But the US government's Centres for Disease Control (CDC) does not agree The CDC records that many thousands of cases of AFP occur in the US every year. It reports that AFP can have many causes. For example, it says that Guillain-Barré disease causes 17 cases of AFP per 100,000 of the US population. That translates into around 50,000 cases annually. The CDC also says that every year there are some 30,000 to 50,000 cases of aseptic meningitis serious enough to require hospitalisation. Both Guillain-Barré disease and aseptic meningitis were diagnosed as polio during the US epidemics prior to 1957. If you use the pre-1957 definition, then there are many more cases of poliomyelitis occurring in the US today, than there were in 1952 - at the height of the US polio epidemics.

To this tally of `Acute Flaccid Paralysis' one could add the many more cases of AFP reported by the CDC as occurring in an epidemic that has swept across the US over the past five years, and which is attributed to the `West Nile' virus (WNV). The CDC states that WNV can cause a `polio-like' paralysis. Many scientists have been less ambiguous. They say WNV is clinically indistinguishable from poliomyelitis.(42) A paper recently published by the British Medical Journal suggests WNV may be `rapidly evolving to fill new ecological niches'.(43) In 2003 there were 9,389 cases of this disease in the US, of which 2,773 showed damage to the nervous system and 246 were fatal. Some researchers think WNV has links to pesticides and other pollutants. A legal action is currently underway in New York to stop the aerial spraying of the city with Malathion, an organophosphate pesticide first used in the 1950s. The city authorities want to use it to kill the mosquitoes it blames for WNV. The litigants maintain that the pesticide is more likely to cause the disease than prevent it.

How does WHO distinguish the very few cases of AFP it says are caused by polio from other cases of AFP? It cannot do this easily - as there is no distinguishing symptom. It instead instructs doctors to send two samples of excrement from AFP patients to one of the scores of laboratories it has set up around the world. These inspect the excrement for poliovirus. If it is present, then they register this as a case of poliomyelitis. If they don't find the virus, then it is registered as a case of `Non-Poliomyelitis AFP'.(44) But this WHO test is in effect meaningless. The poliovirus is by definition a type of enterovirus, which means a stomach bug. Its presence in excrement is thus natural - and does not indicate that it has damaged nerves.

WHO actively discourages doctors from looking for the poliovirus themselves in cases of AFP, because `the virus is very hard to find' and research shows that `there was no relationship between finding the virus and the course of the disease'. It adds that presence of the virus in the central nervous system (CNS) `appeared to have no diagnostic significance.' (45) And yet this is the very reason given for the need to vaccinate against the poliovirus.

-snip-


http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=459
Polio Special Part 4 : Poisonous vaccines

Author: Janine Roberts

Poisonous vaccines

The 1950's race to be the first with a polio vaccine was led by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. Both designed polio vaccines intended to make people immune by exposing them to millions of polio virus. Both would be administered in multiple doses to several hundred million children.

Making so much vaccine required a vast amount of polio virus. There was a fierce debate over what kind of cell to grow this virus in. Some advocated breeding it in fertilized chicken eggs, others in human placental cells grown in laboratory vessels, and others in dishes containing the cells of wild-caught monkeys. Salk and Sabin decided to use monkeys, since they could provide large organs on which the virus would grow readily, and would be a few pence cheaper than the alternatives.

-snip-

Eddy continued to worry. In 1959 she took matters into her own hands. She went back unauthorised to put the Salk polio vaccine through more tests. She was horrified to find that, when she injected its growth medium into 23 hamsters, 20 of them grew large cancer tumours. She investigated further and found the Salk preparation had infected the hamsters with a monkey virus. This would be named Simian Virus 40 (SV40) as it was the 40th monkey virus discovered. Again her boss would react with fury, and ordered her to remain silent. This time she didn't. In 1960, at a meeting of the New York Cancer Society, she told them what happened when she had tested the Salk vaccine. She was immediately demoted by the National Institutes of Health. They took her laboratory from her and delayed publication of her research.

Meanwhile the Salk vaccine was proving ineffective. Children vaccinated with it were still coming down in hundreds with polio. The Journal of the American Medical Association would carry an article admitting, `It is now generally recognised that much of the Salk vaccine used in the US has been worthless.' (2) By 1959, preparations had begun to replace it with its main rival, the Sabin oral vaccine.

-snip-

[Sequoia]

1. This is scary!

I printed them out and will read further. Thank you.

