AD: Polio Awareness Day: Medical Myths Die Hard - Part II - Gary Krasner

Polio Awareness Day: Medical Myths Die Hard - Part II
By Gary Krasner (09/22/06)

THE POLIO CAMPAIGN: THE EPIDEMIC THAT NEVER WAS - Returning to the issue of vaccine-induced paralysis, the vaccine that had caused that greatest numbers of paralytic cases, ironically, was the vaccine intended to end paralysis forever. Publicity for polio received a boost in 1938 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP), and placed his friend, Basil O'Conner in charge of it. O'Conner was considered one of the greatest publicists of his time.

In the late 1940' and early 1950's, he inundated the world with reports of raging polio epidemics. The National Foundation mounted a continuous publicity campaign which reached the entire country with such reminders as the sight of paralyzed victims on crutches, or with names such as the "iron lung," the device used to help "bulbar" cases of polio (paralyzed chest muscles) to breathe. The word polio took on extraordinary emotional connotations, and the Foundation's annual March of Dimes became a fantastically successful fund-raising operation.

In 1952 Jonas Salk stepped into the spotlight. At that time, Salk was a research professor at the University of Pittsburgh and had been enlisted by Basil O'Connor into the National Foundation's polio research program. Salk did not offer a cure for polio. He sought a "preventative� a vaccine which he tested on a small scale in 1952 and 1953.

1955: Salk Vaccination Begins

Salk vaccinations began in the U.S. in April 1955. Only two months into the Salk campaign, the U.S. Public Health Service, on June 23, 1955, announced that there had been 168 confirmed cases of poliomyelitis among the vaccinated with six deaths.

The News Chronicle of May 6, 1955, reported:

"The interval between the inoculation and the first sign of paralysis ranged from 5 to 20 days and in a large proportion of cases it started in the limb on which the injection had been given. Another feature of the tragedy was that the numbers developing polio were far greater than would have been expected had no inoculations been given. In fact, in the state of Idaho, according to a statement by Dr. Carl Eklund, one of the government's chief virus authorities, polio struck only vaccinated children in areas where there had been no cases of polio since the preceding autumn; in 9 out of 10 cases the paralysis occurred in the arms in which the vaccine had been injected."

In June, 1955, James C. Spaulding, a staff writer for the Milwaukee Journal covered an American Medical Association convention. Here is what Spaulding learned and reported on June 19, 1955:

"A policy of secrecy and deception has been followed by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the U.S. Public Health Service in the polio vaccine programs. As a result the nation's physicians were prevented from learning vital information about the trouble in making and testing Salk vaccine… The secrecy and deception started before the field trials."

"One of the things the AMA was not told was that the USPHS had an advisory group made up almost entirely of scientists who were receiving money from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which body was exerting pressure to go ahead with the program, even after Salk vaccine was found to be dangerous."

"In May, some state public health officers met in Atlanta, expecting to be told what had gone wrong with the vaccine program. Instead, the USPHS scientist said he was not permitted to disclose what had happened because it would jeopardize the investment of the pharmaceutical firms in the vaccine program."

Suppressed reports condemning the Salk vaccine by technicians at the National Institutes of Health, was reported in, The Drug Story by Morris Bealle. Among the stories carried in this book is the one that James A. Shannon, M.D., of the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., knew about the reports from the Institute's technicians in 1955, that "Salk vaccine was a killer and totally ineffective as a preventative." As a result of these reports of the Institutes Technicians, no official of the NIH would permit the vaccination of their own children with the Salk vaccine. Word of this leaked out when Robert S. Allen, Washington correspondent, reported in the New York Post, June 8, 1955, that "Doctors and others on the staff of the National Institute of Health are not inoculating their own children with the Salk Vaccine." "Nevertheless," says Mr. Bealle, "on orders from higher-ups in the U.S. Public Health Service, they kept quiet and let hundreds of unfortunate children be killed and thousands maimed for life."
By contrast, the editor of "The Lancet" (June 11, 1955) wrote: "In addition to the possibility of producing the very disease the vaccine is used to prevent, there is a risk, of unknown dimensions, that repeated injections of a vaccine prepared from monkey kidney may eventually sensitize the child in some harmful way."

