“A conspiracy is rarely susceptible of direct proof,
but must very nearly always, from the nature of things,
be established by circumstantial evidence
and legitimate inferences arising therefrom.
The inferences depend largely upon
the commonsense knowledge of the motives
and intentions of men in like circumstances.”
Justice Ray Klingbiel, Illinois Supreme Court Justice before being forced to resign in 1969 for conspiring to subvert justice
Any conversation, argument, dispute, debate about vaccinations invariably brings up Polio. “What about Polio? Yawant Polio to come back?” For “Antivaxxers”, actually Pro-Health, this is a fertile moment. One where a seed could thrive. Funny you should Ask. Polio proves my point. The Polio Vaccine Myth is a tissue of contradictions, omissions, and baseless claims, perpetrated by a documented government, military, medical industrial conspiracy of secrecy and crushing dissenters. * History rhymed with Covid Conspiracy Facts.
Polio is a modern disease. Paralysis is as ancient as the Pharoahs. Get up and Walk! is biblical. However, epidemics of “polio” cases, characterized by high fevers followed by flaccid paralysis only date to the late 19th century in Europe and North America. The third world was immune, with few cases reported by doctors except among western soldiers. Weirdly, these outbreaks appeared as deaths and severe illness from other infectious diseases were declining rapidly in wealthier nations, long before mass vaccinations.
This precipitous decline was due to public health measures ensuring cleaner water, economic expansions allowing improved nutrition and hygiene from progressive political pressures for labor rights, expanding the electorate, socialized public health and increasing welfare to the poor. Liberal victories against obstinate resistance by wealthy conservative forces. Take a bow.
Polio is a conundrum, wrapped in an enigma, a key to the riddle of Public Health vs Infectious Medicine. It only gained a name, poliomyelitis in 1855, because an anatomist noted nerve damage in the spinal cord of dead children. Medical Reports were sporadic until the 1890’s when European and U.S. doctors began treating hundreds of patients, mostly children. Infantile paralysis was the disease’s original medical name, with no clue as to cause.
It was postulated to be an infectious disease caused by a pathogen because germ theory was becoming popular, although more conservative physicians stuck with miasmic theory of toxic fumes in the environment, (they weren’t calling it that). Both sides agreed it was not contagious since typically only one child in a family would be stricken. Thus not epidemic in nature, which requires both qualities.
The “mystery was solved” by Swedish Dr. Ivar Wickman in 1905 who linked contagious contacts by including healthy, asymptomatic carriers, and in 1908 by Austrian biologist Karl Landsteiner who isolated the poliovirus from a dead boy’s spinal tissue and paralyzed monkeys with filtered injections into their brain or gut. Not by feeding it to them, the fecal/oral pathway he theorized for human infection. They are in the Polio Hall of Fame. (WHO knew?)
Infectious diseases had retreated into the poorest, dirtiest slums of cities by then. However, polio appeared as an equity epidemic. Country kids and middle class children came up lame. Even farm animals and pets were going down, although the poliovirus is only spread among humans.
Polio Epidemics emerged and faded every few years in the first half of the 20th century. Only among industrialized nations, mostly in the summer and fall, unlike traditional infectious diseases roaring in with winter and indoor crowding.
The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis privately funded decades of medical research that sacrificed 100,000 monkeys, which led to the Salk and Sabin vaccines in the 1950’s that eradicated polio. Rather than folding their tents, the foundation became the March of Dimes raising money for birth defects. So the simple story goes. The lack of evidence for this narrative is not critical to acceptance by the masses, but there are logical contradictions that can pierce the belief bubble.
It wasn’t until after WWII when a medical explanation was invented to explain the anomaly of a novel, serious infectious disease affecting mainly wealthy countries, or their expatriates. Maybe we’d gone a little overboard with all the Hygiene. Too much soap. Our children weren’t being constantly exposed to the poliovirus spread through human shit, so had no herd immunity resistance to the virus. (Before herd immunity meant mandatory inoculations.).
Spiraling cases of childhood allergies and asthma since 1987 have been blamed on hygiene as well, based on studies of traditional farm exposed children. Merely coincidence that they weren’t vaccinated. Medical dogma sweeps contradictions under the rug, but they can trip up consumer confidence. Oddly enough, when polio epidemics began popping up in poor dirty countries in the 1970’s they were blamed on lack of hygiene. Soap wasn’t doled out, but mass vaccination was provided. Polio disappeared, not paralysis.
After WWII an unprecedented yearly surge crested when Polio cases peaked in the U.S. in 1952 with 60,000 cases, declining in the years before Salk’s vaccine was trotted out in 1955. That year, the diagnosis of polio was officially changed to require a 60 day minimum of paralysis on examination, with blood and fecal samples testing positive for poliovirus. No PCR, back then, so false positives were rare. Cases took a serious dive, coincidental to the Salk Vaccine rollout.
Temporal correlation with the drop among all ages after mass inoculation was proof of causation for the authorities, even though it was only injected into first and second graders. This delivery method did not create gut immunity to stop oral/fecal spreading, since the antibodies were germinated in the blood stream to battle leakage from the intestines. The ineffectiveness of Salk’s attenuated virus vaccine was affirmed by a panel of experts in the U.S., replaced by Albert Sabin’s oral polio vaccine in 1961. Yet, it’s still given all the credit!
Initial Celebrations were dogged by the Cutter Incident, when a shoddy lab in Oakland doing its own safety tests, churned out batches of unattenuated poliovirus that caused the largest outbreak of polio paralysis ever, (Until Bill Gates shots in India). This was papered over by confetti falling on the Salk Victory Parades.
*Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth, anonymous Israeli authors, Zoey O’Toole, Mary Holland editors, Children’s Health Defense, 2022
"batches of unattenuated poliovirus that caused the largest outbreak of polio paralysis ever"
I was following you along until this part.
What was in the shots, does anyone know.
I thought that you were going to say a lot of the polio was actually tetanus.
Tetanus used to be a big thing.
Decades ago I saw a lamb, paralysed; by tetanus, I was told.