[treepig]

2. uh-huh, and i hear that aids is not caused by hiv either

perhaps someone would be kind enough to post all the enlightening details (personally, i just can't get my fill of pseudo-science - there's so much out there to learn and so little time . . . )

[arissa]

3. Gee

You dismiss a well-researched, four-part series in a reputable and mainstream environmental magazine complete with sources, with a couple one-liners?

Very indicative of the same "The established method is the ONLY method" mentality that the series is trying to expose in the 1950's scientific community, which ignored all evidence based solely on the presumption that the establishment can never be wrong.

If you're going to disagree with the article, that's great, debate is awesome! But at least make an attempt to read it and point out why it's claims are wrong, rather than just calling it names. :)

[treepig]

4. the "well-researched" aspect is a bit difficult to judge

considering that the reference link doesn't work (for me at least).

in any event, half a century shows that the polio vaccine is effective, and polio was well on it's way to being eradicated until superstitious reared it's ugly head, as discussed in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=117x2644

it'd be much easier just to ignore all the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, except that it result in real people experiencing real, and unnecessary suffering:



the article you post continues the trend observed here of late where outlandish hypothesis are couched in scientific sounding jargon - supposedly (i suppose) with the intention of deceiving the scientifically illiterate. for example, the following sentence demonstrates the author either doesn't know, or is being purposefully deceptive:

Quote: "One of the standard tests for toxins, the Ames Assay, utilises the fact that if viruses mutate and multiply in the presence of a certain amount of a chemical then that amount is dangerously toxic. Scobey went on to list anti-toxins . .

by reading this sentence in its full context, the author is implying that the virus is becoming dangerous because the tissue (and/or cells) in which it resides is damaged by "toxins" - and then throws in the Ames test to back up this hypothesis. the Ames test is either completely irrelevant to this hypthosis at best, or at worst directly counters it, because:

first, the Ames Assay is used to detect compounds that cause DNA damage. "toxins" - by definition a toxin is a toxic protein with a well known example being ricin. toxins do not damage DNA (and therefore cannot be tested using the Ames Assay). instead they catalytically damage ribosomes, shutting down a cell's ability to synthesize proteins.

second, the Ames Assay is done in living cells and depends on the fact that the "toxic" chemical (not "toxin") being tested is not toxic in the normal sense of the word. instead the test is specifically designed to detect DNA damage that occurs to a test virus harbored within the living cell that results from exposure to the test compound. the point of the assay to to detect DNA damage that persists sufficiently long to be fixed into mutations (if the "toxic" compound was toxic in the normal sense of the word, the cells would die and these mutations would not be observed). an accurate description of what the Ames Assay detects is "genotoxic" not "toxic" compounds.


i could pick apart the entire article sentence by sentence (but don't have the time now). basically, my point is that throwing together a bunch of mis-matched facts is not how science is done. science is an iterative process where hypothesis are (1) generated based on previously verified findings, (2) experimentally tested, (3) published in peer-reviewed journals, and then (4) independently verified by other researchers. otherwise it's just fantasy. the article you cite would pretty much reach a dead in in the scientific process at step 1, because step #2 would require some research funding and funding would never be forthcoming for a misleading set of conjectures such as those you post.

[arissa]

5. Much better

but still could use some room for improvement.

First, the basis of your entire debunking is on the so-called fact that polio cases have been "wiped out" in first-world countries. Second, you pick apart one sentence which really has little to do with the overall case, and for the record I disagree with your assumptions about what that sentence is trying to convey, but since that sentence is literally insignificant to the overall argument, I'm not going to spend a lot of time there.

I'd much rather focus on your claim that "in any event, half a century shows that the polio vaccine is effective, and polio was well on it's way to being eradicated".

So, if you'd read the articles in question, you'd have seen the following information in different sections.

1) "Only 13 days after the vaccine had been acclaimed by the whole of the US press and radio as one of the greatest medical discoveries of the century, and two days after the British ministry of health had announced it would go right ahead with the manufacture of the vaccine, came the first news of disaster. Children inoculated with one brand of the vaccine had developed poliomyelitis. In the following days more and more cases were reported, some of them after incoluation with other brands." -Medical historian Dr. M Beddow Baily

2) President Eisenhower had publicly endorsed the vaccine at its launch, so he charged the US health secretary and the Surgeon General with figuring out a way to spare him the embarassment. They stopped production of the vaccine and rewrote the regulations, hoping to improve the quality.