In July, 1955, Dr. Graham S. Wilson, Director of the Public Laboratory Service of England and Wales (and also Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Bacteriology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), who knew about the secret field trials conducted by the NIH, announced, "I do not see how any vaccine prepared by Salk's method can be guaranteed safe." (American Capsule News, January 21, 1956). In 1967, Sir Graham S. Wilson, M.D., LL.D., F.R.C.P., D.P.H., published one of the most scathing indictments of vaccination: "The Hazards of Imminizations" (Univ. of London, The Athlone Press. 324 pages.)

PARALYSIS INCREASED FOLLOWING THE SALK VACCINE

An Associated Press Dispatch from Boston on August 30, 1955, reported 2,027 cases of polio in Massachusetts against 273 the same time the previous year representing an increase of 743%. This followed the inoculation of 130,000 Massachusetts children, and the authorities banned the vaccine. Connecticut reported 276 cases in 1955, up from 144 in 1954; Vermont, 55 up from 15; Rhode Island, 122 up from 22, and Maine, 74 up from 43.

The Washington D.C. Star, September 20, 1955, reported 180 cases in Washington against 136 the same time in 1954; Maryland's Health Department reported 189 in 1955 to 134 in 1954; New York State, 764 to 469; Wisconsin, 1655 to 326. The Milwaukee Journal, on August 30, 1955, reported that the city's schools closed indefinitely because of the polio outbreak, following inoculation with the Salk vaccine.

Idaho stopped Salk inoculations completely on July 1, 1955, with this blast from State Health Director Peterson said, "I hold Salk vaccine and its manufacturers responsible for a polio outbreak that has killed 7 Idahoans and hospitalized 79." By September 14th 1955, that state had 190 cases compared with 132 for the entire year of 1954. Newark, N.J. stopped inoculations in June, 1955, while Utah took similar action on July 12.

An Associated Press dispatch on November 11, 1955, quoted Dr. Herbert Ratner, Health Commissioner of Oak Park, Illinois, who said that "English authorities in July, 1955, canceled the Salk vaccine programs as 'too dangerous', and all European countries, with the exception of Denmark, have discontinued their programs." Canada also postponed its Salk vaccine program on July 29, 1955.

The New York Times on May 11, 1956, reported on Supplement No. 15 of the Poliomyelitis Surveillance Report for the year which showed 12% more paralysis in 1956 than in 1955. By January 1, 1957, 17 states had rejected their supplies of Jonas Salk's "anti-paralytic" polio vaccine. During this year very nearly half the paralytic cases and three-quarters of the non-paralytic cases in children between the ages of 5 and 14 years occurred in "vaccinated" children.

The Expert Committee on Poliomyelitis of the World Health Organization stated in its Technical Report Series, No. 145 (Second Report, p. 34 Geneva, 1958) that:

"It was noted in the Union of South Africa and in the USA, especially in the course of severe outbreaks in Hawaii and Chicago, that vaccination in the face of an epidemic did not appear to shorten its course. Laboratory and field studies have shown that vaccination does not prevent infection or interfere with dissemination of virus in the community."

Hawaii had an outbreak of polio in 1958. The Honolulu Advertiser on July 15, 1958, carried a statement by Dr. Enright of the Territorial Dept. of Health which broke down the figures as follows: "Of the 32 discovered paralytic polio cases so far this year, six had 3 Salk shots, six had 2 shots, four had one shot, the rest, none." Percentage vaccinated: 50%.

The Chicago Daily News, May 28, 1959, printed the following UPI dispatch from Duluth, MN:

"One of the developers of the new oral (polio) vaccine said Wednesday the recent use of Salk vaccine in Israel had 'little if any effect.' Dr. Herald R. Cox of Lederle Laboratories,…suggested the ineffectiveness of Salk inoculations during a round table discussion at the Minnesota State Medical Association convention. Cox said a confidential report on a polio epidemic showed 90% of children under six years old in Israel were given Salk shots. But the outbreak became epidemic. It is evident that the vaccine failed, Cox said."
Polio cases rose about 300 to 400% in these 5 places that made the Salk vaccine compulsory by law:

* North Carolina: 78 cases in 1958 before compulsory shots. 313 cases in 1959.
* Connecticut: 45 cases in 1958 before compulsory shots. 123 cases in 1959.
* Tennessee: 119 cases in 1958 before compulsory shots. 386 cases in 1959.
* Ohio: 17 cases in 1958 before compulsory shots. 52 cases in 1959.
* Los Angeles: 89 cases in 1958 before compulsory shots. 190 cases in 1959.

