Polio: the virus

and the vaccine

A special report by Janine Roberts

T
There is a rarely mentioned epidemic raging in the world today, one that is crippling
children in more than 100 countries. In extreme cases the disease starts with a
fever, which is followed by vomiting, delirium and spreading pain. Within days of
being infected, the motor-neurone cells in victims’ spines cease to function properly.
Pain intensifies as victims’ limbs are paralysed. In the very worst cases, their chests
are also paralysed, which prevents them from breathing. Even when the children
recover, the illness often returns in later life. Health authorities say it has no cure.
The number of cases increased by over 250 per cent worldwide between 1996 and
20031. It is a disease with a long history and many names. The condition’s official
name now is ‘Acute Flaccid Paralysis’ but it was once known as ‘infantile paralysis’/
‘poliomyelitis’ (polio for short). Some people called it ‘the crippler’.
 three cotton mills, and in settlements two cups of it directly into the brains of

A shot
Polio is a devastating
disease; the preferred
downstream from those mills. Nearby
there were also orchards on which lead
two monkeys. The monkeys fell severely
ill (as might have been predicted). One
Polio: are
method for fighting it is
vaccination. Yet there is
arsenates were almost certainly in use.
They were also living only a short
died and the other had its legs paralysed.
The scientists then dissected the monkeys pesticides
a mass of historic
distance downstream from the location
of the Vermont outbreak.
and found damage in their central
nervous tissues similar to that found in to blame?

in the dark
evidence that suggests it A further epidemic in Massachusetts human cases of infantile paralysis.8
is not caused by a virus in 1908 caused enormous public concern, Today the World Health Organisation Endocrinologist Morton
but by industrial and
but, despite the evidence that exposure to (WHO) still credits Landsteiner and Biskind said the
toxins might have been responsible, the Popper as having found the poliovirus
agricultural pollution investigating health officials overlooked with this experiment. Why it does so is
spread of polio after
the newly introduced pesticides; they inexplicable. The fluid they injected must WWII was caused by
thought them essential to their war have contained much human cellular the ‘most intensive
against viruses and bacteria – and to the debris, any toxins involved in the child’s
uring the first half of the 20th disease, particularly lead, arsenic and Russian Popow discovered in 1883 that campaign of mass
D century infantile paralysis surged
like a bush fire, moving from place
to place, afflicting large numbers of
mercury. In 1824 the English scientist John
Cooke stated: ‘The fumes of these metals,
or the receptance of them in solution into
the same damage could be done with
arsenic.4 This should have sent
shockwaves through the medical
financial health of the agricultural
industry. Thus, the children paralysed in
Massachusetts were not treated with
toxin antidotes to see if these would
illness, and probably several kinds of
viruses. So, it was no wonder the monkeys
fell so desperately ill. Such a soup could in
no way be considered an ‘isolate’ of the
poisoning in human
history’ – the spraying
children, but only in the industrialised the stomach, often cause paralysis.’ 2 establishment as the arsenic-based of some 3.1 billion
West. Prior to these outbreaks it affected In 1878 the link between palsy and pesticide Paris Green had been widely benefit them. Instead, parents were tiny organism we now call a virus. It was
very few and was often called ‘palsy’. In toxins was strengthened when Alfred used since 1870 to stop Codling moth advised to keep their children clean while also strangely non-infectious for a so- pounds of pesticides
the 19th century scientists gave it the Vulpian found that dogs dosed with lead caterpillars ruining apple crops. But the scientists, distracted by the then called virus, for the monkeys were not
brand new theory that all epidemics had paralysed when made to drink it or when The first epidemic of poliomyelitis in a
name ‘poliomyelitis’, referring to the suffered the same damage in their motor- strangely it didn’t.
to be caused by infectious germs, looked one of their limbs was injected with it, nor tropical nation was contemporaneous with
inflammation of the grey nerves of the neurone cells as found in the human In 1892 Paris Green was replaced in
for the virus ‘responsible’. did they pass it on to other monkeys. The the introduction of the pesticide DDT in that
spinal column in cases of paralysis. victims of infantile paralysis.3 The Massachusetts by the more toxic pesticide
experiment, in fact, shed no light on what country. Towards the end of WWII, US
Poisonous metals
n 1908 two scientists working in had paralysed the monkeys, and for that military camps in the Philippines started to
were suspected of
causing this
During the first half of the 20th century infantile paralysis
surged like a bush fire, moving from place to place, afflicting
large numbers of children… in the industrialised West.
I Austria, Karl Landsteiner and Erwin
Popper, reported that they might have
found an ‘invisible virus’ that had caused
matter, the children.
Nevertheless, the following year
Simon Flexner and Paul Lewis of the
be sprayed daily with DDT in order to kill
flies.29 Writing in The Journal of the
American Medical Association two years
these epidemics. They had made their illustrious Rockefeller Institute for after the war, Albert Sabin reported that
discovery, they claimed, after making a Medical Research in the US ‘proved’ a poliomyelitis became, after conflict, the
suspension in water of minced diseased similarly made noxious soup was major cause of death among the troops
lead arsenate. Two years later the first
spinal cord from a nine-year-old victim of ‘infectious’ by injecting it into the brain stationed at these camps. And yet
recorded epidemic of infantile paralysis
infantile paralysis. They had tested this of one monkey. They then extracted unsprayed neighbouring populations were
struck in Massachusetts’ neighbouring
noxious suspension by injecting one or some fluid from its brain, injected this not affected by the disease.30 At the end of
state of Vermont. The outbreak was
the war, the US military’s stocks of DDT
investigated by Dr Charles Caverly, who
were sold onto the public – despite the
reported that it was probably caused by a
toxin rather than a micro-organism.
Milk paralysis gravest warnings from establishment
scientists.
Caverly said: ‘It usually occurred in Many infantile paralysis outbreaks between 1905 and the 1940s
In 1944, the US federal research centre
families of more than one child, and as would be linked by doctors to supplies of contaminated milk,
the National Institutes of Health reported
no efforts were made at isolation it was including one in 1927 in Broadstairs in Kent. The Broadstairs
that DDT damaged the same part of the
very certain it was non-contagious.’ 5 outbreak was fairly typical. It affected institutions such as boarding
spinal cord (the anterior horn cells) that
Lead arsenate rapidly became the schools that had little contact with each other, but which took milk
is damaged in infantile paralysis.
principal pesticide used on fruit and from a common source.6 These epidemics ended when suspected
Endocrinologist Dr Morton Biskind further
berries throughout the industrial world. milk supplies were stopped. Lead arsenate was being used as a
In 1907 calcium arsenate was introduced cattle dip, but the formaldehyde that used to be added to milk to
for use primarily on cotton crops and in prolong its ‘shelf life’ may also have been responsible. (In 1897 The
cotton mills. A year later 69 healthy Australian Medical Gazette reported that formaldehyde in milk had
children suddenly fell paralytically ill in caused several cases of paralysis.) 7
Massachusetts. They lived in a town with

