Page 17 - Summer2015

Caustic Commentary

effects. Many HPV vaccine recipients are reporting primary poliomyelitis (VAPP)—scientists found that the vaccine strain
ovarian failure—the vaccine has made them sterile. live polioviruses in the oral vaccine could mutate or revert to
forms as neurovirulent as wild-type polio, and cause polio in
BUT WHAT ABOUT POLIO? the recipients or in those they come in contact with. When
The most persuasive arguments for vaccinating children have the U.S. finally abandoned use of the live virus oral vaccine
to do with polio. Didn't the polio vaccine wipe out this truly in 1999, it was considered responsible for the only cases of
tragic epidemic of viral disease? Seems like an open-and-shut poliovirus-related infection and paralysis reported in the U.S.
case for vaccination. However, the campaign to eradicate Health officials admit that between 2000 and 2005, the oral po-
polio is littered with accidents, contradiction, confusion and lio vaccine caused eight outbreaks of paralytic polio in Third
fraud. Health officials introduced the live attenuated Salk World countries. Lessons learned, and now in the U.S. we use
vaccine in the U.S. in 1955. The Sabin oral polio vaccine fol- the inactivated injectable vaccine made from green monkey
lowed in 1961. At that time, the diagnostic criteria for polio kidney cells. Polio has disappeared, case closed. Or has it?
were changed. Before introduction of the vaccine, patients In 2014, neurologists began reporting cases of paralysis and
diagnosed with paralytic polio had to exhibit symptoms of death in children fully vaccinated against polio. So of course
paralysis for twenty-four hours; after the vaccines they had to they don't call it polio. "Acute flaccid paralysis" has occurred
exhibit symptoms of paralysis for sixty days. In addition, be- in dozens on American children and tens of thousands of
fore the polio vaccine, coxsackie virus and aseptic meningitis children in heavily vaccinated India.
were lumped in together with polio with no lab confirmation,
but after the introduction of the vaccine, coxsackie virus and A VIRAL DISEASE?
aseptic meningitis were separated out and lab confirmation If polio is caused by a virus, it will continue to mutate, con-
was required. So naturally the rates of polio seemed to come tinue to confound vaccine manufacturers and health officials.
down. But worse, to create the vaccines, both Salk and Sabin But is it caused by a virus? In the Fall 2002 issue of Wise Tradi-
used primary cell cultures from monkey kidneys to attenuate tions, we published an article, "Pesticides and Polio," pointing
the polioviruses. Unfortunately, one of the monkeys used, the the finger at central nevous system poisons from pesticides,
rhesus macaque monkey, carries the SV40 virus, which can especially DDT, as the cause of this terrible disease. The first
cause cancer in other animals and humans. In 1959, research- polio vaccine was introduced shortly after the DDT ban in the
ers discovered that the Salk vaccine—given to more than one U.S. and got the credit for the steep decline in the disease. So
hundred million people worldwade between 1954 and 1961— why do we find a virus associated with polio? The explana-
was contaminated with the SV40 virus. In 1998, scientists tion is something called accelerated genetic recombination.
found SV40 in human brain, bone and lung tumors, as well as Genetic recombination is accelerated whenever a biological
in 45 percent of sperm from healthy men. U.S. public health system is threatened, as with pesticides, radiation or che-
officials have acknowledged that live SV40 did contaminate motherapy. When a cell is critically threatened, accelerated
both inactivated and live polio vaccines between 1955 and genetic recombination (which may include virus proliferation)
1963, but insist that it does not cause human cancers. Still, is just one of a set of events that may occur, a set of events
vaccine manufacturers no longer use rhesus macaque monkey called the "SOS response." But whether polio is caused by
kidney cells, but cells from African green monkey kidneys neurotoxins or by viruses, the approach to treatment and
instead. But some researchers believe that the live oral polio prevention should be the same: good nutrition, starting with
vaccine, made with green monkey cells and tested on children plentiful vitamin A, the body's first defense against viruses
in central Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was the and toxins.
origin of the HIV virus. Another problem: viruses associated
with polio have very high mutation rates during replication
in the gastrointestinal tract and are continually recombining
and evolving in humans and animals. This seems to be the
explanation for the emergence of vaccine-associated paralytic

Wise Traditions SUMMER 2015 Wise Traditions 17

154242_V16N2_text.indd 17 6/25/15 3:54 PM