By 1960, the Salk vaccine had proven to be so hazardous and ineffective, that the Journal of the American Medical Association (February 25, 1961) carried an article admitting that, "It is now generally recognized that much of the Salk vaccine used in the U.S. has been worthless."

In his statement submitted to the House of Representatives Sub-Committee on Health and Environment, 94th Congress, Dr. Thomas E. Baynes (Assistant Professor of Law at Nova University Law Center, Fort Lauderdale, FL, under a contract with HEW, CDC, No. 39204) reported to our elected officials that:

"… In 1949, a polio vaccine was only a dream…now that dream has turned into a nightmare… The extent of litigation from vaccine injuries in humans had been minimal until the advent of the Salk and Sabin vaccines…Resultant litigation from vaccine injuries will require a reevaluation of current efforts to immunize vast numbers of people from communicable diseases."

WAS THERE REALLY AN EPIDEMIC?

Contrary to popular mythology, it's clear from these reports that the Salk vaccine had been a disaster. The next question is whether there had actually been a polio epidemic in the 1950s? To determine that question, several issues have to be examined.
First, was polio increasing or decreasing going into that decade? Perhaps because of the effectiveness of the PR campaign then—and the lingering mythology today—most people didn't know that paralytic polio was substantially declining before the vaccine had been used, with a drop of almost 20,000 cases between 1952 and 1954, for example. This was also true in England, where polio mortalities was at its height in 1950, but had declined 82 percent by 1956 before the Salk vaccinations began there.
But despite this actual decline of paralytic polio, the polio PR campaign cited for 1952, for example, that polio had peaked at 57,879 cases. This disparity was due to statistical "flim-flam": they swelled the statistics by combining the larger numbers of non-paralytic, "unspecified" and "abortive" polio cases with the dwindling numbers of paralytic cases. Almost two-thirds of this total were among the former—"non-paralytic" polio—a mild expression of symptoms no more serious than a bad cold. In the minds of millions of people—then and now—polio had meant "paralysis". But by combining paralytic cases with the various milder, non-paralytic forms, the public was misled into thinking that paralysis was sweeping the land.

Thus, before the Salk vaccine began in 1955, cases that described a wide spectrum of symptoms of the disease were combined under one name: polio. That made it look like there was an epidemic. But after the vaccine was introduced, the reverse procedure was required to demonstrate that there were fewer cases and that the vaccine was successful. That procedure was to fractionate all those cases into several smaller classifications.

This method of hiding paralytic cases under names other than "polio" was discussed in 1960, during a panel discussion on The Present Status of Polio Vaccine (reported in the Aug.&Sept./1960 issues of the Illinois Medical Journal). One of the speakers at this panel discussion was Dr. Bernard G. Greenberg, Ph.D., head of the Department of Biostatistics of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, and former Chairman of the Commission of Evaluation and Standards of the American Public Health Association. Greenberg pointed out that after 1955, "Coxsackie virus infection and septic meningitis [socalled 'polio twins'] have been distinguished from paralytic poliomyelitis. Prior to 1954, large numbers of these cases undoubtedly were mislabeled as paralytic polio."

Dr. Greenberg mentioned only two polio twins. But Dr. Ralph R. Scobey, President of the Poliomyelitis Research Institute, Syracuse, N.Y., in the Archives of Pediatrics, January, 1950, listed 170 diseases of "polio-like" symptoms and effects but with different names such as "spinal meningitis, inhibitory palsy, epidemic cholera, cholera morbus, ergotism, famine fever, billious remittent fever, spinal apoplexy, scurvy, berri-berri, pellagra, acidosis, etc." In fact, symptoms from nutritional and toxicological factors overlap much of the "various forms" of polio.

Ernest B. Zeisler, M.D., in his article, The Great Salk Vaccine Fiasco, (Herald of Health, December, 1960) pointed out that there are over a dozen illnesses that are identical to paralytic polio. In addition, he presents a clear picture of medical guesswork that renders all polio statistics wholly unworthy of confidence:

"No attempt was made to eliminate personal bias in making the diagnosis of poliomyelitis. There are more than a dozen illnesses due to viruses other than those of poliomyelitis, which may be 'indistinguishable from paralytic polio' except by special virus studies. A physician seeing a patient with such paralytic illness at once inquires whether or not the patient has been vaccinated with the Salk vaccine, and his diagnosis is very likely to be influenced by his reply. Inasmuch as physicians have been convinced that triple vaccination is highly effective, they will make a diagnosis of poliomyelitis if there is no history of vaccination and will make a diagnosis of one of the other diseases if there is a history of triple vaccination."