continued page 39
3 6 T H E E C O L O G I S T M AY 2 0 0 4
 the poliovirus, especially among parents. Middle East, Asia and Africa. In Turkey They had spun a sample to remove larger Polio: are pesticides to blame? (cont.)
‘Especially those who ate the most fresh fruit’ But the authorities had little immediate they found people who called infantile particles, diluted it and injected it into
The use of lead arsenate to spray orchards was widespread in 1930s help for them. They simply advised them paralysis ‘the American disease’. The the brains of mice. The animals described in 1949 how DDT caused
America. Orchards were sprayed 10 or more times a year. Spraying to keep their children clean, away from doctors were surprised: immunity to the unsurprisingly became dangerously ill ‘lesions in the spinal cord resembling
occurred in summer, the season when children went down with places where infections could be passed virus presumably meant that it had and paralysed.15 those in human polio in animals’. He
infantile paralysis. Many researchers associated outbreaks of the on, such as public swimming pools, and infected the population. So, how come it The news of Dalldorf and Sickles’ commented: ‘Despite the fact that DDT is
condition with fruit supplies. The UK threatened to stop imports of US to kill flies. The zeal of the parents was caused no epidemics in these countries? experiment was nevertheless welcomed a highly lethal poison for all species of
apples unless the encouraged by advertisements showing However, the scientists racing to find a by the vaccine scientists. Up to now they animals, the myth has become prevalent
pesticide level was giant flies attacking children. While the vaccine were so convinced that a virus was had struggled to find the poliovirus in among the general population that it is
cut. Tobacco and poorer families responded by swatting to blame that they effectively disregarded human spinal tissue. It would now be safe for man in virtually any quantity. Not
other crops were also flies and using more soap and water, the any evidence to the vastly easier to only is it used in households with
sprayed. Today the more affluent tried to turn their homes contrary. Among collect the reckless abandon so that sprays and
soil in heavily sprayed into sterile zones by constantly spraying these it seems was poliovirus they aerosols are inhaled, the solutions are
areas remains so them with insecticides. But these sprays Jonas Salk. In 1947 believed they had permitted to contaminate skin, bedding
polluted that it is a proved useless. And what was even more he found among the identified from and other textiles.’ The same year in
major problem to perculiar was that doctors reported the debris and toxins of human excrement Germany, Daniel Dresden found that acute
housing developers: disease was affecting mostly the children ‘viral isolates’ from than from human DDT poisoning produced ‘degeneration in
in many places the from better-off families – especially those monkey brain spinal tissue. But the central nervous system’ that seemed
soil has to be who ate the most fresh fruit. People thus experiments what he why was it so hard identical to that reported in severe cases
completely removed. started to call the disease ‘the middle- believed to be the to find it in the of infantile paralysis. 31
class plague’. All this was so utterly poliovirus. Although nerve cells in the
inexplicable that parents were left feeling he had not proved spinal column that
into another monkey, and so on through infectious or contagious one, it would helpless and despairing. that this could cause it supposedly
a series of monkeys, paralysing all of have been looked upon as a joke.’ 10 polio in humans, he damaged – that is
them in the process. Flexner and Lewis Nevertheless, this crude science y the end of the 1930s the hoped he could use where it had to be,
reported: ‘We failed utterly to discover
bacteria… that could account for the
disease [paralysis]… The infecting agent
inspired a 40-year hunt for the infantile
paralysis virus. All kinds of biological
materials – spinal cord, brain, faecal
B vaccine scientists had tested
various ‘viral isolates’ from
infected monkey brains, but when these
it to make a vaccine.
But the highly respected bacteriologist
Claus Jungeblut thought otherwise. He
if it really were the
cause of infantile paralysis?
In 1951 they discovered a reason why.
of epidemic poliomyelitis [probably] matter, even flies – were ground up and isolates were fed orally to monkeys the observed that such ‘viral isolates’ did not Quite simply, it was not always there.
belongs to the class of the minute and injected into monkeys’ brains to try to animals did not fall ill. This was most create in monkeys the same disease as Instead a different virus might be present
‘The great expectation for DDT have been realized.
filterable viruses that have not thus far induce paralysis.11 puzzling. The monkeys produced found in human cases of infantile eg the Coxsackie virus. This news was During 1946 exhaustive tests have shown that when
properly used… DDT is a benefactor of all humanity’
been demonstrated with certainty under antibodies afterwards, so some virus must paralysis.13 He concluded: ‘The highly grimly received. Their planned polio
TIME MAGAZINE, JUNE 1947
the microscope.’ 9 In other words, we’ve eanwhile, US president Franklin have harmlessly infected them. The only specialised … virus which has been vaccine would not work against the
injected a cocktail of viruses, cellular
debris and DNA into a series of monkeys,
and we believe that a virus, not yet
M D Roosevelt, himself a victim of
infantile paralysis, set up in
1938 the National Foundation for
way the scientists found they could
create a version of infantile paralysis in
the monkeys was by injecting large
maintained in the past by intra-cerebral
passage in rhesus monkeys is more likely a
laboratory artefact than the agent which
Coxsackie. There was ‘some feeling of
dismay … [this] added one more problem
to the nebulous conditions surrounding
Yet DDT was used to replace lead
arsenate as a pesticide in fruit farming
identified within this noxious cocktail, is Infantile Paralysis (NFIP). The NFIP quantities of the ‘virus’ suspensions causes the natural disease in man’. In other poliomyelitis… the more we learn about and with which to wash dairy cows. Heavy
responsible! The procedure of Flexner promptly decided that there was no cure directly into their brains. words, the ‘virus’ found by the vaccine poliomyelitis, the less we know,’ wrote levels of DDT were soon reported in milk
and Lewis was just as dubious as their for those already suffering from the In 1941 the work of the virus hunters scientists probably did not exist in the AL Hoynel in the journal The Medical supplies. The organochlorine pesticide
conclusion: they took no account of the disease. It would also refuse to examine received a potentially fatal setback. Dr wild but was a product of their Clinics of North America. A Lancet editorial DDE (which is several times more
contaminants in their mashed-up soup; reports of successful treatment involving John Toomey reported in The Journal of experiments.14 If he were right, the in the same year said this discovery dangerous than DDT) was also widely used
they presumed what happened in antidotes against toxins. It instead Pediatrics that it was not passed between consequences were vast. It could mean brought ‘a crop of new snags’ to in the US. Both were known to penetrate
monkeys would be replicated in humans; focused on raising money for vaccine individuals ‘no matter how intimately that the ‘isolates’ used by Salk to make a developing a vaccine. the blood-brain barrier that protects the
and surprisingly, given the evidence research by releasing stories about the exposed.’ 12 If the disease was non- vaccine injected into over a hundred Soon they discovered that it was human brain from viral invasion.
around at the time, they didn’t inject horrors of infantile paralysis. The worst infective, then it could not be caused by a million people, had no relationship to the possible for many different viruses to be Housewives were actually advised to
samples of cyanide or lead into the brains cases were indeed frightening: some virus and thus a vaccine would not work. human disease it was supposed to counter. present in these damaged nerve cells. If spray DDT to stop infantile paralysis.
of monkeys to see if they also caused victims had to be placed in ‘iron lungs’ to Other holes started to appear in the Then, in 1948 Gilbert Dalldorf and toxins caused the disease, this would be Children’s bedrooms had wallpaper pre-
paralysis. In 1910 neonatologist L help them breathe. virus theory. During WWII army doctors Grace Sickles of the New York easy to explain. Many kinds of viruses are soaked in DDT. Epidemics of infantile
Emmett Holt reported: ‘Even five years This advertising drive was found widespread immunity to the Department of Health triumphantly attracted to toxin-damaged cells. More paralysis started to occur every year.
ago if anyone had suggested that the sensationally successful, effective both in suspected poliovirus, and no evidence of claimed that they had found the virus in bad news for the polio vaccine scientists. By 1952 the number of cases of
disease under discussion was an raising money and in spreading fear of infantile paralysis epidemics, in the the excrement of paralysed children. The public expected them to deliver infantile paralysis was three times higher
than the figure for 1940.
Biskind treated over 200 patients
affected with such neurological
disorders. He found that many of these
patients recovered when foods
contaminated with pesticides were
removed from their diets; this applied

