Although polio is usually considered a fearsome disease, even during the worst epidemics only five percent of those exposed to the virus showed any symptoms at all; only about one tenth of a percent were paralyzed. It was extremely seldom that the dreaded iron lung was needed. According to health officials, wild polio virus had been eradicated from the Western Hemisphere by 1991. In his 2009 and 2010 Vaccine Safety Manual, Neil Z Miller writes:
Several years ago, the World Health Organization launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, with 2000 as its target date for eliminating the disease. However, by 2000 it became apparent that not only was polio still around, but new strains of the disease – derived from the vaccine itself – were emerging.295 Researchers first noticed something unusual in 1983. Outbreaks of polio in Egypt were being caused by a “vaccine-derived” polio virus.296 In 1993, Dr Radu Crainic of the Pasteur Institute, discovered that strains of the polio virus have the ability to spontaneously recombine with themselves and create new strains. Crainic showed that if you vaccinate a child with strains 1, 2, and 3, you can produce a new strain, strain 4 out of the child’s stool. Crainic concluded that the polio vaccine creates favorable conditions contributing to the evolution of viral “recombinations”.297
Miller provides further evidence that the oral polio vaccine gives rise to new polio strains which can produce polio in those regions where it’s been used:
In October 2000, virologist Hiromu Yoshida of Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo reported finding a new infectious polio virus in Japanese rivers and sewage. Genetic sequencing confirmed that the virus had mutated from the polio vaccine and regained much of its original virulence.298 According to Yoshida, it poses a “persistent environmental threat.”299
In December 2000, researchers reported on a polio outbreak in Haiti and the Dominican Republic that resulted in numerous cases of flaccid paralysis.300 Laboratory examinations confirmed health authorities’ worst suspicions: the disease was caused by “an unusual viral derivative” of the polio vaccine. The virus demonstrates genetic similarity to the parent vaccine strain, “but it has assumed the neuro-virulence and transmissibility” of the wild polio virus.301 …
…from 2001 to 2005, there were several vaccine-derived polio outbreaks in the Phillipines, Madagascar, China and Indonesia. On the island of Madura in Indonesia, at least 46 people were stricken with paralytic polio caused by viruses that originated from the polio vaccine. In 2006, additional cases of vaccine-derived polio were recorded in Cambodia.304
By 2007, worldwide polio eradication remained an elusive goal. Cases were recorded in at least 16 countries, most notably Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan.305 It should be noted that some children in foreign regions of the world are receiving “more than 12 doses of [polio] vaccine before their second birthday,” yet they are still susceptible to the disease. For example, in India “a median of 10 reported vaccine doses have been received by persons who have contracted poliomyelitis…” 306
Not only is polio “eradication” not working and sometimes causing polio, but other diseases are most likely arising due to contaminants in the vaccine. A thoroughly referenced 2002 article, “What is Coming Through That Needle? The Problem of Pathogenic Vaccine Contamination” by Benjamin McRearden (a pseudonym) reveals two possible sources of contaminants in the oral polio vaccine:
Were you aware that biological products, including some common vaccines (for instance, polio and rabies), are being produced on “continuous” immortal cell lines? Manufacturers, scientists, and agencies will often assure us that these cells themselves are not “tumorigenic”, i.e., they do not cause tumors per se. A closer look however, shows this is not always the case. While lab culturing may indicate that these types of cells are not immediately changing to overt tumor cells, it is now well-known in the scientific community that after these cells have been repeatedly cultured a certain number of times, something causes them to convert to a cancerous state21.
This journal article summary addresses the issue in regards to Vero cells, which is a continuous line coming from the African green monkey, and is commonly used in vaccine production. It states, “One of the current criteria for evaluating the acceptability of cell lines for use in vaccine production is lack of tumorigenicity. Vero cells represent an example of a class of cells known as continuous line cells. They were derived from African green monkey kidney, and their growth properties and culture characteristics have many advantages over other cell substrates for use in vaccine production. We have tested Vero cells for tumorigenicity in nude mice and in a human muscle organ culture system, and found a significant increase in their tumorigenic potential with increasing passage numbers. Cells at passage 232 and higher produced nodules in all nude mice inoculated.”