"Paralytic polio" seemed well buried with the additional classifications. After 1955, non-paralytic polio also acquired a new name. It wasn't until the mid-1950's that new laboratory techniques of culturing viruses could distinguish polio from its clinical twins (i.e. aseptic meningitis, etc.). Since the Salk vaccine had begun to be used in 1955, the huge swing from the incidence of polio to aseptic meningitis following that year indicated that (1) prior to the vaccine, clinicians had been over-diagnosing poliomyelitis in most instances when they had really been cases of aseptic meningitis, or just cases involving a bad cold, and (2) the apparent decline in polio due to the Salk vaccine was merely an artifact of diagnostic methodology (more of which is described below). That was the conclusion of Michael B. Gregg, M.D., Deputy Director, Bureau of Epidemiology of the CDC, from personal correspondence to Barry Mesh, dated 11/23/77 (copy of signed letter available upon request).

Statistics bear out the above item (2): Non-paralytic polio diagnosis was based on subjective clinical observation, not laboratory confirmation. Doctors diagnosed 70,083 cases of non-paralytic polio between 1951 and 1960. They simply called it "polio" for the popular press. And during this time, not one case of "aseptic meningitis" was reported. After 1960, "aseptic meningitis" began to displace "non-paralytic polio". Non-paralytic polio became so rare that the MMWR stopped reporting it in 1983. What had been a (non-paralytic) polio epidemic before, is now an aseptic meningitis epidemic.

These were the numbers that were compiled from national surveillance reports from the MMWR for the years indicated:

Date	Non-Paralytic Polio	Aseptic Meningitis
1951-1960	70,083	0
1961-1982	589	102,999
1983-1992	0	117,366

Thus, non-paralytic polio may have "disappeared". But thousands of children still experience the same symptoms as non-paralytic polio every year. It just goes by another name now.

At the aforementioned panel discussion in 1960, Dr. Greenberg also blew the whistle on the modified diagnostic criteria for polio. Prior to 1954, the diagnosis of spinal paralytic poliomyelitis in most health departments followed the World Health Organization definition: "Signs and symptoms of nonparalytic polio with the addition of partial or complete paralysis of one or more muscle groups, detected on two examinations at least 24 hours apart." But beginning in 1955, the criteria changed to conform more closely to the definition used in the 1954 Salk field trials: "Unless there is residual involvement (paralysis) at least 60 days after onset, a case of poliomyelitis is not considered paralytic."

Obviously, more cases of paralysis had a chance to recover within 60 days, than in 24 hours. During the panel discussion, Dr. Greenberg commented, "This change in definition meant that in 1955 we started reporting a 'new' disease, namely, paralytic polio with a longer lasting paralysis [than what was required before 1955]. As a result of these changes in both diagnosis and diagnostic methods, the rates of polio plummeted from the early 1950's to a low in 1957." (a decrease of 23,500 cases from 1955 to 57.)
However, Dr. Greenberg pointed out that not even this artifactual decline could continue, after the Salk vaccine had been in widespread use for 2 years. He showed that nationally, paralytic polio increased about 50% from 1957 to 1958, and about 80% from 1958 to 1959.

Finally, the PHS redefined a "polio epidemic": Before the introduction of the Salk vaccine, only 20 cases per 100,000 population was an "epidemic". Afterwards, it required 35 per 100,000 per year. Considering all these manipulations to endow efficacy upon the Salk vaccine, to say that public health officials had moved the goal posts would be an understatement. They moved the stadium! This was not epidemiology.

Thus, polio had indeed been wiped out. But in name only.

Perhaps a good note to end this essay on is one which is emblematic of the soft science of polio diagnosis. In an article published in the Journal of Medical Biography on October 31, 2003), Armond Goldman, an emeritus professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and three other doctors and a biostatistician, argue that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was probably paralyzed by Guillain-Barré syndrome, and not polio, as has been widely assumed. Guillain-Barré is an immune system disease that was barely recognized at the time Roosevelt lost the use of his legs. It is polio's closest mimic.

