Tuesday, 1 July 2025

 

POLIO!

19.6.2025: C B: Hello Tim. Would you have any good references showing that Polio had basically been eradicated before the introduction of the polio vaccine?This is for Robert, ahead of a discussion with a Fellow of the Royal Society who says “vaccines have saved countless lives”. I read many books about vaccines when I was pregnant with Alex but didn’t organise any references. Many thanks if you can help.


Hi C.B, thanks for this. Will get back to you when I've had a chance to write something. Regards, T. In addition to my reply today (25.6.2025) on FB I suppose the short answer is 'No'. The longer one follows. I hope it is useful. That "vaccines have saved countless lives" is received opinion, never to be challenged because it hasn't been. Covid has rather thrown cold water on that claim and high-lighted a rather more nuanced interpretation of the policy.

WHO: While it affected children around the world for millennia, the first known clinical description of polio, by British doctor Michael Underwood, was not until 1789, and it was formally recognized as a condition in 1840 by German physician Jakob Heine.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, frequent epidemics saw polio become the most feared disease in the world. A major outbreak in New York City in 1916 killed over 2000 people, and the worst recorded US outbreak in 1952 killed over 3000.

Many who survived the disease faced lifelong consequences. Deformed limbs meant they needed leg braces, crutches or wheelchairs, and some needed to use breathing devices like the iron lung, an artificial respirator invented for treatment of polio patients.

By the mid-20th century, the poliovirus could be found all over the world and killed or paralysed over half a million people every year. With no cure, and epidemics on the rise, there was an urgent need for a vaccine.”





Personal Background

As a child I was not vaccinated. My father objected to it principally on religious grounds. Whether I was better or worse off as a result is an unknown quantity. I certainly seem to have fared fairly well (touch wood) on the illness front leaving aside stress-related problems at various times.

I remember the polio epidemic in the 1950's. The village in which I grew up was plastered with vivid posters highlighting the dangers. Medical opinion suggested it was infectious and caused by droplet and faeces contamination by an RNA sequence virus wrapped in a protien shell. I think that may have been an over simplification as are many of these popular theories. The cause may be far more inexplicable and enigmatic.

It rather put an end to river swimming for a while but I can't remember it affected my life in any way other than influencing my appreciation of the horrors of the disease - those 'iron lungs', a life-saving innovation for the affected. I don't remember having the polio vaccine administered on the tongue but I might have.

I think my first vaccination was when I was nineteen, when it was a requirement for my public heath studentship. I didn't think to question it and took it in my stride. I think it was the BCG for tuberculosis but I'm not sure. I seem to remember I had one for tetanus which was repeated when I was about twenty-three after I cut my finger in a slaughterhouse, doing statutory meat inspection.

Throughout childhood I was pretty illness-free other than one episode of fever-induced delirium when I suppose I was about eight or nine. The cause was never identified but in hindsight it might have been meningitis-related.

Jumping twenty or thirty years, my sister's children all had significant adverse effects following child immunisation in the nineteen sixties, involving high temperature, spasms and behavioural problems. Subsequently in adulthood they all (No. 4) developed diabetes and have now to treat with insulin. Another brother's two sons also became diabetic. Another brother's son developed Hodgkin's disease, I guess when he was in his early thirties. Whether these endocrinological conditions are related in any way to the vaccination programme is the issue however the immediacy of the physiological reaction and later development of disease, strongly suggests they are. Andrew Wakefield came to a similar conclusion in relation to intestinal inflamation referred to as Crohns' Disease in later life.

The frequency of neural conditions in children - the autistic spectrum - has been much commented upon recently, particularly in the recent Trump election by Robert Kennedy. The huge increase in incidence, now arguably about 1:50 children. Any suggestion this is directly linked to vaccination programmes has been vociferously rejected by the medical/pharmaceutical industry, but it remains the likeliest cause based on 'occam's razor'.

Opinions - even medical ones - may now be shifting, though it takes a long time for an ocean liner to change course. My approach would be to reduce particulaly infant vaccinations to a minimum, and making them subject to risk assessment. Local outbreaks of infectious conditions should be responded to as and when and not just blanket mass provision for everyone.

Current Child Vaccination Regime

https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/nhs-vaccinations-and-when-to-have-them/

Currently in Britain, children under the age of one are subject to THREE courses of injations at 8, 12 and 16 weeks, directed at no less than NINE diseases. These are

  • Diptheria

  • Hepatitis B

  • Hib (Haemophilius influenzae type b)

  • Poliomyelitis

  • Tetanus

  • Whooping cough


applied three times, plus Rotavirus applied Men B accine applied twice and Pneumococcal applied once; MMR (Mumps and measels) applied twice.

Then at 3 years and four months : MMR vaccine (2nd dose)

4 in one pre-school booster vaccine .



There is no doubt, if contracted, these diseases are significant and serious threats to a child's health. The question is whether the threat outweighs the the dangers from the vaccines themselves? In effect the the child's immune system is primed before the age of one, twenty-nine times for at least ten specific diseases! Whether it is necessary or prudent on a balance of risks, to subject a young child's auto-immune biological responses to this degree is a matter of debate.

In addition, flu vaccine is recommended every year up to the age of 15, plus vaccines for HPV 3 in one teen booster

Men ACWY vaccine

All of these could be causing immunological overload. Even the experimental Covid vaccine was recommended for children despite there being no risk posed by the disease.


Current day vaccination philosophy and practice

You may however be interested in a few facts and figures. I apologise if they are already familiar to you. I am not 'anti-vax' in the commonly held perjorative sense, although I have been accused of so being, but I am sceptical of the many claims for it made by the medical/pharmaceutical industry. I think the claims for its efficacy are greatly over-stated and its adverse effects largely ignored and supressed as we particularly witness recently in the Covid debacle.