continued page 41
3 8 T H E E C O L O G I S T M AY 2 0 0 4
 Polio: are pesticides to blame? (cont.)

The case against the polio virus particularly to milk products. Biskind
found high concentrations of DDT in
When it was eventually photographed using an electron microscope, the poliovirus was shown to be tiny: an elegant sphere made Massachusetts, US health why viruses might be found on
butter purchased in New York. In 1949 he
up of triangular equal-sized sides, and in all just 25 millionths of a millimetre across. Is this ‘poliovirus’ the cause of infantile inspector Herbert Emerson noted damaged motor neuron cells in
wrote: ‘Though it was originally observed
that most cases occurred in cases of infantile paralysis. He
paralysis / polio? Or is it an ancient and harmless companion of the human race? All the evidence suggestes the latter: in 1945 that DDT is absorbed through the
households with no sewers and posited that the body itself might
skin, accumulates in the body fat and
1 It had been around humans set up the rules for declaring a children of US middle-class low hygiene. If the CDC’s theory activate or produce these viruses,
appears in the milk of animals, it has
for thousands of years and in disease to be caused by a virus. parents were uniquely liable to fall was sound these children would perhaps when under threat or to
recently become almost universal practice
nature only reproduces in human The 1st Postulate states that the ill with infantile paralysis because have had antibodies and been clean up cellular damage. While
to spray cattle with DDT… Although young
throats or guts. Such viruses are virus must be found in every case in their infancy parents kept them immune to polio. In reality, they ‘the fundamental cause of human
poliomyelitis appears to be a animals are much more susceptible to the
normally totally harmless, since of the disease as defined by its away from the dirt in which the were the ones who fell ill.
poison or toxin’, Scobey said, ‘the effects of DDT than adults, so far as the
we have become adapted to symptoms – but the poliovirus was virus lives. This meant these 6 If guilty of causing paralysis, it virus is synthesised or activated available literature is concerned, it does
them and they to us. It lived in not always present in such cases children were not infected when it would have to travel from the gut within the human body as a result not appear that the effects of such
the dirt ingested by human of poliomyelitis.25 was safest – while protected by through the formidable blood-brain of the poisoning’. He suggested concentrations on infants and children
infants, and did not hurt them. their mothers’ milk. Once again, barrier that protects our brains and have even been considered.’ 32
4 It widely infects children that the virus might remain
Instead it helped activate their this theory contradicted everything spinal cords. We still have not Despite the official complacency about
without causing them any illness. ‘dormant’ within cells until
immune system, giving them a known about infectious illness: observed it doing this, despite substances like DDT and DDE, a few
The Koch Postulates lay down that something activates it. We now
stronger resistance to illness. good hygiene nearly always stops many decades of intense research. doctors did consider the effects of toxins.
if it causes a disease, it should do know that the poliovirus can be
epidemics; with infantile paralysis, dormant. It is also widely known Some reported successfully treating
2 If it were the dangerous so whenever it infects.
the CDC argued, good hygiene was 7 It is rarely found in human
pathogen that causes infantile that toxic-damaged tissues paralysed patients with dimercaprol, an
5 It seemed mostly to infect the the cause.26 blood – the easiest route from the
paralysis, then it would be more attract viruses. One of the anti-toxin that is still used in hospitals
cleanest children of middle-class Furthermore, the CDC’s theory gut to the blood-brain barrier. Yet
common in countries with standard tests for toxins, the since it ‘binds’ heavy metal poisons such
parents. Infectious viruses are not was based on the assumption that this is where Jonas Salk’s vaccine
infantile paralysis epidemics, and Ames Assay, utilises the fact that as arsenic and lead and renders them non-
supposed to behave in this way: working-class children are uniquely was supposed to intercept it. if viruses mutate and multiply in
less common in countries with toxic. In 1951 Dr Irwin Eskwith reported
they are indiscriminate as to social exposed to ordinary dirt. Yet surely the presence of a certain amount
no infantile paralysis epidemics. 8 It has never been observed successfully using dimercaprol to cure a
class, and do not thrive in middle-class children also go out of a chemical then that amount is
But the reverse is true. reproducing in victims’ motor child suffering from bulbar paralysis, the
conditions of good hygiene. into the garden? The theory was dangerously toxic. Scobey went
neurone cells.27 most severe form of infantile paralysis.33
3 To say it causes polio may The US Centers for Disease also conceived without checking on to list anti-toxins that had A medical journal also reported that 17
violate one of the most famous Control and Prevention (CDC) has medical reports on the early AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSITION proved effective in curing polio, acute cases of polio were cured after
laws of virology. These are published a theory to explain this epidemics of infantile paralysis. Poliomyelitis researcher Dr Ralph citing 11 scientific papers written treatment with very large doses of another
called the Koch Postulates. They extraordinary behaviour. The Referring to a 1908 epidemic in Scobey suggested in 1954 a reason between 1936 and 1949.28 anti-toxin – ascorbic acid.34
A year earlier investigators from the US
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had
vaccines that would stop the epidemics, ‘growing bed’ for the virus. They would viral corpses that would also protect us control groupand thus in my view cast announced: ‘The finding of [liver] cell
but it was now evident that their polio be trapped, imported and slaughtered by against living wild poliovirus. To kill the doubt on the validity of his results, for it alteration at dietary levels as low as five
vaccines would, at the very best, only the hundreds of thousands to make the virus he poisoned it with formaldehyde made it impossible to tell just what parts per million of DDT, and the
prevent some cases, the ones with their polio vaccines, and are still caught in the before putting it into his vaccine. impact his vaccine had had. It could have considerable storage of the chemical [in
poliovirus present. wild today for the purpose of testing the In 1954 he tested this concoction on been that many of the cases of polio in body fats]… makes it extremely likely
And yet despite all the doubts and UK vaccine. more than 400,000 US children. It was the control group were caused by one that the potential hazard of DDT has been
contrary findings, the vaccine research reported afterwards that ‘only’ 112 of the dose of his vaccine – there was nothing underestimated.’ Polio epidemics had
continued. In 1949 John Enders and y 1954 Salk had his polio vaccine children who received three jabs of his in the published accounts I have seen to