This assessment was described by Washington Post Staff Writer David Brown [www.washingtonpost.com, in Study Challenges Polio as Cause Of FDR's Illness: Researchers Blame Guillain-Barré, October 31, 2003; Page A03] as follows:

"Using the "attack rate" in adults recorded in a polio outbreak in 1916, and the current estimate for the rate of Guillain-Barré in adults, the researchers calculated there was a 39 percent probability that Roosevelt's paralysis was caused by polio and a 51 percent chance that it was caused by Guillain-Barré. They then applied that probability to the signs and symptoms reported by Roosevelt himself, by relatives taking care of him, and by the physicians they consulted. Some of those features-such as fever typical of polio, and paralysis that is symmetrical side-to-side in Guillain-Barré-differ greatly between the diseases, and the precise frequency of each is known. By multiplying the disease probability by the symptom probability, the Texas researchers calculated a net probability for each of the eight features of FDR's illness. Six of the eight favor a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré, according to this analysis."

Acknowledgment: The above article is dedicated to the late Barry Mesh, who inspired his generation of vaccine awareness activists. As early as 1975, researcher Barry Mesh was perhaps the first to assemble the complete polio story of the 1950's. He painted a starkly different picture from the popularized legend of the Salk vaccine. The sections in this article on the Salk vaccine and Dr. Sandler are based on his research, plus other sources.
©2006 by Gary Krasner

POSTSCRIPT #1:

Excerpt From, "Immunization: The Reality Behind The Myth", By Walene James, ©1988, page 26, under the section, "Polio":
The case of poliomyelitis is particularly instructive since its apparent decrease cannot be explained by such developments as sanitation, public water supplies, ventilation, etc. In fact, it is a disease that occurs only among the most civilized peoples with the highest standards of sanitation, etc., being unknown among preliterate cultures that have been relatively untouched by civilization.
Jonas Salk, the discoverer of the Salk polio vaccine, has been called the "twentieth-century miraclemaker" and the savior of countless lives. (W6) We read glowing reports of the dramatic decrease in poliomyelitis in the United States as a result of the Salk vaccine. For instance, the Virginia State Department of Health distributes a folder which tells us that polio vaccines have reduced the incidence of polio in the United States from 18,000 cases of paralytic polio in 1954 to fewer that 20 in 1973-78. A recent article in Modern Maturity states that in 1953, there were 15,600 cases of paralytic polio in the United States; by 1957, due to the Salk vaccine, the number had dropped to 2,499. (W7)

During the 1962 Congressional Hearings on HR 10541, Dr. Bernard Greenberg, head of the Department of Biostatistics of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, testified that not only did polio increase substantially (50 percent from 1957 to 1958 and 80 percent from 1958 to 1959) after the introduction of mass and frequently compulsory immunization programs, but statistics were manipulated and statements made by the Public Health Service to give the opposite impression. (W8)

For instance, in 1957 a spokesman for the North Carolina Health Department made glowing claims for the efficacy of the Salk vaccine, showing how polio steadily decreased from 1953 to 1957. His figures were challenged by Dr. Fred Klenner who pointed out that it wasn't until 1955 that a single person in the state received a polio vaccine injection. Even then injections were administered on a very limited basis because of the number of polio cases resulting from the vaccine. It wasn't until 1956 "that polio vaccinations assumed 'inspiring' proportions." The 61 percent drop in polio cases in 1954 was credited to the Salk vaccine when it wasn't even in the state! By 1957 polio was on the increase. (W9)

Other ways polio statistics were manipulated to give the impression of the effectiveness of the Salk vaccine were: (1) Redefinition of an epidemic: More cases were required to refer to polio as epidemic after the introduction of the Salk vaccine (from 20 per 100,000 to 35 per 100,000 per year). (2) Redefinition of the disease: In order to qualify for classification as paralytic poliomyelitis, the patient had to exhibit paralytic symptoms for at least 60 days after the onset of the disease. Prior to 1954 the patient had to exhibit paralytic symptoms for only 24 hours! Laboratory confirmation and the presence of residual paralysis were not required. After 1954 residual paralysis was determined 10 to 20 days and again 50 to 70 days after the onset of the disease. Dr. Greenberg said that "this change in definition meant that in 1955 we started reporting a new disease, namely, paralytic poliomyelitis with a longer lasting paralysis." (3) Mislabeling: After the introduction of the Salk Vaccine, "Cocksackie virus and aseptic meningitis have been distinguished from paralytic poliomyelitis," explained Dr. Greenberg. "Prior to 1954 large numbers of these cases undoubtedly were mislabeled as paralytic polio." (W10)