3) Despite these new regulations, four months later, more than 2,000 cases of infantile paralysis were recorded in Boston, despite the vaccination of 130,000 children in the city. The previous year it had seen only 273 cases. The number of cases doubled in vaccinated New York State and Connecticut, and tripled in Vermont. They increased by five times in both Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Many were paralysed in the injected arm.

4) The President and US health authorities needed to find a way to slash the number of reported poliomyelitis cases. They accomplished this by changing the definition of paralytic polio. Prior to 1956, the authorities recorded a patient as having paralytic polio (infantile paralysis) if they suffered from paralytic symptoms for 24 hours. After 1956 patients had to have these paralytic symptoms for at least 60 days to be counted as having polio. Obviously, this significantly reduced the number of polio cases, and the 'drop' in cases was credit to the vaccine. Further, all cases reported within 30 days of receiving the vaccine were to be changed to "pre-existing."

5) Despite these efforts, the vaccine continued to cause problems and garner a bad reputation, so further efforts were needed. Prior to 1958, the definition of infantile paralysis (polio) included cases in which paralysis was minimal: perhaps manifesting itself as a very stiff neck, often accompanied by widespread pain. Polio also included cases of 'meningitis', or of inflammation of the membrane that protects the brain and spinal neurons. Prior to 1958, these cases were scientifically referred to as 'non-paralytic poliomyelitis', or polio for short. After 1958, they would be reclassified. The incidence of meningitis soared as official polio cases declined. These classifications are still used today.

This chart shows this parallel:

YEAR Non-paralytic polio cases Aseptic meningitis cases
1951-1960 *** 70,083 *************** 0
1961-1982 *** 589 *************** 102,999
1983-1992 *** 0 *************** 117,366

The decline of polio is nothing more than a statistical manipulation, reclassifying polio cases as meningitis cases.

Further, your map that you displayed actually makes an interesting point. The countries which still show polio problems are, for the most part, countries that started using DDT and DDE after it was banned in western countries. Many places in Africa are being encouraged to use more and more DDT to try and stop malaria, but it's funny because these third-world countries had no polio problems until modern pesticides were introduced, it was referred to as a first-world disease, and even in the US, it was known as a middle-class disease, it didn't affect poorer households as much because they couldn't afford to spray their houses with as many chemicals.

Finally, if the poliovirus is responsible, why is polio not contagious?

Yet you choose not to try and debunk any of these claims. Do you disagree that it is a fact that the official classification for polio was changed in the 50's? Do you disagree that it is a fact that the official cases of meningitis soared and the official cases of polio plummeted immediately after this reclassification?

(a lot of information in this post is lifted from the print edition of The Ecologist, volune 34, no 4, and is copied from pages 35-52)

[treepig]

6. i'm not an epidemiologist

therefore i'm ill-equipped to debate the fine points of the number of cases of polio in the early days of vaccine use.

however, i've not at all inclined to place any stock in anything an author write who:

1. does not know the basic definitions of the words he/she uses

as i've pointed out, this author does not know what a toxin is (later, asbestos is also mis-labeled as a toxin) to give one example.

2. makes completely incorrect statements

such as "polio is not contagious" (or is that you?)

anyhow, according to the CDC, it is contagious:

- How is poliomyelitis transmitted?

Humans are the only known reservoir of poliovirus, which is transmitted most frequently by persons with inapparent infections. There is no asymptomatic carrier state except in immune deficient persons.

Person-to-person spread of poliovirus via the fecal-oral route is the most important route of transmission, although the oral-oral route may account for some cases.

Poliovirus infection typically peaks in the summer months in temperate climates. There is no seasonal pattern in tropical climates.