B
been becoming more and more severe
Thomas Weller discovered how to grow ready for testing. (He confessed to vaccine contracted polio within the next say that this was not so. from 1945 onwards. Biskind reported that
the poliovirus in cell cultures, rather than ‘sacrificing’ some 17,000 monkeys few months. Salk judged his experiment Salk claimed that his vaccine protected this was due to the ‘most intensive
only in the brains of living animals.16 This in the process of developing it) He based a success. 18 But his safety-test results ‘30 to 90 per cent’ of those who received it campaign of mass poisoning in known
made possible the commercial production the vaccine on his theory that children omitted all cases of children who were (a remarkably vague statistic). But more human history’, the spraying of some 3.1
of virus-based vaccines. Then it was would gain immunity to living poliovirus paralysed after one or two doses of the than 60 per cent could have been immune billion pounds of pesticides. 35
discovered how to grow their poliovirus if dead poliovirus were injected into them. vaccine – or within two weeks of taking already, at least according to the theory of In a 1953 paper published in the
on cheap monkey kidney and testicle He hoped our sensitive immune system the third dose. These were counted as The polio virus necessary for the vaccine was grown the US federal agency the Centers for American Journal of Digestive Diseases
cells.17 Monkeys soon became the would react by creating antibodies to these cases of polio in the non-vaccinated on the kidneys of wild-caught monkeys. Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Biskind said: ‘It was known by 1945 that
DDT is stored in the body fat of mammals
and appears in [their] milk… Yet, far from
admitting a causal relationship [between
DDT and polio] so obvious that in any
other field of biology it would be instantly
accepted, virtually the entire apparatus
of communication, lay and scientific