[The term “passage” in this context means the number of times a cell line has been cultured].
McRearden continues:
If there is any one type of bacterial contamination in vaccines that warrants particular attention, it would be mycoplasmas. These small organisms have a structure not characteristic of most forms of bacteria…They are described as being capable of slipping through filtration procedures, and can transfer to other media through the air or via routine handling in the lab70. One source states that “less than 10% of laboratories actually test for infection/contamination regularly”…that mycoplasmas are “influencing almost every aspect of cell biology” …and that labs “which do not test for mycoplasma probably harbour contaminated cell lines and may even have their entire stocks contaminated, as mycoplasma spreads readily along cell lines via reagents and media, the operator and the work surface”71
Mycoplasmas have been found in vaccines:
The journal and industry literature is filled with references to the problems of mycoplasma contamination in cell cultures and vaccines. Various studies cite corrupted cell lines ranging in occurrence from 5% to 87% (71, 72, 74, 75, 76), and as we now know, once this pathogen is in the cell culture being used to make the vaccine, it is liable to end up in the final product.(77, 78, 79, 80)
Many disease conditions can arise:
Mycoplasmas and associated variant forms have long been associated with many disease processes, including cancer, chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, arthritis, Gulf War Illness, and many others (73, 85, 86). It would be impossible to cite all the pertinent references in this short report, on this vast arena of microbiology that is often ignored by much of the medical community, sometimes with tragic consequences. Mycoplasmas without question have the capability of altering cell membranes and their antigens, disrupting DNA, and altering cellular metabolism both in vitro and in vivo.(70, 71, 72 73, 86)
Beginning in 1954, just before the Salk injected polio vaccine was first used (in April, 1955), polio case reporting statistics were juggled. Even so, polio cases initially increased due to live virus in the vaccine and, after 1957, increased again. The article, “Polio Perspectives“, by Edda West, published in the June-Aug 2001 VRAN Newsletter tells us:
One of the heroes that emerged during the Salk polio vaccine debacle was Dr Herbert Ratner, MD. As public health director in Oak Park Illinois, assistant professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, and editor of the Bulletin of the American Association of Public Health Physicians…he criticized the blatant manipulation of statistics, the “double standard” in reporting vaccine induced paralytic polio (3)…In May of 1960, Dr Ratner chaired a panel discussion, at the 120th meeting of the Illinois Medical Society to review the increasing rise in paralytic polio in the U.S. The proceedings were reprinted in the August, 1960 Illinois Medical Journal…One of the experts on the panel, statistician Dr Bernard Greenberg, who went on to testify at Congressional hearings, revealed how data had been manipulated to hide the dangers and ineffectiveness of the vaccine from the public. Dr Greenberg explained that the perceived overall reduction in polio cases was achieved by changing the criteria by which polio was diagnosed. (2)
Prior to 1954, all that was required was an examination on admittance and another 24 hours later; if the classic polio symptoms were discernible, the patient was considered to have polio. No lab test, and no residual paralysis were required to establish a paralytic polio case definitely. When the new criteria were established in 1954, for a case to be reportable as polio, residual paralysis had to linger for 60 days or longer. From this time onward, all cases in which paralysis lasted less than 60 days would no longer be classified as polio!
Overnight, the majority of cases that would have been diagnosed as polio were now shifted into a new disease category, cocksackie virus, or asceptic viral meningitis.