Our approach to health and disease is partly technical/scientific and partly philosophical in the broadest sense. Diseases and the vaccines developed to prevent them are in one sense discrete but in another sense generic. By this I mean signs and symptoms by which diseases are diagnosed can also be seen as different physiological and pathological responses to common causes, be they social, psychological, physical, chemical or radiological. In short life-style, genetic and environmental.

For example obesity results in a whole range of disease conditions, all quite distinct, with different out comes and treatments, but caused by the common feature of being over-weight, a result of excess food intake out of balance with muscle activation or 'exercise'. The same principle applies to many conditions and 'illnesses'.

In similar vein, although there are now a multiplicity of vaccines, for a multiplicity of diseases, they share common features and work through common micro-biological and physiological processes within the body, by stimulating the natural immune system to detect and oppose their presence. This of course is an over-simplification of a highly complex and exquisite chemical process at a cellular level, which in recent years has to a large extent been unravelled and explained. This is not to say there is still an element of mystery attached to it.



Genetic engineering

In recent scientific history, geo-engineering has advanced to such an extent, that humans now have the ability not only to analyse and describe the wequencing of DNA but also to create RNA chains - that is half of the classical DNA helix – replicating known pathogens, which can then be injected into the human body, to obtain a desired immune reaction. This in essence was what the experimental Covid vaccine was, although what appears to be intentional genetic 'implants' seem to have had a multiplicity of adverse effects, replicating the philosophical concept referred to above. This is the context in which I turn to the specific topic of just the one disease of Polio, for which great claims for vaccination are made, without regard to causes or true efficacy or dangers.

The impact of vaccination on TB

Generally then the role of vaccination in preventing many diseases has been much over-stated. Take for example Tuberculosis (TB) a major killer in Britain for centuries and particulary during the Victorian and early Edwardian period, it is clear from the statistics, both the incidence and prognosis were both vastly improved before either sulphonamide drugs or vaccination were introduced in the 1940's. Their introduction may well have assisted in 'mopping up' outbreaks but it is generally accepted that it was other factors, such as improved living standards, housing, working conditions, nuitrition and a general reduction in poverty were the real reasons it declined.

We can draw similar conclusion regarding the enteric diseases such as cholera, typhoid and food poisoning cured not by medicine but by engineering in drainage, water supply and hygiene.

This is illustrated in the graph below, the time-line of which is limited to 1900 but which in fact just continues the trajectory of steep decline pre-dating this. Both World Wars effect an up-tick, larger for the First than the Second, again emphasising rather obvious environmental factors.



It is true that decline continues following the introduction of Solfonamide drugs (1930's to 1950's) and Streptomycina (1950's onwards) and the BCG vaccine from the mid- 1950's, continue the decline but change the trajectory of the graph hardly at all. Immunisation does not become a factor for school children until the mid 1950's until eventually stopped in 2005. Therefore medicine and particulary vaccination, cannot lay claim to the steady and consistent decline in the disease over the preceding century. It is a moot point whether it made any difference at all, or if the decline would not have continued without it, owing to natural attenuation, improved general health and natural resistance.

The shibboleth of the 'Magic Bullet'

The aura of the 'magic bullet' surrounding vaccines and their application in the prevention of disease has been greatly exaggerated and conversely any suggestion that they may be themselves be the cause of chronic or acute illness, energetically opposed and censored. What we witness is the natural decline of the traditional infectious diseases, to be replaced by new ones (such as AIDS) and a whole range of genetic-related conditions including of course cancers of all types. 

Whether present day vaccine regimes have a causal relationsip to the disease pattern is open to debate. The Covid experiment certainly proves it can be. We cannot be sure because any attenpt to scientifically investigate causal relationships is blocked even before they start. The treatment of Dr Andrew Wakefield is apocryfal. 

The huge increase in children with symptoms of ADHd and other autism spectrum disorders has never been explained. Any suggestion it is related to the vaccination programme is vociferously rejected. Yet something is causing these public health trends.

Those that warned about the adverse consequeces of the novel Covid vaccines were criticised and ostracised almost uniformly, Mike Yeadon notable among them. Doctors were put under unethical pressure to conform and resisted at their professional peril. 

Only today in the Times I notice that education, health and care plans for children has surged by more than 10% in the past year alone to a record 638,745 which indicates an increase in demand for specialst support. Specialist support is indicative of increasing numbers of children with physical, mental or educational problems that we might expect them to take into adulthood.

The question is was it caused in whole or part by the injection regime? In seeking to prevent potential childhood diseases, are we creating a whole range of others that reveal themselves in later life? Is there a need to review the whole philosophy and practice of vaccination in general?

Poliomyelitis

So to the topic of Poliomyelitis or 'Polio' for short, to answer your question, we can draw from the vaccination experience generally and from the polio experience in particular. Polio as a disease condition has been around for millienia but it came to prominence in the developed world in the 1950's. What caused this sudden peak is open to speculation.

The table below shows the sudden rise in 1945, which of course happens to coincide with the end of the Second World War a repeat of the phenomenom we noticed for TB above. A feature of the war, apart from all the destruction, stress and upheaval it caused, was the proliferation of toxins into the environment and home. In the case of just one, DDT for de-lousing troops and prisoners of war.

In addition three thermo-nuclear bombs were detonated in 1945 – one in America and two over Japan. Between 1945 and 1960 there were a total of 318 nuclear explosions contaminating the world's atmosphere. land and seasween 215 by the United States, 82 by the Soviet Union, and 21 by the United Kingdom. These undoubtedly had profound health consequences for living thing, including of course humans.

There is little doubt the contamination by radio-active nuclitides were reflected in the incidence of childhood leucaemia. See the following chart which demonstrates a rapid increase post-1945. (Unfortunately I am unable to copy the chart to here)


Sadly, for some reason, this document refuses to load the the graphs that demonstrate to salient and relevant points: 1. that the incidence of childhood leukaemia cases shot up post 1945; and 2, that onset follows a clear pattern showing a steep five-fold increase age 1 – 4 yrs then decline to age 12. Both of these circumstances fit the probable causal link with both radio active contamination and childhood vaccination. It would appear from Google search, the internet and scientific community much prefers to represent improved prognosis from advances in treatments rather than the increase of cancers of all types.


