Page 81 - Summer 2019 Journal

POST-VACCINE INCREASE IN POLIO Between 1923 and 1953 (before the Salk vaccine’s introduction), the polio death rate in the U.S. had declined on its own by 47 percent; England had observed a similar pattern, with a 55 percent decline.1 Following the use of Salk’s vaccine between 1955 and 1963, however, cases of polio in the U.S. increased—by 50 percent from 1957 to 1958 and by 80 percent between
1958 and 1959.16
Notwithstanding the large increase in polio
cases in the U.S. starting in 1955, government sleight-of-hand made the vaccine appear suc- cessful. In 1955, officials redefined “paralytic poliomyelitis” and made the diagnosis much more stringent. Prior to the vaccine’s introduc- tion, a patient only had to exhibit paralytic symptoms for twenty-four hours, and a diagno- sis required no laboratory confirmation or tests to determine residual paralysis. Post-vaccine, the revised definition expanded the time period for symptoms of paralysis to a minimum of sixty days and required confirmation of residual paralysis at least twice during the course of the disease. Because paralytic poliomyelitis is rarely permanent and often lasts for only a short period of time, patients with a short paralytic duration were no longer counted as having polio.7
Another factor that served to lower the apparent incidence of polio after the vaccine’s introduction was the fact that distinct diseases that had previously been grouped together under the umbrella of “polio” began to be reported as separate diseases. One of these was aseptic meningitis, an infectious disease that is often difficult to distinguish from poliovirus or other enteroviruses such as Coxsackie virus. Accord- ing to Dr. Humphries, numerous other condi- tions were often naively mislabeled as “paralytic poliomyelitis” in the pre-vaccine but not the post-vaccine era. Transverse myelitis—a rare form of spinal cord inflammation that affects infants as young as five months old—provides one example. Approximately fourteen hundred new cases of transverse myelitis are reported every year in the U.S., leaving some of those af- fected permanently paralyzed and dependent on a ventilator to breathe. Pre-polio vaccination, all of these cases would have been called “polio.”7
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Also considered “polio” before but not after the onset of mass vaccination were undiagnosed congenital syphilis; arsenic and DDT toxicity; Guillain-Barré syndrome; provocation of limb paralysis by intramuscular injections (includ- ing vaccination) (see “Injection-Induced Polio” below); hand, foot and mouth disease; and lead poisoning.7 West Nile virus also has symptoms that are clinically identical to polio, to the extent that it is referred to in medical journals as “West Nile poliomyelitis.” As Dr. Humphries astutely concludes, “Simply by changing the diagnostic criteria, the number of paralytic cases was pre- determined to decrease in 1955-1957, whether or not any vaccine was used.”7
IPV AND OPV
In 1963, the U.S. replaced Salk’s IPV
vaccine with an attenuated (weakened, not killed) oral polio vaccine (OPV) developed by American physician and microbiologist, Albert Sabin. As a live virus vaccine, it, too, was (and continues to be) capable of giving its recipients polio. Not only can OPV trigger vaccine-strain polio in recipients, it can also cause polio in those who come in contact with recently vac- cinated individuals due to shedding of live vaccine-strain poliovirus in bodily fluids.12 In validation of this very theory, Dr. Salk testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1977 that the oral polio vaccine had caused most of the polio cases in the U.S. since the early 1960s.17
Today, the U.S. has reverted to using an updated version of Salk’s “killed” IPV vaccine. Meanwhile, Sabin’s live OPV vaccine continues to be widely used in other parts of the world, and particularly in lower-income countries, as it is less expensive to produce.
INJECTION-INDUCED POLIO
Two additional factors contributed to the
complexity of the mid-century polio situation. The first and most indisputable factor is that, as Miller documents on the ThinkTwice web- site, intramuscular injection of vaccines and other pharmaceuticals started prompting “polio” cases to skyrocket, particularly after introduc- tion of the diphtheria and pertussis vaccines in the 1940s.18
Wise Traditions
Before the vaccine’s introduction, the polio death rate in the United States had declined on its own by 47 percent.
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