continued page 43
4 0 T H E E C O L O G I S T M AY 2 0 0 4
that working-class children were already Manchester Guardian, Alistair Cooke cases were reported, some of them after these new regulations, four months later Prior to 1956, the authorities recorded Polio: are pesticides to blame? (cont.)
immune as a result of exposure to the virus wrote: ‘Nothing short of the overthrow of inoculation with other brands.’ 19 more than 2,000 cases of infantile a patient as having paralytic polio
in dirt. It is not known if Salk ever checked the Communist regime in the Soviet Within two weeks of the launch the paralysis were recorded in Boston, (infantile paralysis) if they suffered from alike, has been devoted to denying,
to see if children were already immune Union could bring such rejoicing to the number of cases of polio in vaccinated despite the vaccination of 130,000 paralytic symptoms for 24 hours. After concealing, suppressing, distorting and
before he vaccinated them, but Hilary hearts and homes in America as the children had nearly reached 200. This children in the city. The previous year it 1956 patients had to have these paralytic attempts to convert into its opposite the
Koprowski reported in 1957 that the historic announcement last Tuesday that created near panic in the White House. had seen only 273 cases. The number of symptoms for at least 60 days to be overwhelming evidence. Libel, slander
inhabitants of the Congo were 85 per cent the 166-year war against poliomyelitis is President Eisenhower had publicly cases doubled in counted as having and economic boycott have not been
immune before they ever saw a dose of almost certainly at an end.’ endorsed the vaccine at its launch, so he vaccinated New York polio. As many overlooked in this campaign.’ 36
polio vaccine. (Amazingly this didn’t stop sent the US health secretary Oveta State and people recovered US farmers had been officially
Medical Fraud
Koprowski. He went on to uselessly Hobby to make it very plain to the Connecticut, and within 60 days, this recommended to stop washing cattle with
he triumph following the launch
administer to them hundreds of thousands
of doses of his experimental vaccine.)
The Salk vaccine could have been
derailed if a 1954 report by Dr Bernice
T of the Salk vaccine was short-
lived. The medical historian Dr M
Beddow Baily recorded what happened
Surgeon General that the president
needed to be spared the embarrassment
of further such cases.
On 8 May 1955 the Surgeon General
tripled in Vermont.
They increased by
five times in both
Rhode Island and
measure alone
dramatically cut the
official number of
cases. This ‘drop’ in
DDT in 1949, but this advice was not
enforced and was mostly ignored. In 1950
supplies of US milk were found to contain
up to twice the amount of DDT that was
next: ‘Only 13 days after the vaccine had
Eddy, the scientist in charge of the US suspended the entire US production of Wisconsin. Many polio cases was needed to produce severe illness in
been acclaimed by the whole of the US
government safety-testing lab, had been the vaccine. After hurried meetings were paralysed in publicly credited to humans. Biskind and fellow poliomyelitis
press and radio as one of the greatest
taken seriously. Eddy stated that when between Salk, manufacturers and the the injected arm. the vaccine. researcher Ralph Scobey were invited to
medical discoveries of the centur y, and
she tested the Salk vaccine it caused surgeon general, distribution of the It seemed that Furthermore, all testify to Congress in 1950 and in 1951,
two days after the British ministry of
severe paralysis in monkeys. She vaccine was resumed five days later, with the vaccine would cases of polio respectively.37 They drew up a formidable
health had announced it would go right
photographed the diseased monkeys, new regulations in place to ensure better soon be totally occurring within 30 case for banning DDT, citing the work of
ahead with the manufacture of the
took these photos to her boss – and was standards in the vaccine laboratories. discredited. So, to days of vaccination many scientists. In 1951 the US Public
vaccine, came the first news of disaster.
reprimanded as an alarmist. She was not The general consensus was that these protect the (such as the first 200 Health Service said: ‘DDT is a delayed-
Children inoculated with one brand of
sure what it was in the vaccine that cases had been caused by viruses in the President, Salk, the cases that had so action poison. Due to the fact that it
the vaccine had developed poliomyelitis.
caused the paralysis: was it a virus, vaccine that had survived the vaccine alarmed the White accumulates in the body tissues,
In the following days more and more
cellular debris or a toxin? Something formaldehyde, despite evidence that manufacturers and House) were in especially in females, the repeated
In 1955 Salk’s polio vaccine was pronounced totally
repeated injections can themselves from the safe and effective in providing complete protection future not to be inhalation or ingestion of DDT constitutes
against poliomyelitis
cause paralysis. humiliation of an blamed on the a distinct health hazard. The deleterious
The first news of disaster came only 13 days after However, despite unmitigated failure, vaccine but to be effects are manifested principally in the
Salk was awarded a Congressional Medal in 1955 the US health authorities had to recorded as ‘pre-existing’. liver, spleen, kidneys and spinal cord…
dramatically slash the incidence of But Salk continued to worr y. Despite DDT is excreted in the milk of cows and of
with his vaccine being acclaimed as one of the poliomyelitis. They managed this by its regulatory and statistical ‘success’, the nursing mothers.’
greatest medical discoveries of the century. simply changing the way they recorded reputation of his vaccine was
the incidents of poliomyelitis. It worked plummeting. In June 1955 the British ffective action was slow to be taken,
quite deadly was clearly present. (One
year later, after her warnings proved true,
like this: doctors’ union the Medical Practitioners’ E however: the health establishment was
in total denial as far as pesticide effects on
she was stopped from working on polio.) humans were concerned. Precautions were
On April 12 1955, Salk’s polio vaccine Vaccine Paralysis put in place too slowly and too late to stop
was pronounced totally safe and effective the greatest of all the infantile paralysis
in providing complete protection against 1 Muscles can be poisoned and paralysed by being repeatedly
epidemics – that of 1952, when some
poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis), when it injected with vaccines or antibiotics; this is now called ‘provocation
57,700 cases were reported across the US,
was launched by the National paralysis’, and was no secret in the 1950s. In 1952 vaccinations had
of which a third had paralytic symptoms.
Foundation for Infantile Paralysis before been suspended for the summer in the UK and US (the ‘infantile
By the end of the 1952 epidemic there
an invited audience of 500 doctors and paralysis season’) as the injected arms of many children had been
was a vast amount of evidence to suggest
200 journalists. The launch ceremony paralysed. The Lancet had reported: ‘Clinically, the cases associated
that infantile paralysis was not caused by
was relayed by closed-circuit television to with recent immunisations were indistinguishable from the acute
a virus:
some 54,000 doctors in cities throughout cases of paralytic poliomyelitis.’ 20 By 1955 US children were receiving
the US and Canada. Salk was three injections with Salk’s polio vaccine, as well as the smallpox and 1 Farm and domestic animals were
immediately awarded a Congressional whooping cough vaccines. paralysed at the same time as children.
Medal by US president Dwight 2 Also, the Salk vaccine was far from pure. We now know that it was Chickens that had become lame were
Eisenhower. Church bells were rung in contaminated with a small amount of formaldehyde and viral debris. found to have suffered motor neurone
celebration of Salk’s victory. In The damage. The poliovirus only infected
humans and thus could not have caused
the animals’ paralysis. Exposure to
poisons, on the other hand, can damage
many different species at the same time.