In Canada, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics issued an official bulletin in June 1959 titled Poliomyelitis Trends, 1958. “Data shown in this report are confined to paralytic poliomyelitis only. It may be noted that the Dominion Council of Health at its 74th meeting in October 1958 recommended that for the purposes of national reporting and statistics the term non-paralytic poliomyelitis be replaced by “meningitis, viral or asceptic”, with the specific viruses shown where known.” (13)
‘Section 53, Polio’ of Rodale’s 1962 The Encyclopedia of Common Diseases provides evidence that malnourishment contributes to the development of “polio”:
Children and adults in primitive countries simply don’t get polio. And the more civilization they have, the more polio they have. …For instance, a letter from a Turkish correspondent in the Journal of the American Medical Association for August 6, 1950, assures us that polio is practically unknown in Turkey. …In Science News Letter for October 4, 1947, we read of…an effort to discover why American troops in Japan, India and North Africa suffered from an increased incidence of polio, while the native populations had no polio at all. …There have never been any outbreaks of polio among the native Philippines…For many years, medical magazines have been commenting and marveling on the scarcity of reports of polio among the races living in North China.
The Rodale Encyclopedia notes that “the Sandler diet for preventing polio…is a diet high in protein in which starches, especially refined starches, are completely eliminated, and even natural foods that are high in starch are restricted.” Of course, breast milk is the most immune supportive human food. The introduction of artificial milk formulas to babies in primitive cultures undoubtedly contributed to increased polio, just as it did for North American babies during the worst of the polio epidemics of the twentieth century. The encyclopedia adds:
Dr George Boines, whose article on the subject appeared in the Virginia Medical Monthly (June, 1956)…believes that the problem raised in the body by polio is a disturbed nutritional absorption by the muscles and a loss of protein. He feels that both of these conditions can be remedied by improved diet and supplementary feedings. Dr Boines even suggests that susceptibility to polio may be the result of the shortage of protein. …
If the disease should strike, the protein situation becomes even worse. A negative nitrogen balance occurs with the usual high fever, and this results in a waste of the body’s protein – the worse the infection, the greater the protein destruction.
Vitamin C is important:
C. W. Jungblat in the 1939 Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Microbiology in New York said. “…a study of the natural history of poliomyelitis suggests a vitamin C deficiency as one of the chief predisposing agencies. The tissues of the susceptible do not seem able to destroy the virus when it enters as they should.” Dr Jungblat, at another time, remarked that extremely small doses of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) are capable of inactivating many times the fatal dose of polio virus – two or three milligrams of vitamin C are enough to inactivate 10 to 20 fatal doses of polio virus.
…and vitamin A:
A very strong case for the addition of vitamin A to the list of elements of health known to be necessary to build up resistance to polio is presented by Dr Jose Guadalupe Reyes of New York City in his article in the New York State Journal of Medicine for August 1, 1954. Of 84 children suffering from polio who were admitted to St. Francis Hospital during the epidemic of that year, 98 per cent showed skin symptoms of vitamin A deficiency; and of these, all but two recovered under the proper care and with a well-balanced diet amply provisioned with vitamin A.
…and most likely, vitamin B:
Beriberi was the first paralytic disease found to be definitely attributable to vitamin B deficiency. …Recent reports of the successful treatment of many diseases of the nervous system by vitamin B give support to the theory of deficiency of this food element in poliomyelitis and encephalitis. …
By the assumption of vitamin B deficiency in poliomyelitis and encephalitis…the conspicuous lack of contagious relationship between the cases and the recognized ineffectual control by quarantine are explained.
The “conspicuous lack” of contagion of polio – unlike the contagion of other gut-mediated viral infections such as measles – gives rise to the possibility that, a) most people in North America were sufficiently well nourished that their bodies weakened polio virus to the point that it became too impotent to infect others, or b) most polio cases had nothing to do with polio virus or any other infectious organism. Of course, these factors could also have been operating concurrently.
