Polio in Sewers- Oh My!

And a historical review of Polio

Virus hunters leaving no Turd unturned

Traces of poliovirus have been detected in routine sewage surveillance in the United Kingdom. Health officials say the virus identified is vaccine-derived.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/polio-detected-in-uk-sewage-why-experts-are-concerned

Lets take a trip back in time a refresh our memory about the history of Polio

1914-MV (mixed virus) Polio strain of the Rockefeller Institute in NY, a virulent virus mixture prepared by H. L. Amoss in 1914 and kept for decades through numerous intracerebral passages in monkeys .

1916- NY Polio epidemic. The number of children age 2 yr affected was the highest ever recorded; the case fatality rate of 25% was the highest ever recorded [certainly higher than natural wild type polio virus which is less than one percent]; the epidemic started in early May, well before the normal summer polio season.

The virus was highly destructive to the nervous system, much like the Rockefeller labs cultivated “MV” strain. Three miles from the epicentre of the outbreak, Simon Flexner and his associates at the Rockefeller Institute had been passaging spinal cord tissue containing poliovirus, from one Rhesus monkey spinal cord to another.

1934-Dr Brodie develops polio vaccine and begins trial while working for the New York Public Health Department with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation.   

Maurice Brodie had used ingenious techniques to reproduce poliovirus in mice for  vaccine trials.  Called the Brodie vaccine it was given in trials to children in North Carolina and staff at LA County Hospital. Nine children who received the vaccine had died.

The MV strain was used by Brodie and Park for their vaccines .

Surprisingly, all of the polio histories have accepted the idea that this MV strain caused the polio cases associated with the experimental vaccines, none has suggested that the earlier and presumably less altered virus might be linked with the 1916 epidemic.

1940’s

From CDC web site

The National Malaria Eradication Program, a cooperative undertaking by state and local health agencies of 13 Southeastern states and the CDC, originally proposed by Louis Laval Williams, commenced operations on July 1, 1947. By the end of 1949, over 4,650,000 housespray applications had been made. In 1947, 15,000 malaria cases were reported. By 1950, only 2,000 cases were reported. By 1951, malaria was considered eliminated from the United States.

[Note:  CDC chose not to indicate what the house-spray was ]

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/index.html

Following a link we discover what that mystery house spray was

The National Malaria Eradication Program was a cooperative undertaking by state and local health agencies of 13 southeastern states and the Communicable Disease Center of the U. S. Public Health Service, originally proposed by Dr. L. L. Williams. The program commenced operations on July 1, 1947. It consisted primarily of DDT application to the interior surfaces of rural homes or entire premises in countieswhere malaria was reported to have been prevalent in recent years. By the end of 1949, more than 4,650,000 house spray applications had been made.

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html

Notice the spike in Polio Cases as CDC and others were spraying households with DDT?

In 1946, however, two years before Jonas Salk first began his research, the city of San Antonio, Texas tried to prevent the spread of a polio outbreak by dousing the city with DDT, apparently in a misguided effort to kill insects they believed carried the disease. Most people today know that spraying DDT will not prevent polio, and can actually harm one’s health. Rachel Carson‘s Silent Spring (1962) exposed the hazards of commonly-used pesticides, and the chemical was mostly banned in the early 1970s.

https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2014/05/19/this-week-in-universal-news-spraying-ddt-to-prevent-polio-1946/

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1945/08/14/88278746.html?pageNumber=14

It was in the late 1940’s that a Westport, Connecticut physician by the name of Morton Biskind began noticing new ailments and new variations on old ailments in both humans he was treating as well as in domestic and wild animals in the area. The maladies he observed were initially most pronounced in dogs, cats, sheep and cattle and included degenerative problems in their brains, internal organs and muscles. When Biskind noticed a dramatic increase in similar symptoms in humans, he began doing research and consulting other doctors about their observations. 

In 1949, he and Dr. Irving Bieber published “DDT Poisoning — A New Symptom With Neuropsychiatric Manifestations” in the American Journal of Psychotherapy. Much of the article focused on what Biskind and Bieber saw as a link between DDT exposure and the occurrence of polio. “Facts are stubborn,” the authors wrote, “and refusal to accept them does not avoid their inexorable effects—the tragic consequences are now upon us.”

In 1950, he testified before Congress about the harmful effects of DDT, and in 1953, he published another important article, “Public Health Aspects of the New Insecticides,” in the American Journal of Digestive Diseases. Though resistance from powerful quarters continued, the message began to get through. More and more studies showed the destructive impact DDT spraying had on all forms of wildlife as well as direct links to cancer and other diseases in humans.

https://westernctdsa.org/andy-piascik/morton-biskind-the-connecticut-physician-who-warned-the-world-about-ddt/

Are there other concerns about the rise of polio in the 40s and 50s? One is provocation polio – which saw a spike in cases from both tonsillectomies and DPT injections, which allowed viruses to pass from the gut (in which they were harmless) to the blood stream, and into the central nervous system, where the damage started.

https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/ddt-and-the-polio-fallout/225116

1950’s

The National Foundation For Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) used the "The March Of Dimes" to fund its polio research which lead to the Salk vaccine field trials in 1954. The Director Of Polio Researchwas Dr. Henry Kumm.