2 Most cases of paralysis were incurred

within 48 hours of each other. That is not

continued page 45
4 2 T H E E C O L O G I S T M AY 2 0 0 4
 Non-paralytic Aseptic new rule, 49 per cent were found to have paralysis cases had sharply increased Polio: are pesticides to blame? (cont.)
polio cases meningitis cases no poliovirus. They had to be reclassified after the introduction of Salk’s vaccine.
1951-1960 70,083 0 as having ‘non-poliomyelitis acute Without the Coxsackie and aseptic the pattern for infectious outbreaks,
1961-1982 589 102,999 flaccid paralysis’ even though they were meningitis reclassifications, for example, which start slowly, grow faster as the
1983-1992 0 117,366 suffering from symptoms identical to the number of reported cases of paralytic infection spreads and then diminish as
Jim West, Images of Poliomyelitis poliomyelitis with the same paralysis polio would have doubled from 2,500 in immunity develops. It is the pattern of a
and the same pain. Other polio cases 1957 to 5,000 in 1959. 23 mass poisoning event.
These classifications are still used
were reclassified as ‘Guillian-Barré This deliberate fraud did not go
today. Last year the US National Center
syndrome’, which some researchers now entirely unnoticed, however. Dr Bernard 3 Parents reported that some children
for Infectious Diseases reported no cases
think is what crippled Roosevelt. Yet Greenberg, the then head of the fell ill immediately after eating fresh fruit
of poliomyelitis but 30,000 to 50,000
more cases are now referred to as ‘Hand, Department of Biostatistics at the Fruit was sprayed heavily with lead
cases of aseptic meningitis requiring
Foot and Mouth Disease’, which can also University of North Carolina, testified at arsenate at the time.
hospitalisation. There are probably
cause paralysis. And last year the a 1962 Congressional hearing that
several times this number of incidents of 4 The illness was relieved by the
Coxsackie virus was found in cases of infantile paralysis cases had increased
aseptic meningitis that did not require administration of antidotes for chemical
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), which after the introduction of the vaccine by
hospitalisation, but statistics are no poisoning, and chemicals associated with
sometimes shows polio-like symptoms of 50 per cent from 1957 to 1958, and by
longer kept for such cases. poisoning appeared in the diseased tissues
muscle damage; in the past CFS might 80 per cent from 1958 to 1959. He
Then another scam was enacted to of the victims of paralytic polio – including
have been classified as a form of polio. concluded that US health officials had
massage down the poliomyelitis figures. It oestrogenic chemicals now widely
If this process of reclassification had manipulated the statistics to give entirely
took advantage of the 1951 discovery that associated with environmental poisoning.
not occurred, it would have been the opposite impression. 24
different viruses could be present in cases
impossible to hide the fact that infantile 5 The spread of poliomyelitis was not
By the time Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was introduced in affected by the closure of schools, as it
What are viruses? should have been if the disease was
Union wrote: America in 1955, the level of infantile paralysis in the infectious. Nor did close contact with
‘These The pharmaceutical industry makes vast profits by exploiting paranoia
misfortunes
country was already a third of what it had been in 1952, about viruses, so it is important to understand just what viruses are.
paralysed children spread paralysis. Yet
the virus presumed to cause the illness
would be almost due to legislative restrictions on the use of pesticides. When viruses were first discovered they were presumed to be was highly infectious, as was shown by
endurable if a enemies. (The word ‘virus’ is Latin for ‘poisonous fluid’.) This was a the widespread presence of antibodies for
whole new generation were to be host of other diseases to attract funding. of infantile paralysis. Prior to 1958 this serious misconception. it among healthy individuals.
rendered permanently immune to the And this is exactly what they did. Prior to did not matter. A doctor diagnosed a We now know that human bodies need and create viruses. Our cells
disease. In fact, there is no evidence that 1958 the definition of infantile paralysis person with polio by taking note of their contain tiny molecular engineers, known as transposons, which cut 6 There was little or no correlation
any lasting immunity is achieved.’ 21 (polio) included cases in which paralysis evident symptoms. They did not and adapt our DNA. Sometimes we may need to send genetic code between the prevalence of polio
The following month Canada was minimal: perhaps manifesting itself investigate to see if the poliovirus were from one cell to another – perhaps so as to resolve genetic problems antibodies in the population and the
suspended its distribution of Salk’s as a very stiff neck, often accompanied present. In 1958 a new regulation was put or to deal with toxins. Cells can do this by turning transposons into incidence of paralytic polio. In fact
vaccine. By November all European by widespread pain. Polio also included in place requiring doctors to only register messengers that carry genetic code from cell to cell. Travelling patients deemed to be recovering from
countries had suspended distribution cases of ‘meningitis’, or of inflammation a patient as having polio if the poliovirus transposons are called ‘endogenous’ viruses: we manufacture them paralytic polio were found to ‘be
plans, apart from Denmark. By January of the membrane that protects the brain were present, something that was very ourselves. They are essential to our genetic information highway. We completely lacking’ in polio antibodies. 38
1957 17 US states had stopped distributing and spinal neurons. The CDC describes difficult to establish for sure. For a start, it make millions of such viruses.
7 And the most virulent viral epidemics
the vaccine. The same year The New York such cases as ‘serious but rarely fatal’.22 was impossible to tell by looking at Other viruses are ‘exogenous’: they originate from outside the
human body. They must enter (infect) cells in order to ‘reproduce’. Some occur when viruses are newly introduced
Times reported that nearly 50 per cent of Prior to 1958 these cases were symptoms. The Textbook of Child Neurology
kill the cells they use to do this – others do not. If they are viruses that into populations. The poliovirus had been
cases of infantile paralysis in children scientifically referred to as ‘non-paralytic reported: ‘Coxsackie virus and echoviruses
we have never met before, then they are more likely to be dangerous to present long before the epidemics
between the ages of five and 14 had poliomyelitis’, or polio for short. can cause paralytic syndromes that are
us. Such a virus has recently been found present in 85 per cent of all started. The use of chemical pesticides,
occurred after vaccination. Henceforward, they would be reclassified. clinically indistinguishable from paralytic
cases of a cancer, mesothelioma, which is caused by asbestos. This in contrast, began just before the
So, more regulatory and statistical The Los Angeles County health poliomyelitis.’ This new requirement for
virus, SV40, seemingly makes this toxin more dangerous to us, by epidemics started.
changes were needed in order to give the authorities stated: ‘Most cases reported doctors caused a vast drop in the number
polio vaccine the appearance of a prior to July 1 1958 of non-paralytic of cases registered as poliomyelitis – a switching off a human gene, p53, which protects us against cancer.
Slowly, the US authorities began to act.
triumph of modern medicine. What poliomyelitis are now reported as viral or drop that ever since has been credited And yet many exogenous viruses also do us no harm. We sometimes
Following the FDA secured legislative
better way to achieve this than to aseptic meningitis.’ The incidence of solely to the vaccine. welcome them by making their genetic code part of our DNA. As such
restrictions on the use of pesticides in
reclassify all the cases of polio into meningitis soared as official polio cases So, when patients diagnosed as these harmless viruses are likely to have been around humanity for a
195439 and 195640, the incidence of
numerous other diseases resulting in a declined, as the following table (compiled having polio in a 1958 epidemic in long time. We have become adapted to each other.
infantile paralysis in the US plummeted
massive reduction in polio cases, and a from national surveillance reports)shows. Detroit were re-tested as required by this immediately. By the time Jonas Salk’s
polio vaccine was publicly released in
1955, the level of infantile paralysis in
the US was already below a half of what it
had been in 1952. The figures for the UK
were even more dramatic: the incidence
of infantile paralysis fell by more than 82
per cent between 1950 and the first mass
administration of the vaccine in 1957.
4 4 T H E E C O L O G I S T M AY 2 0 0 4
 These cases are left without a cure –and
The World Health Organisation (WHO) confidently
even without a vaccine! They become
predicts that polio epidemics are all but over and effectively a hidden epidemic.
that the poliovirus itself will become extinct by the WHO makes even bolder claims for
Europe and the Americas. It states that
end of 2004. Who is it trying to fool and why?
they are now free of both polio and AFP.
On closer inspection, WHO’s figures do
not bear much scrutiny. It declares that
there is ‘no data’ for the number of cases

The hidden
of AFP in the UK and the US. It then
interprets ‘no data’ as if it means ‘zero’.41
But the US government’s Centres for
Disease Control (CDC) does not agree
The CDC records that many thousands
of cases of AFP occur in the US every

epidemic
year. It reports that AFP can have many
causes. For example, it says that Guillain-
Barré disease causes 17 cases of AFP per
100,000 of the US population. That
translates into around 50,000 cases
annually. The CDC also says that every
year there are some 30,000 to 50,000
cases of aseptic meningitis serious
he disease that struck down so