Another way of reducing the incidence of disease by way of semantics—or statistical artifact, as Dr. Greenberg calls it—is simply to reclassify the disease. From the Los Angeles County Health Index: Morbidity and Mortality, Reportable Diseases, we read the following:

Date	Viral Meningitis or Aseptic Meningitis	Polio
July 1955	50	273
July 1961	161	65
July 1963	151	31
Sept 1966	256	5

The reason for this remarkable change is stated in this same publication: "Most cases reported prior to July 1, 1958, as non-paralytic poliomyelitis are now reported as viral or aseptic meningitis." (W11) In Organic Consumer Report (March 11, 1975) we read, "In a California Report of Communicable Diseases, polio showed a zero count, while an accompanying asterisk explained, "All such cases now reported as meningitis."

There have been at least three major polio epidemics in the United States, according to Dr. Christopher Kent. "One occurred in the teens, another in the late thirties, and the most recent in the fifties." The first two epidemics simply went away like the old epidemics of plague. Around 1948, the incidence of polio began to soar. (Interestingly, this is when pertussis—whooping cough-vaccine appeared, Dr. Kent points out.) It reached a high in 1949, with 43,000 cases, but by 1951 had dropped to below 28,000. In 1952, when a government subsidized study of polio vaccine began, the rate soared to an all-time high of well over 55,000 cases. After the study, the number of cases dropped again and continued to decline as they had in the previous epidemics. "This time, however, the vaccine took the credit instead of nature." (W12)

The cyclical nature of polio is again illustrated by the remarks of Dr. Alec Burton at the 1978 meeting of the Natural Hygiene Society in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Some years ago at the University of New South Wales in Australia, statistics were compiled which showed that the polio vaccine in use at the time had no influence whatsoever on the polio epidemic. Polio comes in cycles anyway, Dr. Burton said, and when it has been "conquered" by vaccines, and a disease with identical symptoms continues to appear, doctors look for a new virus because they know the old one has been "wiped out." "And the game goes on," he added. (W13)

When Dr. Robert Mendelsohn was asked about the possibility of childhood diseases—particularly polio-returning if the vaccinations were stopped, he replied: "Doctors admit that forty percent of our population is not immunized against polio. So where is polio? Diseases are like fashions; they come and go, like the flu epidemic of 1918." (W14)

On a 1983 Donahue Show ("Dangers of Childhood Immunizations," Jan.12), Dr. Mendelsohn pointed out that polio disappeared in Europe during the 1940s and 1950s without mass vaccination, and that polio does not occur in the Third World where only 10 percent of the people have been vaccinated against polio or anything else.

Returning to the congressional hearings referred to earlier (HR 10541), we read that in 1958 Israel had a major "type I" polio epidemic after mass vaccinations. There was no difference in protection between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. In 1961, Massachusetts had a "type III" polio outbreak and "there were more paralytic cases in the triple vaccinates than in the unvaccinated." (W15)

Testimony at these same hearings from Herbert Ratner, M.D., pointed out that because poliomyelitis is such a low-incidence disease, this complicates the evaluation of a vaccine for it. He also said that there is "a high degree of acquired immunity and many natural factors preventing the occurrence of the disease . . . in the Nation at large." (W16)

Dr. Moskowitz adds that the virulence of the poliovirus was low to begin with. "Given the fact that the poliovirus was ubiquitous before the vaccine was introduced, and could be found routinely in samples of city sewage whenever it was looked for, it is evident that effective, natural immunity to poliovirus was already as close to being universal as it can ever be, and "a fortiori" no artificial substitute could ever equal or even approximate that result." (W17)