The graph below also shows trends in pesticide use and the related decline in rapter populations. Warfare always involves a proliferation of harmful chemical, biological and radiological substances. It also of course also involves laqck of food, loss of housing and emotional stress all of which can have damaging consequences. Whether these factors played a part in the sudden peak in the particular disease of polio but the correlation is notable. Again it is worth noting, incidence is well in decline before vaccination is introduced or could have had a significant effect.



From: https://wshoms.co.uk/the-history-of-polio/


Here is the situation in the USA. The replication on different continents must raise the question of global factors in its cause common to both. Despite being separated by more than three thousand miles, the timing and distribution of the graph is replicated almost exactly – even the final mini-peak. Note how the decline was well under way before vaccination could have possibly had any noticable effect. The trajectory just continues. What is to say that the credit given to the vaccine is in fact quite illusionary and that the rise and fall is dependent on quite separate factors?


I APOLOGISE FOR THE POOR QUALITY OF THE IMAGE.

The text top down reads:

1955 first polio vaccine administered in the United States.”

By 1961 85% of children had been vaccinated against polio.”

By 1980 wild polio had been eliminated from the USA.”


So we see that Polio must be viewed within the wider context of childhood serious illness that post-dates both the introduction of the immunisation programme and also a dramatic increase in radiological and chemical contamination of particularly the atmospheric environment.

Note how the cases do not clearly correlate with the application of the vaccine. The rise and fall might equally be put down to other more generic factors or to natural fluctuation. Not until 1962 does it fall below the historic 1912 – 1945 average. Vaccination is indroduced when incidence is already in decline and does not appear to have a marked effect on cases even theoretically, except towards the end of a sixteen year period.

The role of pesticides generally in the health profile of the nation cannot be under-estimated nor its adverse effect on the environment. The following graph illustrates the pervasive and ubiquitous use of these chemicals to which we must add many more such as lead in petrol and radiological fall-out from nuclear testing and accidents from the 1960's onwards. The human metabolism has to cope with these novel contaminants and some are more subjected to them than others. A multiplicity of drugs both medicinal and recreational have to be added to the mix.





Types of Polio Vaccine

There were basically two types of vaccine administered: inactivated polio virus vaccine (IPV) by injection and oral polio virus vaccine (OPV) by mouth.

IPV is carried out routinely at 8, 12 and 16 weeks with pre-school boosters at 5 and 13 years. There is virtually no information on any possible adverse effects.

OPV is a live weakened polio virus. It was widely administered but now less so, partly as a result of incidents where it actually resulted in the disease it was intended to provide immunity from! Details of these medical disasters are provided below.

The WHO estimates 'Vaccine Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis' (VAPP) at a global level for every birth cohort of 1 million children in OPV-only using countries, there are 2-4 cases of VAPP. This translates to an estimated 250 – 500 VAPP cases globally per year. Of these, about 40% are caused by OPV’s type 2 component. In the Region of the Americas, the VAPP risk is 1 case per 7.68 million doses administered.

I quote “Although wild poliovirus type 2 appears to have been eradicated globally in 1999, vaccine-related type 2 viruses continue to cause the majority of cVDPV outbreaks and many VAPP cases. Therefore, OPV type 2 now carries more risk than benefit and undermines global polio eradication efforts. Thus, tOPV will be replaced with bivalent OPV (bOPV), which will continue to target the remaining polio types 1 and 3. Once these types are eradicated, bOPV will also be withdrawn.”

When a child receives OPV, the vaccine virus enters the child’s mouth and gut and replicates. The child then mounts immune responses in three places: (1) antibody response in the blood that protects against the virus invading the nervous system and causing paralysis, (2) immune response in the mouth which prevents shedding of virus in oral secretions and spread from those secretions and (3) intestinal immunity (also called gut or mucosal immunity), which prevents shedding of the virus in the stool.

Thus, children vaccinated with OPV who come into contact with wild poliovirus are less likely to excrete poliovirus in their oral fluids or stool than unvaccinated persons. The predominant mode of transmission in the developing world is thought to be fecal-oral. Virus is shed in the feces and, in poor sanitary conditions and with suboptimal hygiene measures, can infect other persons if transmitted by dirty hands or contaminated food and water.

Therefore, strong intestinal immunity prevents transmission. IPV is an inactivated vaccine (killed virus) that stimulates a very good humoral response (antibodies in the blood) in children after only 1 or 2 doses. IPV also prevents children from excreting virus in their mouths as effectively as OPV and hence to the extent that polioviruses are transmitted through oral secretions, IPV is very effective at blocking that type of transmission.

However, IPV alone does not induce the same level of intestinal immunity as OPV. Thus, while individuals vaccinated with IPV alone are protected against paralysis, they may excrete the virus and allow it to spread. The combination of IPV with bOPV provides the advantages of both vaccines: strong intestinal immunity and antibody protection against the two serotypes in bOPV, types 1 and 3. This combination gives both the child and the child’s community the best protection.

Source: https://www.paho.org/sites/default/files/IPV-IntroductionFAQ-e.pdf


Polio Vaccination Disasters

CUTTER INCIDENT USA

Following from: https://www.science.org/content/article/unqualified-failure-polio-vaccine-policy-left-thousands-kids-paralyzed

Something momentous happened in the history of polio eradication in April 2016: Over a period of 2 weeks, 155 countries and territories started to use a new version of Albert Sabin’s classic oral polio vaccine (OPV) that no longer protected against one of the three types of poliovirus. Type 2 virus had been eradicated by then, and the only remaining type 2 polio cases were touched off by the live virus in the vaccine itself. Dropping the type 2 component from the vaccine would end those cases as well, the thinking went.