In her 2008-9 book, Fear of the Invisible, investigative journalist, Janine Roberts, forwards factor b):
If patients came to them [doctors] with the classic symptoms of paralytic polio, these were to be diagnosed as ‘Acute Flaccid Paralysis’ (AFP). The doctors were, and still are, told to send samples of two turds from such a patient to the official laboratories. There these turds are inspected to see if the poliovirus is in them. If signs of its presence are not found, it is declared not to be polio – no matter that the children have all the classic symptoms and distress found in the worst cases of polio during the great US epidemics.137
This astonishingly revealed that the ‘poliovirus’ is rarely to be found in the paralysed children. Logically, one would think that this would force the health authorities to conclude that the virus could not be the cause of polio – but that idea seems to be unacceptable. Instead it seems they are more interested in claiming a victory. …
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) today report many thousands of cases of AFP in the US every year, but it gives these every name but polio. For example, it says that Guillaine-Barré disease, formerly called polio, causes 17 cases of AFP per 100,000 of the US population. That translates into around 50,000 cases annually – equal to the number affected in the worst year of the 20th century polio epidemics. The CDC also reports that every year there are some 30,000 to 50,000 cases of aseptic meningitis in the USA serious enough to require hospitalization. These also were previously diagnosed as polio. …
To this tally of ‘Acute Flaccid Paralysis’ one could add the many more cases of AFP occurring in another epidemic that has swept across the US over the past few years, one that virologists attribute 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 AFP caused by WNV is clinically indistinguishable from poliomyelitis.142 …
Amazingly WHO today states on its official website “there is no relationship between finding the [polio] virus and the course of the disease” and that the presence or absence of the virus in the patients’ central nervous system (CNS) “appears to have no diagnostic significance.”
Writes Janine Roberts, “What could cause polio, if not a virus?”:
Dr. D. Bodian of Baltimore found in 1954 that injecting a ‘poliovirus sample’ [ie a sample which would have been contaminated since the polio virus had not been completely isolated at that time] into the hearts of monkeys made half of them paralyzed. But he had then found, if he injected them first with toxins or irritants, including penicillin or DPT vaccine, the number paralyzed went up to 80 per cent and the paralysis frequently occurred in the limb injected! 114 …
Dr Biskind, a practitioner and medical researcher…came to the conclusion that pesticides were the major cause of polio epidemics. …He treated them [polio victims] as victims of poisoning…and found many recovered, especially when contaminated milk products were also stopped. He tested butter purchased in New York and found high concentrations of DDT.118
Unfortunately, it appears that good intentions have been overtaken by an overwhelming determination to uphold the righteousness of the germ theory and its corollary, “immunization”. The saddest part of polio “eradication” is that the huge effort and funds which have been and continue to be allocated to it could have been used to help alleviate the malnutrition, poor sanitation and otherwise stressful living conditions which undoubtedly contribute to numerous diseases, not just polio or its analogs.
With gratitude to the authors quoted, compiled by Susan Fletcher, BSc;
VRAN (Vaccination Risk Awareness Network Inc); Jan, 2011.
References and notes for Vaccine Safety Manual by Neil Z Miller:
3. Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR); 55th edition. (Montvale, NJ: Medical Economics, 2001):778.
295. World Health Organization. “Problems with eradicating polio.” Science News (November 25, 2000):348.
296. Reuters Health. “Polio outbreak in Dominican Republic and Haiti caused by vaccine-derived virus.” Reuters Medical News (December 4, 2000). www.id.medscape.com
297. Crainic, R., et al. “Polio virus with natural recombinant genomes isolated from vaccine associated paralytic poliomyelitis.” Virology 1993; 196:199-208.
298. Yoshida, H., et al. Lancet (October 28, 2000).
299. See Note 295.
300. See Note 296.
301. Ibid.
304. “Update on vaccine-derived polioviruses.” Medscape (November 13, 2006). www.medscape.com [Also see: MMWR 2005;55(40:1093-97.]
305. Pallansch, MA., et al. “The eradication of polio – progress and challenges.” New England Journal of Medicine (December 14, 2006);355(24):2508-2511.
306. Ibid.
Note that polio has also occurred (rarely) in people who were in close contact with persons recently vaccinated with the live Sabin oral polio vaccine.
References and notes for What is Coming Through That Needle?:
(21) Contreras G, Bather R, Furesz J, Becker BC. Activation of metastatic potential in African green monkey kidney cell lines by prolonged in vitro culture. In Vitro Cell Div Biol 1985 Nov;21(11):649-52. PMID 4066602.