T
rapidly getting worse. enough to require hospitalisation. Both
many in the 20th century Take the WHO’s figures for the east Guillain-Barré disease and aseptic
epidemics was then known as Asian/Pacific region as an example. They meningitis were diagnosed as polio
infantile paralysis, or poliomyelitis. It was reveal that the incidence of AFP went up during the US epidemics prior to 1957. If
this disease the polio vaccines were between 1994 and 1998 by 50 per cent you use the pre-1957 definition, then The search for a virus and vaccine
intended to eliminate. But today infantile in China, 400 per cent in Malaysia, and
paralysis is renamed as Acute Flaccid
there are many more cases of for polio was based on a flawed
1,500 per cent in the Pacific islands. But poliomyelitis occurring in the US today,
Paralysis (AFP). How could the WHO be other than providing these statistics, than there were in 1952 – at the height theory. This tragically distracted the
claiming to have nearly eliminated this WHO pays little attention to any of
disease when, by its own figures,
of the US polio epidemics. medical establishment from the
these cases in which the poliovirus is To this tally of ‘Acute Flaccid
epidemics of AFP are not ending but absent – meaning nearly all of them. Paralysis’ one could add the many more more likely to cause the environmental science that might received up to 10 doses of
disease than prevent it.
cases of AFP reported by the CDC as have cured a large number of the vaccine.
occurring in an epidemic that has swept How does WHO But this is the strangest
across the US over the past five years, distinguish the very few children – and which could still do so tool for the WHO to choose
and which is attributed to the ‘West Nile’ cases of AFP it says are to eradicate the poliovirus
virus (WNV). The CDC states that WNV caused by polio from other cases of AFP? virus is very hard to find’ and research with. Sabin’s vaccine, unlike Salk’s,
can cause a ‘polio-like’ paralysis. Many It cannot do this easily – as there is no shows that ‘there was no relationship contains living mutated poliovirus. This
scientists have been less ambiguous. distinguishing symptom. It instead between finding the virus and the course will breed in the vaccinated. WHO
They say WNV is clinically instructs doctors to send two samples of of the disease’. It adds that presence of recommends this vaccine for the
indistinguishable from poliomyelitis. 42 excrement from AFP patients to one of the virus in the central nervous system developing world for this very reason, for
A paper recently published by the British the scores of laboratories it has set up (CNS) ‘appeared to have no diagnostic the vaccinated widely spread the virus, to
Medical Journal suggests WNV may be around the world. These inspect the significance.’ 45 And yet this is the very infect and immunise those who have
‘rapidly evolving to fill new ecological excrement for poliovirus. If it is present, reason given for the need to vaccinate refused vaccination. WHO is thus
niches’.43 In 2003 there were 9,389 cases then they register this as a case of against the poliovirus. strangely choosing to spread a poliovirus
of this disease in the US, of which 2,773 poliomyelitis. If they don’t find the in order to eliminate it!
showed damage to the nervous system virus, then it is registered as a case of he Sabin polio vaccine has been WHO shows little concern over
and 246 were fatal. Some researchers
think WNV has links to pesticides and
other pollutants. A legal action is
‘Non-Poliomyelitis AFP’. 44 But this WHO
test is in effect meaningless. The
poliovirus is by definition a type of
T chosen by WHO to finally eradicate
the poliovirus. It hopes to achieve
this by inspecting the excrement from
replacing the natural poliovirus in the
environment with an ‘unnatural’
laboratory-made mutated poliovirus bred
currently underway in New York to stop enterovirus, which means a stomach every case of AFP reported. Should it find in monkey cells. This is astonishing,
the aerial spraying of the city with bug. Its presence in excrement is thus a case in which the poliovirus is present, given that this synthetic virus does not
Malathion, an organophosphate natural – and does not indicate that it then the polio vaccine will be remain stable, but continues to mutate.
pesticide first used in the 1950s. The city has damaged nerves. administered on a national scale so as to Poliovirus contains RNA – a type of
authorities want to use it to kill the WHO actively discourages doctors eliminate the risk of its spreading. This genetic coding that allows rapid
mosquitoes it blames for WNV. The from looking for the poliovirus has happened now so many times that mutation – and the vaccine’s mutated
litigants maintain that the pesticide is themselves in cases of AFP, because ‘the in countries like India children have poliovirus has acquired a reputation

4 6 T H E E C O L O G I S T M AY 2 0 0 4 T H E E C O L O G I S T M AY 2 0 0 4 4 7
among researchers for the speed with developing nations as infantile paralysis cause of all paralytic epidemics.
which it does this. The virus can also ceased to be the ‘American disease’. The One hopeful sign of progress was a
reside inside humans for more than 20 first polio epidemic in Manila happened recent report by the US National
years, making it practically impossible to in 1972. Today the WHO encourages Academy of Sciences, documenting how
exterminate. And what is more shocking, developing nations to use cheap DDT to current levels of food contamination by
but not surprising given the nature of kill malaria-spreading mosquitoes, while organophosphates can cause ‘acute
viruses, it is now reappearing in more it organises vaccination campaigns in poisoning in children’. 48 Another
mutated forms in outbreaks on several the same countries to fight the polio that ground-breaking piece of recent research
continents.46 The danger now is that DDT may cause. Effectively, the pesticide focused on treating individuals suffering
these might now evolve to present a companies are now partners to the WHO from paralysis up to 40 years after
threat that the natural virus never did. in its war against viruses. It’s safer for becoming ill with poliomyelitis. A group
them to blame a virus for polio than of 17 individuals were placed into an
But why do we still have epidemics of pesticides: viruses can’t be sued. environment from which most toxic
infantile paralysis/AFP? WHO is now raising over a billion substances had been removed, and were
Organochlorine and organophosphate dollars, not to cure those still suffering treated with antidotes to toxins. ‘Long-
pesticides are back in widespread use. from the original disease, not to look to term follow-up of the 14 improved
They may be better regulated, but their see if toxins caused the children’s patients showed general return of
toxins still accumulate in body fats until paralysis, but solely as a matter of pride wellbeing and renewed vigour,’ and
they reach dangerous levels. The level of to try to win for the polio vaccine a ‘eight became totally pain-free’. The
pesticide pollution on farmland in seeming victory by eliminating a researchers concluded that ‘post-polio
America is now so bad that the US practically harmless virus. syndrome’ was due to an ‘overload of
Environmental Protection Agency It states on its website: ‘There is no environmental pollutants on wounded
‘estimates that there are 10,000 to 20,000 cure for polio: its effects are irreversible.’ target organs’.49
cases of physician-diagnosed
pesticide poisonings’ every he evidence thus strongly
year among agricultural
workers. The CDC reports that
approximately one billion
The evidence strongly suggests
that the polio epidemics of the T suggests that the infantile
paralysis (polio)
epidemics of the past were
pounds of pesticides are now past were man-made and caused man-made disasters caused
used every year in the US. The primarily by the gross overuse
primarily by the gross overuse of
global market for pesticides of very dangerous pesticides,
was estimated at $1,761 billion very dangerous pesticides and that these epidemics are
in 1989; it would surely be continuing. The poliovirus,
bigger today. This is only so because public funds have along with other viruses, may play a
The fact is, the victory won against been wasted on an ineffective and role, but it seems it is a far smaller role
pesticides in the early 1950s was very wrongly targeted vaccine that cannot than that given to it by the vaccine
short-lived. In 1955, the very year that cure a single case of AFP. This is nothing industry. The weight of evidence also
Salk’s vaccine was launched, other than tragic for the thousands of strongly suggests that the search for this
organophosphate pesticides were children involved. virus, and for a vaccine, was and is based
introduced into the US in partial on a flawed theory. This has tragically
replacement for organochlorines like And finally, why is the WHO ignoring distracted the medical establishment
DDT. The organophosphates were the possible role of pesticides, and from the science that might have cured a
perhaps less dangerous than the sticking with its vaccination assault? large number of children – and which
organochlorines, but they were still Is it because in our increasingly could still do so.
highly neurotoxic. specialised, non-holistic world, the The consequence of the campaign to
It was only after the publication of virologists involved with vaccines have spin the polio vaccine as a great success
Rachel Carson’s sensational book Silent not been talking to the toxicologists is not simply that the public has been
Spring in 1962, telling how pesticides involved with chemicals? Despite the deceived. If toxins are the primary cause
were endangering the survival of fact that there are literally hundreds of of this disease, then countless thousands
America’s symbolic bald eagles, that papers produced by the latter of paralysed children have never been
more meaningful restrictions were put documenting how pesticides can harm treated correctly. Many could have had
on organophosphates and the remaining our immune systems, dramatically lower their pain removed. Many might have
organochlorines. They were banned in the number of our vital illness-fighting been able to walk again. This is not some
the US in 1972, but not for long. In 1983 ‘T-cells’, and cause numerous other abstract academic issue: it affects real
organophosphate pesticides were diseases as well as paralysis 47, this people, enduring real suffering and real
reintroduced. research unfortunately does not seem to paralysis. This is a story of a hidden
During the ban, US pesticide be filtering through to the vaccine epidemic. It is surely time to cast aside
manufacturers simply shifted markets. industry, which is still based on the the fog of doctrine and urgently consider
They redirected most of their sales to the theory that viruses must be the principal what can be done to cure such people.