But “the switch,” as this global move has become known, became “an unqualified failure,” according to an unusually blunt draft report commissioned by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) that is now open for public comments.

Unexpectedly, vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 has continued to circulate after the switch, paralyzing more than 3300 children. And GPEI has spent more than $1.8 billion trying to quash these outbreaks, mostly in Africa.

Those numbers are certain to increase until the polio program finds a way to deal with the problem it inadvertently—and with the best of intentions—created.


Cutter Incident: 1955

In 1955, some batches of polio vaccine given to the public contained live polio virus, even though they had passed required safety testing. Over 250 cases of polio were attributed to vaccines produced by one company: Cutter Laboratories. This case, which came to be known as the Cutter Incident, resulted in many cases of paralysis. The vaccine was recalled as soon as cases of polio were detected.

The Cutter Incident was a defining moment in the history of vaccine manufacturing and government oversight of vaccines, and led to the creation of a better system of regulating vaccines. After the government improved this process and increased oversight, polio vaccinations resumed in the fall of 1955.

Simian Virus 40 (SV40): 1955 - 1963

From 1955 to 1963, an estimated 10-30% of polio vaccines administered in the US were contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV40). The virus came from monkey kidney cell cultures used to make polio vaccines at that time. Most of the contamination was in the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), but it was also found in oral polio vaccine (OPV). After the contamination was discovered, the U.S. government established testing requirements to verify that all new lots of polio vaccines were free of SV40.

Because of research done with SV40 in animal models, there has been some concern that the virus could cause cancer in humans. However, most studies looking at the relationship between SV40 and cancers are reassuring, finding no causal association between receipt of SV40-contaminated polio vaccine and development of cancer.” Source: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/historical-concerns/index.html


"‘Unqualified failure’ in polio vaccine policy left thousands of kids paralyzed"

Following from: https://www.science.org/content/article/unqualified-failure-polio-vaccine-policy-left-thousands-kids-paralyzed

"Something momentous happened in the history of polio eradication in April 2016: Over a period of 2 weeks, 155 countries and territories started to use a new version of Albert Sabin’s classic oral polio vaccine (OPV) that no longer protected against one of the three types of poliovirus. Type 2 virus had been eradicated by then, and the only remaining type 2 polio cases were touched off by the live virus in the vaccine itself. Dropping the type 2 component from the vaccine would end those cases as well, the thinking went.

"But “the switch,” as this global move has become known, became “an unqualified failure,” according to an unusually blunt draft report commissioned by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) that is now open for public comments. Unexpectedly, vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 has continued to circulate after the switch, paralyzing more than 3300 children. And GPEI has spent more than $1.8 billion trying to quash these outbreaks, mostly in Africa. Those numbers are certain to increase until the polio program finds a way to deal with the problem it inadvertently—and with the best of intentions—created.

“It is about time someone publicly declared the switch a failure, given the obvious management and leadership errors,” says Kimberly Thompson, who heads Kid Risk, Inc., a nonprofit that has long modeled the consequences of various polio vaccine options."

Following from: https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1205&context=annlsurvey

The Gates Foundation focuses on world health and population and highlights its strategy of accelerating scientific discovery with reducing costs. Since the early 2000s, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (Gavi), 

Global Health Innovative Technology Fund and PATH, all heavily funded by the Gates Foundation, have been distributing vaccines and drugs to vulnerable populations in Africa and India. 

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded experimental malaria and meningitis vaccine trials across Africa and HPV vaccine programs in India. All of these programs resulted in numerous deaths and injuries, with accounts of forced vaccinations and uninformed consent. 

Ultimately, these health campaigns, under the guise of saving lives, have relocated large scale clinical trials of untested or unapproved drugs to developing markets where administering drugs is less regulated and cheaper.

Conclusion

You asked if I had any information to support the view that Polio had been virtually eliminated prior to the introduction of the the first vaccine. I answered no but it prompted a discussion of polio vaccination and vaccination in the light of disease more generally. I apologise for that but I hope you find something interesting, if not relevant there.

What we can say however is that the outbreak that appears to have been common to both the UK and USA between 1945 and 1960  (I'm sorry I haven't been able to check if the pattern was repeated generally throught the world or what the pattern might suggest) was effectively in major decline prior to the introduction of any vaccines. Further that at least in one notable incident in 1955 and subsequently (how many more cases were not attributed to the vaccine?) immunisation actually caused significant numbers of cases of the disease! 

The indication is that the trajectory of the decline was fixed and only marginally affected, if at all, by vaccines, although of course the claim by proponents of it is otherwise. What I have suggested is the causes of the outbreak and of its decline are to be found elsewhere in province of war, DDT use and radiological contamination. 

With the decline in polio, there was also a startling rise in cases of childhood leukaemia (and cancers generally) which is almost certainly linked with the programme of atmospheric tests as the scientific research from Hiroshima and Nagasaki confirms. This tends to strengthen my former suggestion in relation to polio.

Besides the disastrous consequences of some OPV programmes, the less obvious adverse consequences of vaccination have been under-studied because of medical establishment and pharmaceutical resistance. As a result the efficacy and desireability of the injection schedule has largely gone unchallenged. Has there ever actually been any research into the relative health status of unvaccinated children?

In the last thirty years or so, increasing attention has been paid to the neurological consequences of vaccines as these have now assumed almost epidemic proportions in young people and adults. A quarter of British adults now claim a neurological or psychological condition requiring medical intervention. And of course the Covid vaccine has been proved to have been the cause of a whole range of adverse conditions and arguably the most likely cause of a spike in the death rate.

Nor has the part played, if any, in the general state of the nation's health, which by muliple indices cannot be said to be good. Given the role of the immunological ssystem, is it possible that vaccines have played a part in the emmergence of later diseases that now plague the nation?