References:
W6. Joan S. Wixen, "Twentieth-century miraclemaker," Modern Maturity, Dec. 1984-Jan. 1985, p.92.
W7. Ibid.
W8. Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Eighty-Seventh Congress, Second Session on H.R. 10541, May 1962, p.94
W9. "The Disturbing Question of the Salk Vaccine," Prevention, Sept. 1959, p.52
W10. Hearings on H.R. 10541, op. cit., pp.94, 96, 112.
W11. Christopher Kent, D.C., Ph.D., "Drugs, Bugs, and Shots in the Dark," Health Freedom News, Jan.1983, p.26.
W12. Ibid.
W13. Alec Burton, O.D., "The Fallacy of the Germ Theory of Disease," talk given at the convention of the National Hygiene Society, Milwaukee, WI, 1978.
W14. Interview with Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., The Herbalist New Health, July 1981, p.61.
W15. Hearings on 10541, op. cit., p.113.
W16. Ibid. pp.89, 94.
W17. Richard Moskowitz, M.D., The Case Against Immunizations, reprinted from the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, vol.76, March 1983, p.21.

POSTSCRIPT #2:

Dr. Viera Scheibner, a Principal Research Scientist (Retired) in Australia and noted critic of vaccination, wrote in 1999:
Polio has not been eradicated by vaccination, it is lurking behind a redefinition and new diagnostic names like viral or aseptic meningitis. When the first, injectable, polio vaccine was tested on some 1.8 million children in the United States in 1954, within 9 days there was huge epidemic of paralytic polio in the vaccinated and some of their parents and other contacts. The US Surgeon General discontinued the trial for 2 weeks. The vaccinators then put their heads together and came back with a new definition of poliomyelitis. The old, classical, definition: a disease with residual paralysis which resolves within 60 days has been changed to a disease with residual paralysis which persists for more than 60 days. Knowing the reality of polio disease, this nifty but dishonest administrative move excluded more than 90% of polio cases from the definition of polio.

Ever since then, when a polio-vaccinated person gets polio, it will not be diagnosed as polio, it will be diagnosed as viral or aseptic meningitis. According to one of the 1997 issues of the MMWR, there are some 30,000 to 50,000 cases of viral meningitis per year in the United States alone. That's where all those 30,000—50,000 cases of polio disappeared after the introduction of mass vaccination. One must also be aware that polio is a man-made disease since those well-publicized outbreaks are misrepresented that those huge outbreaks were causally linked to intensified diphtheria and other vaccinations at the relevant time. They even have a name for it: provocation poliomyelitis.

JAMA (1993) published that the fall in the incidence of Hib meningitis occurred in the age group below the age of one year at the time when none of the Hib vaccines were even licensed for that age group. The recent outbreaks of meningitis in the US College students can be clearly linked to the enforced MMR vaccination as a condition for enrolment to Colleges in the U.S.

POSTSCRIPT #3:
Neurological Complications of Vaccinations

By Charles M. Poser, M.D., FRCP

Neurological complications of immunizations have been recorded in the medical literature for many years, yet many physicians fail to recognize their clinical manifestations and identify their etiology. This is due in part to their rarity, and to the well-publicized, overriding public health benefits that make these complications easily overlooked. Yet they can be devastating despite the fact that early treatment is often successful.

A great deal of knowledge regarding their pathogenesis has accumulated over the years based on the existence of excellent animal models of the human disease, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, the commonest neurological manifestation of an adverse immune response to vaccines. Experimental allergic encephalomyelitis and neuritis faithfully reproduce the pathologic alterations of the nervous system that may complicate immunizations.

Adverse reactions involving the nervous system from a wide variety of immunizations result from the same pathogenetic mechanism. They may affect any and all parts of the central and peripheral nervous systems. With rare exceptions, e.g. rubella immunization, the nature of the vaccine does not seem to influence the nature of the response.

Thus the nervous system ailments include many different clinical forms, ranging from the classic acute disseminated encephalomyelitis to aseptic meningoencephalitis. In rare instances, in the case of live viruses, e.g. polio and smallpox, an actual infection by the virus itself may ensue. Many different vaccinations involving many different sites in the nervous system have been reported. This is particularly true of vaccines commonly used in children against measles, varicella and rubella.

The pathogenetic mechanism is as follows: the primary effect of the hyperergic (immune) reaction is on the small blood vessels of the nervous system, usually capillaries, but occasionally involving arterioles and venules; in exceptional circumstances, even major arteries such as the carotid may be affected. The vasculopathy may cause vessel obstruction and ischemia, a stroke. Rupture of the vessel wall results in hemorrhage.