According to the brief sketch in American Journal of Digestive Diseases, May 1953, Dr. Kumm was born in Wiesbaden, Germany. He came to the U.S. via Britain and became an American citizen in 1945. He had spent 23 years on the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation for Medical Research before joining the NFIP in July, 1951.

In May 1953, Dr. Kumm replaced Dr. Harry M. Weaver as Director Of Polio Research at NFIP.

During World War II he had served as civilian consultant to the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army in Italy, directing field studies for the use of DDTagainst malarial mosquitoes in the marshes near Rome and Naples.

This appears to be a conflict of interest for this key player in polio research.

http://whale.to/m/kumm.html

1954, the same year that the Salks Polio Vaccine was introduced, the CDC abruptly redefined “paralytic polio” much more narrowly, to apply to only the most severe cases in which paralysis continued for at least 60 days

Milder cases of of what were called “polio” included a variety of other paralytic ailments, such as enterovirus infections; poisoning with neurotoxins such as lead, arsenic, and DDT; transverse myelitis; other types of viral or “aseptic” meningitis; and Guillain-Barré syndrome

DDT spraying of residents and residential areas were also reduced due to safety concerns, and the March of Dimes program paying for Polio treatments that encouraged a Polio diagnosis was curtailed

The Polio Vaccine came out in 1954 although it suffered a setback due to the Cutter Incident which resulted in giving vaccinated kids Polio in 1955

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/)

1954-Dr. Bernice Eddy was an award-winning virologist, and one of the highest-ranking female scientists in NIH history.

In 1954, NIH asked Eddy to direct testing of the Salk polio vaccine. She discovered, while testing eighteen macaques, that Salk’s vaccine contained residual live polio virus that was paralyzing the monkeys.

Dr. Eddy warned her NIH bosses that the vaccine was virulent, but they dismissed her concerns. The distribution of that vaccine by Cutter Labs in California caused the worst polio outbreak in history.

Less than a month after the Salk vaccine's approval and licensure in April 1955, it became apparent that some of the vaccine lots were contaminated with wild polio.

The ensuing disaster, in which some 260 children developed paralytic polio from the vaccine, was widely blamed at the time on Cutter pharmaceuticals.

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.

The polio vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1954. From ‘50 thru ‘55, the striped and clear portions of the bars represent about 85% of the reported cases, or 30,000 per year, on average. Those cases were automatically eliminated by two radical changes the CDC made to the diagnostic parameters and labeling protocol of the disease as soon as the vaccine was licensed – 30,000 cases a year we were subsequently told were eliminated by the vaccine.

And, critically, before the vaccine was licensed polio diagnoses were made clinically and accepted from around the nation, duly reported to the American public annually as polio, no lab analysis required, while after it was licensed only the CDC was – and is – allowed to issue confirmations of paralytic polio – all suspected cases had to be sent to them for analysis and testing.

It may be noted that the Dominion Council of Health at its 74th meeting in October 1958 recommended that for the purposes of national reporting and statistics the term non-paralytic poliomyelitis be replaced by ‘meningitis, viral or aseptic’ with the specific viruses shown where known.

[my apologies, the link seems to have been wiped from my notes and subsequent searches not picking it up. duck Duck Go isnt what it used to be]

From 1954 onward because, even though the US production of DDT skyrocketed, its distribution was then being shifted out of the US and into developing nations.

Governmental hearings, including those with Biskind, Scobey and others, brought about greater awareness of DDT dangers, as well as better labeling and handling methods.8 Due to public governmental debate in 1950-51 and numerous policy and legislative changes afterward,DDT production figures after these dates do not correlate with US usage or exposure to DDT.

https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/environmental-toxins/pesticides-and-polio-a-critique-of-scientific-literature/

1957-experimental oral polio vaccines were manufactured and administered to over one million Africans from 1957 to 1960. These experiments were led by Dr. Hilary Koprowski, director of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.

Koprowski viewed himself as Dr. Sabin’s competitor in the race to replace the Salk vaccine. Both Sabin’s and Koprowski’s vaccines were grown in monkey kidney tissue..

“Between 1956 and 1960 more then 1 million African people were ‘encouraged’ to receive Koprowski’s vaccine called CHAT.”. The earliest known cases of AIDS occurred in central Africa, in the same regions where Koprowski’s polio vaccine was given to over a million people in 1957-1960.

There is no documented case of HIV infection or AIDS before 1959. Polio vaccines are grown (cultured) on monkey kidneys which could have been contaminated by SIVs. Polio vaccines could not be screened for SIV contamination before 1985.

1957-BMJ.com rapid response dated 26 August 2012 (Eradication of polio by vaccination Part 3), Morris et al. (1956) isolated and identified monkey cytopathogenic agent that produced acute respiratory illness in chimpanzees at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and named it chimpanzee coryza virus (CCV).   