All of this points to the need for a fundamental reappraisal of vaccination policy and advice. There should be a push to reducing the number of vaccines given to the child and far more emphasis placed on risk assessment as the criterion for intervention.


Recent papers:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/153506/injected-vaccine-could-help-eradicate-polio/

The study, by Imperial College London and the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, suggests that the injected polio vaccine (IPV), which is rarely used today in countries affected by polio, could provide better and longer lasting protection against infection if used in combination with the more commonly used live oral polio vaccine (OPV).

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25018120/

Inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) does not induce an intestinal mucosal immune response, but could boost protection in children who are mucosally primed through previous exposure to OPV.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/2013-14.pdf

In 1954 Jonas Salk was lauded for developing a polio vaccine, making the cover of Time magazine. He had successfully inactivated each of the 3 virus strains found in nature using formalin, and injected the resulting inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) into monkeys and later, his family, to show this caused antibodies to the virus to be raised in the blood. In 1955 a field trial in over 1.3 million American children showed the vaccine to be safe and highly effective in preventing paralytic poliomyelitis. By 1960 IPV had reduced polio incidence in the USA by over 95% to about 1,300 reported cases, a tremendous public health success. Yet, by 1968 the USA no longer used IPV.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/rmv.401

Once wild poliovirus transmission has been interrupted by OPV, the only poliomyelitis due to poliovirus will be caused by OPV. Risks are posed by the very tool responsible for successful interruption of wild poliovirus transmission.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2217/fmb.15.19

IPV v. OPV?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4212416/

Poliomyelitis: Historical Facts, Epidemiology, and Current Challenges in Eradication



Sustainable protection of the world population against paralytic polio cannot be achieved simply by stopping the circulation of poliovirus but must also include maintaining high rates of population immunity indefinitely.

In the United States, polio incidence fell from 13.9 cases per 100 000 in 1954 to <0.5 cases per 100 000 in 1965, endemic transmission ceased by 1970, and the last case of domestically acquired poliomyelitis was reported in 1979.

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/224/Supplement_4/S398/6378088

The immune response to IPV depends on the number of doses, the interval between doses, and the presence of maternally derived antibody, which impairs immune responses in infants up to 6 months of age [5–7]. 

ADVERSE EFFECTS OF POLIO VACCINE

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4083159/#:~:text=Headache%20(22.4%25)%2C%20abdominal%20pain,and%20nervous%20system%20(29.3%25).

Adverse events following immunization with oral poliovirus in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Headache (22.4%), abdominal pain (17.2%), fever (11.7%), diarrhea (9.9%), and asthenia (7.5%) were the common symptoms. Paralysis and asthma-like reactions were rare and serious adverse events in this study. The most affected systems were gastro-intestinal (33.5%) and nervous system (29.3%). 


Adverse Events Associated with Childhood Vaccines: Evidence Bearing on Causality. It is not clear whether either OPV or IPV confers lifelong immunity (Nishio et al., 1984).  The concept that live attenuated polio vaccine causes a small number of poliomyelitis cases thus has a history of at least six decades. Since the 1960s there have been about 100 studies reporting individual cases, case series, and national surveillances of vaccine-associated cases of paralytic poliomyelitis. The evidence establishes a causal relation between OPV and paralytic and nonparalytic polio. The incidence of paralytic polio in OPV recipients has been well documented and is greater with the first dose of vaccine. The CDC has estimated that the overall dose-related incidence of paralytic disease is 1 case per 520,000 first doses.


POSTSCRIPT

Hi C, The academic debate seems to centre around whether IPV or OPV is best method. Some work has been done on adverse effects. The concensus seems to be one paralytic case from the OPV per 500.000 application, and a higher rate for first as compared to subsequent ones. Typically the less severe the reaction the more likely it shows. The contrast with covid - around 1:800 - is stark. Hygiene first and foremost, i.e. the prevention of faecal contamination of food and water, must be the primary line of defence. However I find the replication of the graphs and their timing vis a vis other factors fascinating. The question remains whether it is the vaccine or other public health knowledge and advances that are truly responsible for the decline in cases?  I'm sure you are better versed in the scientific literature on the subject, but I attach a short list I checked out below. Regards, Tim.


Friday, 20 June 2025

The world on an Iranian nuclear brink! (Update: Postponed for 'two weeks' apparently)


Thursday, March 20, 2025.FILE Photo | AP



https://ix.cnn.io/dailygraphics/graphics/20250616-isr-iran-tehran-strikes/static/media/ai2html-graphic-desktop.1440f868.jpg


20.6.2025: If yet again America goes into psychotic, homicidal bombing mode, on the back of a fabricated pretext, it will prove it is the most evil, destabilizing and anti-human force in the world! It will also prove that Trump's claims to be a 'peace-maker' and 'anti-war President' were nothing more than empty, ego-cetric rhetoric from a dangerous buffoon.

If he decimates Iran, with all its human and military consequences, he will be remembered not for peace and security, but yet again as an American President who plunges the world into chaos and misery. It could also perversely ensure the end of the Israeli state and American world hegemony - morally, economically and militarily, the very opposite of Trump's claims of making America 'great again'.

Of course we were all aware of the fetid nature of the neo-con/zionist conceit and deceit, from 9/11 onwards, although this is still not admitted. Yet the "seven states in five years" has still played out, though it has taken five times as long. Iran is the last to be attacked but may be a far more difficult fruit to fall, this leaving aside the issue as to whether other nuclear powers can allow it to be harvested so seamlessly into the zionist barn.

NATO has failed in Ukraine, despite the largely unpublicised loss of millions of lives, yet here we are again with another wasteful, despicable American killing spree on the cards.

Will Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, China stand idly by as Iran is massively bombed? Will Iran itself feel constrained from attacking American bases and oil producing nations on its doorstep? What has it to loose from an all-out attack on Israel with the possiblity of nuclear destruction and contamination only hairs-breadth away.