More commonly, however, there is alteration of the blood-brain barrier, exsudation of water and edema (swelling) of nervous tissue. Inflammation and disorganization of the myelin lamellae (layers) and destruction of myelin may ensue but are not obligatory. In some cases, there is sufficient red blood cell diapedesis (migration through the vessel wall) to produce what is known as acute hemorrhagic leukoencephalopathy, which despite its awesome appearance is usually responsive to vigorous treatment.

The extent of pathological involvement of nervous tissue also varies greatly, as seen in vaccination against measles, mumps and varicella. In infants, brain swelling, also known as congestive edematous encephalopathy, may be the only complication, a condition that often responds dramatically to treatment with corticosteroids. It occurs most commonly in vaccination against smallpox.

The diagnosis of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, the commonest complication of vaccinations in both children and adult, has been aided by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The pictures are reasonably characteristic, yet, unfortunately, despite many published descriptions, these images are not always correctly interpreted, and are often misread as those of multiple sclerosis.

There is also some confusion in terminology: "encephalitis" and "meningoencephalitis" refer to actual invasion of the brain by a virus, while "encephalopathy" is a generic term that simply describes a pathological condition of the brain; "encephalomyelitis" refers to an "allergic" or immune reaction of the nervous system. It is the latter term that should be generally used for the nervous system complications of vaccinations.

The official publications that commented on the ill effects of the 1976 swine-flu (A-New Jersey 76) vaccination campaign illustrate the problems that arise when there is need to extrapolate scientific data to judicial considerations. The report stating that the Landry-Guillain-Barré syndrome (LGBS) was the only "real" complication of the swine-flu vaccine passed over published reports to the contrary. The statement that there had been underreporting of complications was simply ignored. The accepted view is that if an adverse reaction does not reach the magical figure of 5 percent, it does not exist.

The reverence accorded to statistical analyses overlooks the value of anecdotal reports in constructing valid medical hypotheses; this is despite the warnings by respected epidemiologists that such studies can never deny the existence of a cause-and-effect relationship. This is illustrated by the report of nervous system complications following vaccination against hepatitis B. Another problem arose from the decision to limit the "acceptable" time period of onset after immunization, which ignored a number of reports of well-documented delayed reactions.

In the last few years a new mantra has emerged to the effect that all published results such as proposed new treatments, must meet the test of being "evidence-based," which means that they must be derived from statistically verified data. Thus calculations of probabilities, also known as educated guesses, will take precedence over clinical, pathological, radiological or experimental data. Close examination of some specific situations will reveal the flaws of this concept.

There is no way of predicting who will have an adverse reaction to vaccination. The individual's susceptibility is determined by the genetic background and previous immunological history. We are constantly exposed to a wide variety of viral antigens that cause our immune system to develop antibodies against them. The phenomenon of molecular mimicry explains why some people's immune system will mistakenly respond to the measles antigen, for instance, in the vaccine because some of its amino acid groupings, its epitopes, are the same as those in the protein of a previously encountered viral antigen.

This is why there was an unexpected preponderance of people in their 50s and 60s who developed LGBS after swine-flu vaccination, because they might have been exposed to the "Asian flu" caused by a somewhat similar virus in the 1920s. It is also germane to point out that vaccines contain a number of substances, many of them as antigenic as the one for which they were designed. Preservatives may also contribute to the adverse side effects. It is extremely difficult to distinguish the effects of the vaccines' constituents.

Physicians often neglect to ask about previous vaccinations when confronted with puzzling neurological illness. Most of them appear to have been convinced that immunizations are completely harmless. Many also believe that such reactions must occur within one month from vaccination, and therefore do not inquire about immunizations in previous months.

Because of the expense of testing drugs, vaccines and other medical products, the pharmaceutical industry has assumed an increasingly important role in the conduct of therapeutic trials and post-marketing surveillance. This is both understandable and often beneficial. On the downside, however, is the appearance of conflict of interest when the analyses of the results are carried out by the pharmaceutical firm itself, or the government agency charged with guarding the safety of the product.

Dr. Poser is visiting professor of neurology, Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, and is senior neurologist with Beth Israel Deaconess Med Center in Boston.

[Copyright 2003 by the author. First printed in Mealey's Litigation Report, Thimerosal & Vaccines, Volume 1, Issue #10, April 2003]

Part I - Polio Awareness Day: Medical Myths Die Hard -Part I

(Printer friendly version) Email: Gary Krasner



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