Poliovirus is highly infectious, with seroconversion rates in susceptible household contacts of children nearly 100% and over 90% in susceptible household contacts of adults. Cases are most infectious from 7 to 10 days before and after the onset of symptoms, but poliovirus may be present in the stool from 3 to 6 weeks.

http://sprojects.mmi.mcgill.ca/tropmed/disease/polio/trans.htm

3. engages in fear-mongering-type hyperbole

for example, placing statements such as this one in bold at the top of the page `If you continue to allow these contaminated vaccines to go out, I guarantee you that over the next 20 years you will have epidemics of cancer unlike the world has ever seen'. Bernice Eddy's testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1972.

a balanced/truthful presentation would have highlighted what is known today, summarized in Science (Volume 298, Number 5594, Issue of 25 October 2002, p 725):

Creeping Consensus on SV40 and Polio Vaccine
Dan Ferber
Since a virus was discovered in the monkey kidney extracts used to make the Salk vaccine some 40 years ago, concern has risen that the vaccine might have triggered an epidemic of cancer. Now, the U.S. Institute of Medicine has allayed most--but not all--of those fears. The virus, known as SV40, has not caused a wave of cancer, the panel concluded, but it might be causing some rare cancers.

so, instead of selectively culling the literature to find examples of instances where polio-vaccine-derived SV40 seems to be a contributing agent to the development of cancer - an honest evaluation would have emphasized that no "epidemic" of cancer has occurred (indeed, most studies have been hard-pressed to detect any statistical rise in cancer rates - one can look up the primary studies on the NIH's "PUBMED" website).

4. presents a bunch of stuff that can at best be considered nonsense

referring, of course, to the observations that other toxic compounds - like heavy metals, pesticides, or other pathogens - can cause neurological damage and then suggesting that the symptoms of polio most likely do not originate with the polio virus but have been massively mis-diagnosed (apparently due to some sinister but opague agendi on the part of those evil pharmaceutical corporations or mad scientists).

there may very well be something true in this article, it's just that weeding it out from all the garbage casts overwhelming doubt on the veracity of the entire treatise. sure, in retrospect mistakes were made in the fight against polio (ineffective batches of vaccine, the somewhat risky choice of "live" virus for the vaccine, mis-diagnosed cases, etc). however, the vast majority of the population is grateful for (or at least has greatly benefited) from the bumbling, but inspired efforts of the persons who created the vaccines in the 1950s. i think it's only from the luxury of their success that ridiculous second-guessing can occur.

[GCP]

8. Very nicely argued

I'd also like to point out that we use far more pesticides and chemicals in the production of food now than we did when the polio epidemics were at their worst.

Hmmm - why aren't we in the middle of a polio epidemic if these articles have any basis in fact?

All I know is, I was a young kid in the early 50s and I saw polio disappear with the coming of the vaccine.

I hate all this pseudo-science from people who obviously don't have a scientific background. Carl Sagan wrote a book about it before he died, "The Demon-Haunted World". The author of these articles needs to read it.

[GCP]

9. Very nicely argued

I'd also like to point out that we use far more pesticides and chemicals in the production of food now than we did when the polio epidemics were at their worst.

Hmmm - why aren't we in the middle of a polio epidemic if these articles have any basis in fact?

All I know is, I was a young kid in the early 50s and I saw polio disappear with the coming of the vaccine.

I hate all this pseudo-science from people who obviously don't have a scientific background. Carl Sagan wrote a book about it before he died, "The Demon-Haunted World". The author of these articles needs to read it.

[happyslug]

11. Two Points

First, the definition of "Toxin" is NOT limited to things that produce illness, Asbestos causes illness thus it is a "Toxin". Carbon monoxide will kill a person, thus it is a "toxin" even through CO is NOT produced by any "Natural Means".

Now some definitions of Toxin requires it to be organically produced, but that is NOT the definition in the Medical Community which defines "Toxin" as ANY "A poisonous substance".
See the following for various definitions of the term "Toxin":
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/toxin

I have seen the term "Toxin" used for ANYTHING that causes harm to a living thing, even if the substance is in-organic in origin.

Second point, the author does not claim that the Virus is not the root cause of Polio BUT THAT THE VIRUS, IF IT CAUSES ANY PARALYSIS, ONLY CAUSES SUCH PARALYSIS WHEN EXPOSURE TO INSECTICIDES MAY HAVE CAUSED DAMAGE TO THE SPINAL CORD LEAVING THE NERVOUS SYSTEM OPEN TO INFECTION.

Now she does mention some points that indicate a belief that many polio victims where more the victim of Insecticides than a Virus, but she does not come out a say that a virus is NOT involved in Polio.

My big concern in this paper is the re-definition of Polio to get those numbers DOWN. Such re-definitions are rarely done do to the fact such re-definitions just make comparing the earlier stats with the later stats meaningless. Even if the rest of the story is proved wrong, that re-definition is enough to put questions in my mind.