Everyone knows the zionist-controlled west's position on Iran is deeply corrupt and perverted. To attack a country for its potential nuclear capabilitities, when the aggressors (Israel, America, Britain and France ) already control a huge stockpile, variously not under, or removed from, international non-proliferation treaties, is the height of hypocrisy. Hopefully everyone in the world can see through the political deception. taking us all to destruction.

Thanks Mr Trump. Thanks the great state of 21st Century America - "The Great Satan" as Iran has described it - which short of a miracle policy turnaround, yet again it is proving itself to be.

https://veaterecosan.blogspot.com/search?q=USA+Iran


Tim Veater
Why does the international community put up with this outrage? It is shameful that it can be bossed around by that jumped up little hellish state of israel. Why no 'Berlin' air drop? Why no military protection of civilians? The UN is an utter disgrace.
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Jess Lv
Tim Veater absolutely. The number of people shot at aid sites by the IDF and the GHF has risen to 400! and I don't understand how the world is letting this go on even after Netenyahu admitted to arming militias and gangs like Abu Shabab who loot the humanitarian aid.
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Jess Lv I would say, shamefully, it is because in the scheme of things, despite all the rhetoric and claimed outrage, Palestininian lives do not matter, and have not mattered for decades! It is hard not to see this as cultural supremacy and rascist superiority in action, within the context of Western imperialist settlement and invasion, much as what occurred from the 16th C. onwards all around the world. Deprived of independence, Palestinians have had little economic heft. It is no accident. It is why Israel has created refugee dependancy and treats them with such contempt. We all know that western media, through ownership and inveigling, has controlled the narrative in Israel's favour, effectively concealing its disgusting treatment of its Palestinian neighbours. Hopefully the world's view of Israel has irrevocably changed, but still national governments are reticent to folow suit, presumably because trade and security links run so deep within the overarching east/west divide. Israel has cost America billions of dollars but one wonders what it has got in return? Increasingly Americans are asking the same question even if their elected representatives arn't.




The West's moral position has become a hollow drum, a clanging cymbal. It is a tired and bankrupt charade. Even where one might hope to find it - the Christian Church - there is nothing but eirie silence. No codemnation of sin; no rejection of evil; seemingly no ethical adjudication at all, even when it is Christians that are the victims of it. Apparently as far as the West is concerned, Israel can do what it likes, where it likes and when it likes, and no one must intervene or criticise, even when observing untold cruelty, the shelling of the starving or even the threatened mass annihilation of a city of fifteen million people. Lies have replaced truth; aggression has been lauded; risks have been fabricated - and all for what? So that political and military egos can be stroked; fascist uniforms can be polished; phallic weapons can be paraded; Western hegemony claimed? The crooked make money whilst thousands of years of culture is reduced to rubble. The population of the world - billions of people - look on amazed and dumfounded, that a few arrogant fools can bring them to this and that Institutions set up at enormous cost to prevent it have proved themselves to be little more than hot air. The air is likely to get a lot hotter before it cools. The question remains what will be standing when it does?

23.6.2025
We have to somehow free ourselves from Americo/zionist control but no one should under-estimate the difficulty. It's a long time since Harold Wilson tried it and look what happened to him. Does Starmer believe the things he says and does or is it just a pragmatic response to the economic realities? Trump has done more to lessen the ties with European and Commonwealth formations than anyone and this is an opportunity as much as a challenge. Canada has led the way. Australia may follow. If push comes to shove, Europe will probably choose Denmark over the US. So far however, Ukraine and Palestine - and now Iran - have highlighted the paradoxes and contradictions. In backing Ukraine it has cited the illegality whilst ignoring the context. In backing Israel it ignores legality and context but can it prevent a schism with the neo-con/zionist approach to Iran if it is to retain a semblance of respect for international law, its institutions and public opinion that has turned against Israeli barbarism and despotism?

Probably most people appreciate that Trump is a bombastic, arrogant fool, bribed and/or black-mailed to follow a zionist agenda. Unfortunately neither those in his own domestic circle nor those in foreign ones, are prepared to tell him. It is left to a few brave or even reckless individuals to do so, such as the one below - a master-class in critical analysis. Could there ever have been a better oxymoronic example of a slogan than, "Making America Great Again" or of the individual who promised it?

Oregon's Bay Area is feeling shocked.
·
In the span of seventy-two hours, the Trump administration has managed to simultaneously bomb Iran, fracture its own political coalition, humiliate itself on the global stage, and vaporize billions of dollars in advanced munitions, all while declaring victory. It takes a certain kind of brilliance to orchestrate a fiasco this comprehensive.

We begin with what Trump insists on calling a “complete and total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The centerpiece of this spectacle, code-named “Operation Midnight Hammer” (a name that would embarrass even a Michael Bay film), involved seven B-2 Spirit bombers dropping a dozen 30,000-pound bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Iran’s Fordo facility. Each of these bombs reportedly costs upwards of $500 million, and with twelve dropped, we are staring at $6 billion in ordnance expended on just one target. Add in cruise missile salvos, submarine deployments, the logistics of moving B-2s halfway across the world, and the surrounding military build-up of 40,000 American troops now sitting well within Iranian missile range, and you’re easily looking at a multi-billion dollar operation. That’s just for this single round of strikes.

But it gets better. Despite the chest-thumping at the Pentagon press conference, the damage assessment tells a different story. Satellite imagery reviewed by multiple independent experts suggests that while substantial above-ground damage occurred, Fordo’s deeply buried enrichment halls may have survived. Observers saw trucks moving materials out of Fordo and Natanz in the days before the attacks, strongly suggesting that Iran moved its highly enriched uranium, enough for multiple bombs, to a safe location beforehand. In short, Trump may have spent billions of dollars successfully bombing empty tunnels.