Chanock et al.(1957) pointed out the association of a new type of cytopathogenic myxovirus with infantile croup. Chanock and Finberg (1957) reported on two isolations of similar agents from infants with severe lower respiratory illness (bronchopneumonia, bronchiolitis and laryngotracheobronchitis).

The two viruses were indistinguishable from an agent associated with the outbreak of coryza in chimpanzees (Chimpanzee coryza agent or CCA virus, studied by Morris et al. (1956).

A person working with the infected chimpanzees (CCA virus of Morris et al. as above) subsequently experienced respiratory infection with a rise in CCA antibodies during convalescence.

A new name was proposed for this agent:”respiratory syncytial virus” (RSV). The original name “chimpanzee coryza virus” disappeared from medical literature.

In Australia, Lewis et al. (1961) isolated further viral specimens identical with CCA. They wrote, “Prior to July 1960, the influenza and parainfluenza viruses predominated in infant epidemic respiratory infections.

In July 1961 the pattern changed abruptly with sudden increases in bronchiolitis and bronchitis, infrequent before. 58% were under 12 months, and patients under 4 years predominated. Infants with bronchiolitis and severe bronchitis yielded RCA not previously isolated. Deaths have occurred.”

https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2398/rr/599724

1960-it was discovered that Simian Virus 40 (SV40) contaminated up to 30% of the poliovirus vaccines in the US. This contamination arose because the vaccines were produced in monkey kidney cell cultures harboring SV40 between 1955 and 1963.

During this period, approximately 90% of children and 60% of adults in the USA were inoculated for polio and possibly exposed to SV40. 

Contaminated vaccines were allowed to be given until stocks were depleted in 1963

New York Cancer Society had invited Eddy to address its annual conference. Eddy chose the subject of tumors induced by the polyoma virus. However, she also described tumors induced by the SV40 viral agent in monkey kidney cells.

Her NIH supervisor angrily reprimanded Eddy for mentioning the discovery publicly and banned her from public health crisis statements.

Eddy argued for publication of her work on the virus, casting the contaminated vaccine supply on an urgent public health crisis.

Agency bigwigs stonewalled publication, allowing Merck and Parke-Davis to continue marketing the oncogenic vaccine to millions of American adults and children.

On July 26, 1961, the New York Times reported that Merck and Parke-Davis were withdrawing their Polio vaccines. The article said nothing about cancer. The Times ran the story next to an account about overdue library fines on page 33.

NIH officials refused to pursue a total recall of the rest of the supply, fearing reputational injury to the vaccine program if Americans learned that PHS had infected them with a cancer-producing virus.

As a result, millions of unsuspecting Americans received carcinogenic vaccines between 1961 and 1963. The Public Health Service then concealed that “secret” for forty years.

1967-infants and toddlers immunized with a formalin-inactivated vaccineagainst respiratory syncytial virus(RSV) experienced an enhanced form of RSVdisease characterized by high fever, bronchopneumonia, and wheezing when they became infected with wild-type virus in the community

Levy et al. (1997) ascertained that respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) became the most prevalent cause of lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) in infants and young children.

“Infections with RSV are a major health problem during early childhood and primary RSV infections occur most often between the ages of 6 weeks and 2 years.

Approximately one half of all infants became infected with RSV during the first year of life…In the US each year approximstely100,000 children are hospitalised at an estimated cost of $300 million. More than half of those admitted for RSV bronchiolitis are between 1 and 3 months of age”

To quote Simoes (1999), “Since it [RSV] was identified as the agents causing chimpanzee coryza in 1956, and after its subsequent isolation from children with pneumonary disease in Baltimore,USA, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) had been described as the single most important virus causing acute respiratory tract infections in children.

The WHO estimates that of the 12.2 million annual deaths in children under 5 years, a third are due to acute infections of the lower respiratory tract.

Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and RSV are the predominant pathogens…vaccinated children were not protected from subsequent RSV infection.

Furthermore, RSV-naïve infants who received formalin-inactivated RSV vaccine, and who were naturally infected with RSV later, developed more severe disease in the lower respiratory tract than a control group immunized with a trivalent parainfluenza vaccine.”…

Data from ten developing countries with intense polio vaccination showed RSV the most frequent cause of lower respiratory tract infections (70% of all cases).”

The yearly cost of bronchiolitis in the USA goes into billions.

Johnson et al. (2014) write, “Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a major cause of disease and hospitalisations in infants and young children worldwide, resulting in more than 3.4 million hospitalisations and more than 200,000 deaths globally.

Medically attended RSV pediatric disease in the USA exceeds $1 billion in direct medical costs annually.

RSV infections also cause significant mortality and morbidity in the elderly and other high risk adults.”…

“Clinical trials of a formalin-inactivated RSV vaccine (F1-RSV) in young infants did not protect against infection, but increased disease severity…

Progress has been hampered by limited immunogenicity, induction of Th2-biased immunity or unacceptable levels of adverse events. Natural RSV infection does not induce long-term protection, possibly due to the ability of RSV to suppress or evade host immunity.”