One last comment, starting in the 1800s Doctors started to report increase "allergies". Such Allergies were rare in lower class people, but almost always in Upper Class people. Even in the 1800s some Doctors believe that the cause of the Increase Allergies was do to such Upper class people no longer being exposed to common bugs. The Human body evolved to fight off such bugs, and it was believed that when no such bugs exists, the body will "invent" something to fight. i.e. Allergies were the body finding something to fight off instead of the diseases the human immune system would normally be fighting off.

Polio may be the same, a combination of exposures to insecticides, lack of other exposures to disease AND the Polio Virus working together to produce the Polio epidemic of the 1900s.

[treepig]

12. i realize that "toxin" has a different meaning in general

usage than its more rigorous definition in specific biological fields, just like "theory" means "wild, half-assed guess" in general usage but has quite a different scientific meaning. however, since this article clearly was not aimed at the scientifically literate i'll stop quibbling over semantics. however, i don't think it's mere quibbling to wonder why a 1941 study is cited to make the point that polio is not contagious - while neglecting more than half a century of follow-up studies that establish its route of person to person transmission. that's just plain dishonest.

also, if DDT does cause polio - why is there a 0% correlation between countries where it has been used recently and where polio is currently endemic?

anyhow, upon further perusal of the web, i find there is quite the cottage industry of ascribing polio to pesticide use - of course, the specific pesticides blamed have to be carefully winnowed to provide graphs where usage somewhat approximates the pesticide in question, such as DDT, as can be seen at the following page and links therefrom:

http://www.geocities.com/harpub/overview.htm

rather interestingly, the name peter duesberg pops up repeatedly in the polio-virus-does-not-cause-poliomyetes mythology. turns out my gut instinct at the forces behind this movement, alluded to in post #2 above, were surprisingly accurate.

[treepig]

7. the link between ddt and polio

from the pdf available at that following site:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol9no8/disc10.htm

this information is provided:

countries with recent use of ddt:

botswanna
zimbabwe
malaysia
argentina
guyana
peru


countries with current use of ddt:

namibia
solomon islands
myanmar
thailand
belize


looks like there's approximately a 0% correlation between ddt use and polio as of now. seems like pseudo-science to me . . .

[treepig]

10. so, would you volunteer to be injected with synthetic polio DNA?

the entire polio virus genome has been made by synthetic chemical methods and therefore cannot be contaminated by all the mysterious substances that supposedly are co-purified along with virus obtained from biological sources

if, as the article states, polio "could not be caused by a virus" - then i assume you're willing to ingest the polio virus DNA?

or do the studies done in 1941 and cited in the article as proof that polio virus is not contagious not seem so convincing anymore in light of this new knowledge?

anyhow, here's the details:

Chemical synthesis of poliovirus cDNA: generation of infectious virus in the absence of natural template.

Science. 2002 Aug 9;297(5583):1016-8. Epub 2002 Jul 11.

Cello J, Paul AV, Wimmer E.

Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, School of Medicine, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-5222, USA.

Full-length poliovirus complementary DNA (cDNA) was synthesized by assembling oligonucleotides of plus and minus strand polarity. The synthetic poliovirus cDNA was transcribed by RNA polymerase into viral RNA, which translated and replicated in a cell-free extract, resulting in the de novo synthesis of infectious poliovirus. Experiments in tissue culture using neutralizing antibodies and CD155 receptor-specific antibodies and neurovirulence tests in CD155 transgenic mice confirmed that the synthetic virus had biochemical and pathogenic characteristics of poliovirus. (my comment - uh oh!! hehehe) Our results show that it is possible to synthesize an infectious agent by in vitro chemical-biochemical means solely by following instructions from a written sequence.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12114528

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. Call me tinfoilhatter

But wouldn't some people find it WONDERFUL if one of FDR's most spectacular achievements turned out to be bogus?

[houseboy]

14. Scientific illiteracy

This is a great example of the population at large not having a clue about science in general and things like statistics and cause and effect. This has been pointed out very well by several other posters.

I will just go to the most obvious:

"Polio is a devastating disease; the preferred method for fighting it is vaccination. Yet there is a mass of historic evidence that suggests it is not caused by a virus but by industrial and agricultural pollution."