Iran, of course, wasted no time signaling that its program remains intact, with foreign ministry officials implying that enrichment could continue elsewhere, including at the much deeper, as-yet-unstruck Pickaxe Mountain site. Even Israel’s own Channel 13 military analysts admit the program could not be destroyed with airstrikes alone, even if this operation continued for another year. The phrase “mission accomplished” hovers over this charade like a ghost from George W. Bush’s deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

And yet, while Trump boasts of obliteration, his own Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were dispatched to Sunday talk shows to offer a far more modest take: no, this was not about regime change; no, Iran’s stockpiles were not fully destroyed; yes, this simply “set back” their program. But then, like clockwork, Trump himself detonates his own talking points by hopping onto Truth Social to declare that regime change is now exactly what he’s after: “Why wouldn’t there be regime change?” he mused, in between bizarre tirades against Thomas Massie and spelling his own name wrong as “DONA KDJ Trump.”

This sudden turn toward regime change prompted some awkward silence within MAGA world. Populist allies who once cheered Trump’s anti-interventionist rhetoric are now visibly squirming. Even Thomas Massie, long a reliable libertarian foot soldier, found himself publicly attacked by Trump for opposing what is clearly an unconstitutional act of war. The anti-war isolationist mask has slipped; what remains is raw imperial hubris wrapped in cheap populist theater.

And yet, the contradictions keep piling up. Trump, who famously promised to disentangle America from Middle East wars, now finds himself on the phone, figuratively, if not literally, begging Xi Jinping to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open as Iran threatens to choke off global oil shipping lanes in retaliation. The great self-proclaimed dealmaker, who once mocked Joe Biden as weak, now stands humiliated, forced to rely on Beijing to prevent his own reckless adventure from igniting an oil price shock that could crater the world economy. In a particularly bitter irony, while Trump rules by tantrum and impulsive fiat, Iran’s leadership, though authoritarian, shares its decision-making through institutional consensus among multiple power centers. The mullahs, the Revolutionary Guard, and the civilian government consult, maneuver, and adapt with remarkable cohesion, while Washington’s policy process resembles little more than Trump’s late-night social media stream-of-consciousness.

Meanwhile, Iran has already begun coordinating with Russia, with its foreign minister flying to Moscow to bolster defense ties. For all of Trump’s bluster about maximum pressure, he has driven Tehran deeper into the very axis he once claimed his deal-making would disrupt.
Of course, no international disaster is complete without the moral voice of the Vatican weighing in, and here Pope Leo delivered what may be the most devastating condemnation of all. In his Sunday address, the Pope linked Trump’s Iran strikes directly to Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, calling it a cynical diversion from atrocities unfolding there. “War does not solve problems,” Pope Leo declared. “It amplifies them.” He went further, condemning leaders who wage war without risking their own children, a not-so-subtle jab at Trump and his family, none of whom will be dodging Iranian missiles in the days ahead. The irony was almost too on-the-nose when, during Trump’s lavish parade the tiny audience was treated to sounds of “Fortunate Son”, that iconic Vietnam-era anthem railing against draft-dodging elites who send others to die while their own privileged offspring stay safely at home. It was, unintentionally, the most honest soundtrack imaginable for a president who skipped Vietnam, ducked every fight of his life, and now orders young Americans into harm’s way from the comfort of his fortified golf resorts.

And if the moral indictment weren’t enough, there is the strategic blunder to consider. Trita Parsi, one of the sharpest analysts of the Iran file, compared Trump’s strike to Israel’s infamous 1981 Osirak raid, which ultimately accelerated Iraq’s nuclear ambitions rather than quashing them. Parsi predicts the same dynamic now: Trump may have guaranteed that within 5 to 10 years, Iran will go nuclear, both as a deterrent and as a nationalistic response to U.S.-Israeli aggression. Once again, we have bombed our way into proliferation.

Perhaps most damning of all is the complete collapse of process. Trump, increasingly isolated within his own administration, ignored his intelligence agencies (led at one point by Tulsi Gabbard before she was uninvited to the table), disregarded congressional war powers, and conducted military strikes absent any serious National Security Council deliberation. The decision-making process was instead driven by a tight inner circle of Fox News veterans, MAGA loyalists, and Netanyahu emissaries, with John Ratcliffe feeding Trump Israeli intelligence to override his own agencies. The result is less a functional presidency than a rogue operation wrapped in Christian nationalist cosplay.

For all the expensive hardware, the precision-guided bombs, and the absurdly costly stealth bombers circling the skies, what Trump has purchased here is not victory but escalation. The United States now finds itself exposed to retaliation, its credibility weakened, its global alliances further fractured, and its own domestic constitutional order once again shredded under the weight of one man’s boundless ego.

And yet, the grift rolls on. Even as missiles fall, Trump’s surrogates are busy pumping out pro-war merchandise, MAGA influencers are scrambling to update their talking points, and the base is left to awkwardly explain how their anti-war avatar just launched the war they spent eight years promising to prevent. In the end, perhaps Pope Leo said it best: “No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, fear of children, the stolen future.”

What’s most remarkable is not simply that Trump has pushed America into an undeclared war, or that $6 billion in high-tech ordnance may have accomplished little. It’s that, in the wreckage of America’s strategic credibility, we now see the full descent into something cruder and more dangerous: a great power reduced to subcontracted muscle, drunkenly swinging its fists at the behest of smaller client states, while China, Russia, and Iran carefully redraw the maps behind its back.