(70) Cell Culture Contamination Example. Mycoplasma. http://www.unc.edu/depts/tcf/mycoplasma.htm
(71) Prasad E, Lim-Fong R. Mycoplasmas. http://www.provlab.ab.ca/bugs/biologos/9702mypl.htm
(72) Mycoplasma Detection Kit. http://www.atcc.org/Products/MycoplasmaDetectKit.cfm
(73) Mattman LH, 2001. Cell wall deficient forms: stealth pathogens (3rd ed.). CRC Press.
(74) Uphoff CC, Drexler HG. Prevention of mycoplasma contamination in leukemia-lymphoma cell lines. Um Cell 2001 Sep;14(3):244-7. PMID 11774744.
(75) Mycoplasma Detection and Elimination. http://www.dsmz.de/mutz/mutzmyco.htm
(76) Mycoplasma Detection Kit. http://biovalley.fr/anglais/biology/mob_cc.htm
(77) Kojima A, Takahashi T, Kijima M, Ogikubo Y, Tamura Y, Harasawa R. Detection of mycoplasma DNA in veterinary live virus vaccines by the polymerase chain reaction. J Vet Med Sci 1996 Oct;58(10):1045-8. PMID 8916012.
(78) Kojima A, Takahashi T, Kijima M, Ogikubo Y, Nishimura M, Nishimura S, Harasawa R, Tamura Y. Detection of Mycoplasma in avian live virus vaccines by polymerase chain reaction. Biologicals 1997 Dec;25(4):365-71. PMID 9467032.
(79) Benisheva T, Sovova V, Ivanov I, Opalchenova G. Comparison of methods used for detection of mycoplasma contamination in cell cultures, sera, and live-virus vaccines. Folia Biol (Praha) 1993;39(5):270-6.
(80) Nicolson GL, Nass M, Nicolson N. Anthrax vaccine controversy over safety and efficacy. Antimicrobics and Infectious Disease Newsletter (Elsevier Science) 2000. Article located at http://www.flatlandbooks.com/anthrax.html
(85) Macomber PB. Cancer and cell wall deficient bacteria. Med Hypotheses 1990 May;32(1):1-9. PMID 2190063.
(86) Baseman JB, Tully JG. Mycoplasmas: sophisticated, reemerging, and burdened by their notoriety. Emerg Infect Dis 1997 Jan-Mar;3(1):21-32. PMID 9126441.
Full text article available at http://cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol3no1/baseman.htm
Note that the monkey virus, SV40, contaminated the original seed cultures for all the polio vaccines. This virus has been found in bone and brain cancers, semen and blood, even in people who’d never received a polio vaccine. It remains unclear whether or not today’s oral polio vaccine still contains SV40. http://www.sv40cancer.com/paper1.asp
It has also been suggested that polio vaccines given in Africa resulted in HIV and subsequently AIDS as a result of mutation of a contaminating monkey virus, SIV. However, since there is much evidence and medical opinion that what’s known as “AIDS” is not caused by HIV, this information has been excluded from the article.
References for Polio Perspectives by Edda West:
(3) Bulletin of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, November, 1995 [VOL. 2 NO. 5] (2) J.I. Rodale: The Encyclopedia of Common Diseases, Rodale Press Inc., Emmaus Pennsylvania (1962)
(13) Poliomyelitis Trends, 1958, Dominion Bureau of Statistics (Canada)
Also see ‘Hiding Polio’ at http://www.whale.to/vaccine/polio1.html.
References for Fear of the Invisible by Janine Roberts:
137 http://www.who.int/vaccines/casecount/case_count.cfm.
142 A Arturo Leis et al; ‘West Nile poliomyelitis’; Reviewed in The Lancet, 1 January 2003
114 Bodian D. (1934). Amer. Jour. Hygiene. 60, 339.
118 MS Biskind and I Bieber; ‘DDT poisoning: a new syndrome with neuropsychiatric manifestations’: American Journal of Psychiatry: page 261; 1949
Also see the graph, ‘Polio Incidence And Pesticide Production in US 1940-1970’ and other fascinating information both historical and recent on polio, West Nile Virus, etc. under Images of Poliomyelitis at http://www.whale.to/m/west5.html OR google: images of poliomyelitis jim west.