So logic says that polio is not a virus, but a vaccination has eliminated polio whenever used. (Thats a fact) industrial and agricultural pollution is better or worse than than 1950? Pollution causes polio but a vaccination stops it. Therefor we no longer have to worry about pollution and we can stop trying to reduce it...just get a vaccine to protect us against pollution

[LastDemocratInSC]

15. This isn't scary - it's bullshit

Janine Roberts has degrees in religion and sociology. Those are good things but they don't qualify her to write on the topic of polio. She would need, at a minimum, a M.D. or a Ph.D in immunology to address the topic. She has jumped overboard without a life preserver on this issue. Google her name and polio and you'll know why.

Our world today is full of "holistic institutes" and "self-discovery seminars" where you can aim your brain at the iceburgs. I think she wants to be important but can't figure out how to do it.

I'd suggest a triple layer of aluminum foil on this one. Not because of cosmic rays, mind you, but because bullshit tends to splatter and you'll need some cover.

[enki23]

16. whee

hiv doesn't cause aids. polio virus doesn't cause polio. influenza can be almost completely prevented by taking colloidal silver. so can everything else. back pain is caused by misaligned magnetic fields. sinus infections are caused by spinal misalignments. you can get crab lice from your dog. you can ward off vampires with garlic. a kid once died from eating pop rocks and drinking soda. if you swallow gum, it all collects in one big goopy ball in your gut. cancer is caused by negative thoughts. paranoid schizophrenics are actually possessed by demons. cats sometimes sit on the faces of newborn babies and suffocate them. especially calico cats. eating shark cartilage will prevent cancer. the average american swallows eight spiders a year, in their sleep. cholera is actually caused by taking too much colloidal silver. clustered water is good for you. clustered water is bad for you. there is such thing as clustered and unclustered water. if you don't change your lightening rod tips every five years, they stop working. ghosts hate the living. ghosts don't hate the living, they are just sad and alone. ghosts cause cancer. ghosts can be cured with colloidal silver. clustered water cures cholera. monkeys never scratch themselves with their left paws. pop rocks can cure back pain. polio virus cures cancer. your dog is possessed by a demon. sinus infections can cure malaria. syphilis is is not a sexually transmitted disease, it's caused by antibiotics. antibiotics can prevent the positive effects of colloidal silver. demons can be banished with clustered water. cats cause polio. newborn babies swallow eight spiders a year. demons spread syphillis. hiv virus cures back pain. magnets cause cancer. magnets cure cancer. cell phones cause aids. magnets cause polio. cell phones are possessed by demons. antibiotics should never be taken with unclustered water. cholera prevents influenza. influenza prevents cancer. cancer prevents aids. aids prevents cholera. monkeys never drink clustered water. pesticides cure syphillis, cause aids, cause polio, banish demons, exacerbate back pain, increase sperm production, corrode lightning rods, cure cancer, cause anal cysts. colloidal silver increases sperm production. sperm cures cancer. sperm causes aids. aids is caused by AZT.

[LibLabUK]

17. Awesome!

Thanks for the info! :)

*goes off to realign his clustered magnetic water to cure his chakra deficiency*

[LibLabUK]

18. I read this post and...

my anti-vaccination pressure group alarm went off, and then exploded.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. This is such nonsense

I'm not a medical expert, but I've read a lot about the history of medicine, and here's what I remember about polio:

1. Polio has always existed, but like many diseases, it is harsher the older you are when you contract it. In pre-industrial societies, people got polio in infancy and recovered completely and acquired lifelong immunity. In industrial societies, you had higher standards of living and therefore less likelihood of being exposed to nasty germs in infancy, but when people got polio, they were older and more likely to be left paralyzed or to die.

2. The vaccines: the Salk vaccine was a killed virus vaccine administered by injection, as opposed to the modern oral vaccines, using weakened live viruses. The disasters with early attempts at vaccination were the result of manufacturing mistakes at one laboratory.

3. I'm just old enough to remember when polio was an everyday concern. I'm told that when I was four years old, I attended a birthday party, two days before the birthday child was diagnosed with polio. All the pediatrician could do was tell my mother to keep me at home getting plenty of rest and extra vitamins for about a week. (I didn't get polio.)

I was hospitalized for other reasons a while later, and the nurse took me around to meet the other children on the ward. I remember seeing a girl lying in one of those big iron lungs with just her head sticking out.

Vaccination became widespread shortly after that, and many years later, I noticed that everyone I ever saw who showed the after-effects of polio was my age (I'm now 54) or older.

If the polio virus had nothing to do with polio, then the advent of vaccination would have had no effect, and hospitals would still be full of polio potions.