Have We Been Told the Truth About Polio?

Nigeria has recently made the news because, where officials believed the nation was on course to be declared polio-free in the very near future, several new cases of wild virus have just come to light.  Notably, " country analysis shows that the 2016 isolate is closely linked to a  2011 isolate. This means we were unable to detect the transmission." (link)  This illustrates just one of the very important facts about polio that the medical community as a whole conveniently fails to tell us, the people.  Let's talk about a few of those.

1. Paralysis is not an inherent characteristic of polio virus.

This point readily becomes clear when we look at the situation in Nigeria.  If paralytic polio had been circulating for four years, don't you think someone would have noticed?  So why didn't they?  Because the vast majority of polio cases present much like a cold.  That's it.  Really.

Not what we've been told, right?  We've all been led to believe that every case -- or at least almost every case -- of polio results in lasting paralysis and often even paralysis of the lungs, leading to death or near-death.  That simply isn't true.  Most polio is an annoying virus.  A very small percentage of cases result in paralysis.  An even smaller percentage of those cases leave behind lingering effects.  In other words, most people who contract polio get sick, feel bad for a while -- some worse than others -- and then fully recover.

2. Polio has (not) been eradicated in Western nations, thanks to the vaccine.

This claim is the result of some very clever wordplay.  In the 1950s, just prior to the mass introduction of the vaccine, the definition of "polio" was a clinical one.  That is, it was defined and diagnosed based on a common set of symptoms.  Shortly after the introduction of the vaccine, this definition was changed to include only the most severe cases.  Obviously, that made the numbers look favorable for the vaccine, but that's only the tip of the iceberg.

The polio vaccine is formulated against one particular virus.  Today, when we talk about polio cases, we limit the discussion by using cultures to determine which virus is under consideration, and only refer to a given virus (and its very close variants) as "polio." 

At some level, this makes sense.  If we create a vaccine to battle "virus A," then it seems to make sense to count up how many cases of "virus A" are still left.  The problem is, the pre-vaccine numbers were not limited to "virus A," so the conclusions are incorrect.

Remember how back in the 50s, we were defining polio based on a set of clinical symptoms?  This is a set of clinical symptoms we still see today; we've simply assigned new and different names to them, depending on which viral variants (all "relatives" of the virus the vaccine is formulated for) are involved: acute flaccid paralysis, Guillaine Barre Syndrome, "non-polio" enterovirus, transverse myelitis, meningitis, cerebral palsy (not present/diagnosed at birth), etc.  

3. The polio vaccine is completely safe and effective -- or is it?

Some elements of the safety/efficacy discussion are debatable.  You may arrive at a different conclusion than someone else, depending on how you interpret the data.  If, however, you look at the data -- as noted above -- with a scientific, critical eye, you may not arrive at the same conclusion the mainstream offers us.

If we take the definition for "polio" that was being used prior to the introduction of the vaccine, and apply that same definition consistently to the statistical data available since then, we begin to see some disturbing patterns.  Of course there is the concern for efficacy -- if we still are seeing polio, by another name, then clearly the efficacy has been less than we've been led to believe.

Worse, though, if we take all the numbers into consideration, there is a good deal of evidence that vaccine campaigns are increasing illness, and we're missing it because we believe we're just seeing the emergence of new diseases.  Even in very recent years, as polio vaccination campaigns have been introduced in other countries on a widespread basis, there have been declines in diagnoses of "polio" but corresponding increases in diagnoses of "other" illnesses (like acute flaccid paralysis) with like or similar symptom sets.  In many cases, the increase of these "other" illnesses outstrip the decrease of "polio."

Besides the fundamental questions of whether the vaccine prevents the illness or potentially even increases it (the live vaccine is actually known to cause the illness, as alluded to in the previous link), there are other safety questions.

The live virus -- not typically used in the U.S. any longer, but still used elsewhere in the world -- not only has the ability to cause illness in the recipient, but can be shed, spreading the illness to those around him.  For instance, swimming in a pool with small children who have been recently vaccinated with the live vaccine puts one at risk.

Polio vaccines may be the foundation of something called "post-polio syndrome" -- essentially a reactivation of an infectious agent that has long been dormant in the body.  This post-polio syndrome is a known phenomenon with those who had known diagnoses of polio as children.  Recent researchers have begun to suspect that chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome may actually be a variety of post-polio syndrome.  They certainly appear to have a similar etiology.

Further, the culturing process of the vaccine's creation introduces a risk of contamination.  It is well-known that early batches of the polio vaccine unwittingly introduced a simian (monkey) virus, now known as SV-40, into the human population.  This was unintentional and, at the time, unknown, illustrating how readily contaminants can be introduced to humanity through a vaccine campaign, even when researchers have the best of intentions.