The United States once led the world. Now it lurches behind Israel’s shadow, like some punch drunk barroom bouncer, throwing billion-dollar tantrums that leave its allies uneasy, its adversaries emboldened, and its citizens staring down another quagmire they never voted for.
follow me at marygeddry.substack.com and @magixarc.bsky.social
#iran #kakistocracy #PeteHegseth #PopeLeoXIV #b2bomber

25.6.2025:
Proof that sometimes I surface early! Good morning to you all. What shall we have to read on FB when you take your eye-break? I woke at five and have been reading the paper obituaries since. Interesting disparate lives always fascinate. On the one hand Kim Woodburn, the ascerbic presenter of 'How Clean is Your House?' and on the other Leon Krier the architect of Prince Charles' Poundbury. Time up for both. Poundbury was started 35 years ago and I eventually got to see it a couple of months ago, staying overnight in the swish hotel there, fulfilling a little ambition of mine. Both he and she had their lives transformed by a chance meeting; he with the Prince, she with Channel 4. Both gained a degree of fame and notoriety as a result - of which an obituary in the Times is the proof. We would all like to leave a mark on this brief, rather pointless, ludicrous thing called life and be remembered affectionately. The sad reality is somewhat different, and before long we are all swept away on the tide of anonymity and regret. This morning I stood outside in my own miniature 'poundbury' (or 'bury the pound' even!) and listened transfixed, to a Mistle Thrush, which warbled and trilled from the Beech tree I planted forty-five years ago. It sang just for me in the balmy morning air, before the tree-tops were brushed with gold, its song a transcription of life's all too transitory and diaphonous beauty.







26.6.2025:  Re. Trump's post praising Netanyahu as the great war leader: Some of us see Netanyahu as an obsessive, fanatical and callous war criminal, a view shared by the highest criminal court in the world. The question is whether israeli/american imperialism trumps due process and justice? Throughout recent history, israel has consistently acted illegally with american backing to fulfill long-term aims to destabilize iran and ensure regime change. It has failed spectacularly, although trump obviously needs to paint the opposite picture to keep AIPAC and his donors happy. Neither the opinion-poles or world opinion on the american/israeli alliance would provide him with much comfort. America is sick of war and sick of israeli arrogance and cruelty. It's a shame the Government does not reflect and replicate it. The recent Harvard-linked study that indicates 400,000 palestinians, half of them innocent children, have been 'disappeared' - a castigating aphorism if ever I saw one - cannot be simply air-brushed away with a few bombastic, triumphalist slogans. These were real people and real lives that have been shattered by a blood-thirsty tyrant called netanyahu, who has no regard for non-jewish humans and knows only death and destruction to relentlessly pursue his perverted ambition and aims. Iran's response may have given him a moment's reality check but the suffering in Gaza continues and will continue unless netanyahu and israel are stopped in their devilish designs. https://thecradle.co/articles-id/31546 https://veaterecosan.blogspot.com/


Prophetess Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas, the woman who exposed the United States of America and banned speech until she died and left a word:
(*"The Arab countries will be completely gone"..!! *).
_The National Press Club of America commemorates the passing of the Dean of the White House correspondents, the first woman to be president of the Press Club, who captured, accompanied and covered their activities, and was with Nixon on the first historic trip to China in 1971, which refused to accompany George Bush Jr., and announced her rejection of his famous phrase: "He Fighting in Iraq for God and the cross.” And she said: "It is Satan's war, not God's war."
_Is Helen Thomas, who died at 95, and was, as her pupils said at her memorial service: “The bravest journalist in the history of the United States.”
_ Several days before she left, Thomas wrote a dangerous article for publication in the pride of American newspapers, and it was rejected in an incident for the first time, which made her shout in a press club lecture: "The Jews control our media, our newspapers, and they control the White House."
I added: I will not change what I have believed in; Israelis occupy Palestine, this is not their country. Tell them: Go back to your countries and leave Palestine for its people.
_ I see the third world war powder, I cooked in the kitchen of Tel Aviv and the American intelligence agency, and many witnesses, the first step of the emergence of terrorist organizations, supported by an American.
_Don't believe that Washington is fighting terrorists, they are a puppet in the hands of CIA.
_ I added: I see that Britain will revive the British spirit "Mark Sykes", France will revive the French spirit "Francois Pico", and Washington is paving their ideas to divide the Arab states into the three, and Russia is coming to get what is left of it.
_ Believe me, they lie to you and say: "They fight terrorism on behalf of the world and they are the makers of this terrorism and the media markets their lies, because the Jews of Israel own it."
_These are the words of Helen Thomas two years ago and reposted in her memory, last July, of course she accepted a storm of an outrageous attack from the Zionist lobby and Netanyahu demanded that she be tried for anti-semitism, but she passed away after she told the truth and the words of the world director "Michael Moore" appeared in a record film.
_And Moore is the one who exposed Bush, Jr. and his gang of right-wing gun companies owners like "Dick Cheney" and "Condelisa Rice" and his famous film Fahrenheit @TAG/11 won more than an award.
_ What interests us amidst the recent events, starting from the Russian plane crash, which killed more than two hundred civilians, then the Beirut incident, which left tens of dead and wounded, then the Paris incident, followed by incidents in Arish, Iraq, Libya and Syria, that the terrorist organizations cannot carry out all this horrible violence alone. And that there are intelligence agencies that support it, and demonize it to set the area on fire and push it to an unquenchable inferno, their period is on the edge of the yard.
_And the courtyard here means handing over the area to the forces that planned, supported, and set ablaze to remove the listener, slide the stable and remove the acknowledged. What is confirmed by this, the words of "James Wolsey", the former head of the US intelligence, who clearly said: "The Arab region will not return as it was, countries will pass and the borders of existing countries will change."
_ Almost the same meaning said by "Mark Rajeev", the spokesman of the Israeli government: "The region is on a hot sheet, and we will not be silent, and we will coordinate with the intelligence agencies in major countries to eliminate terrorism, and we will intervene with them to fight terrorism, even if wars break out, to ensure the protection of our state."
_So the prophecy of "Helen Thomas" is being fulfilled: Tel Aviv and Washington created the legend of the terrorist organizations in the region that came out of the Tel Aviv and DC affairs to inflame the region and the world, and move the regimes towards one goal, the reorganization and distribution of influence and loot, so what are you doing??
Bottom line: Hope awakens the absent minds. They need to understand, comprehend, and wake up, stop being careless. . Before the prophecy of Helen Thomas came true.