4 8 T H E E C O L O G I S T M AY 2 0 0 4
 ‘If you continue to allow these contaminated [polio] could grow enough viruses on a single
kidney to make around 6,000 doses of
vaccines to go out, I guarantee you that over the the vaccine – enough for 2,000 children
next 20 years you will have epidemics of cancer at 3 doses each. In 1955 this meant they
unlike the world has ever seen’. Bernice Eddy’s required the kidneys of some 47,710
monkeys for the US – and some 8,000 for
testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1972. the UK vaccine.1
The monkeys were flown via London
to the US. On average, half of the
monkeys died on route or were rejected

Poisonous
as too infected or ill to use on arrival. But
some two million wild-caught monkeys
arrived in good enough shape to be killed
in the West for polio vaccine production
and testing over the next decades.
In 1955, the UK adopted the Salk

vaccines
vaccine against the recommendation of
its local manufacturer, Wellcome, which
wanted instead to use a vaccine it
thought safer as it was not grown in
monkeys but in fertilized chicken eggs.
Sweden and Canada would also refuse to
he 1950’s race to be the first with a readily, and would be a few pence

T polio vaccine was led by Jonas Salk

and Albert Sabin. Both designed
polio vaccines intended to make people
cheaper than the alternatives.
Salk and Sabin must have known that
monkey viruses were a serious danger.
use monkey cells – instead they grew
their vaccines’ polio virus on human
cells multiplied in laboratories.

immune by exposing them to millions of Sabin had lost a colleague to a monkey

n 1954, the scientist in charge of the US
polio virus. Both would be administered
in multiple doses to several hundred
million children.
Making so much vaccine required a
virus (Simian Virus B) during vaccine-
related research in 1932. And, Dr Herald
R Cox, the Principal Bacteriologist of the
United States Public Health Service, had
I government’s safety testing laboratory,
Bernice Eddy, made a shocking
discovery. Her monkeys, after being dosed
with the monkey kidney preparation, had
vast amount of polio virus. There was a forbidden his scientists from using
collapsed and died. This should have been
fierce debate over what kind of cell to monkeys to make a polio vaccine because
the end for the Salk vaccine – but
grow this virus in. Some advocated of the danger monkey virus represented.
astonishingly it wasn’t. Instead, Eddy was
breeding it in fertilized chicken eggs, Nonetheless Salk and Sabin pressed
silenced by her employer, the federal
others in human placental cells grown in on with monkeys. They both selected the
National Institutes of Health.
laboratory vessels, and others in dishes rhesus monkey found in the temples of
Eddy continued to worr y. In 1959 she
containing the cells of wild-caught northern India. They used their kidneys,
took matters into her own hands. She
monkeys. Salk and Sabin decided to use since these are large and easy to remove
went back unauthorised to put the Salk
monkeys, since they could provide large and their testicles, since these are even
polio vaccine through more tests. She
organs on which the virus would grow easier to extract. They calculated they
was horrified to find that, when she
injected its growth medium into 23
hamsters, 20 of them grew large cancer
tumours. She investigated further and
found the Salk preparation had infected
the hamsters with a monkey virus. This
would be named Simian Virus 40 (SV40)
as it was the 40th monkey virus
discovered. Again her boss would react
with fury, and ordered her to remain
silent. This time she didn’t. In 1960, at a
meeting of the New York Cancer Society,
she told them what happened when she
had tested the Salk vaccine. She was
immediately demoted by the National
Institutes of Health. They took her
laboratory from her and delayed
publication of her research.
Meanwhile the Salk vaccine was
 proving ineffective. Children vaccinated vaccine-damaged child. US) to use SV40 contaminated vaccine.7 Yet in 1988 the UK Health Minister
Making the vaccine with it were still coming down in The implication of what Merck said to On top of this, the same internal memo would assure Parliament that, although
To mass vaccinate, the vaccine scientists had to produce a stable hundreds with polio. The Journal of the the Surgeon General was that both the Salk revealed that the company was not only the polio vaccine was once contaminated
‘seed-stock’ of poliovirus from which they could breed the huge American Medical Association would carry and Sabin polio vaccines had been released using the SV40-free African Green with SV40, American research had
amounts of virus needed for the vaccine. The process they used was an article admitting, ‘It is now generally and given to children by the million Monkeys to make the vaccine but was showed SV40 to be harmless.
crude and very liable to viral contamination. recognised that much of the Salk despite their manufacturers being unable ‘harvesting kidneys’ from a monkey
They made a suspension in water of diseased spinal tissue from vaccine used in the US has been to remove from them their monkey virus species from the Philippines, the Is the Current Polio Vaccine Safe?
polio victims, and injected this into the living brains of monkeys. They worthless.’ 2 By 1959, preparations had contamination. Whilst Merck honourably carcopithecus, that did carry SV40. Michael Steward, Professor of
believed that the more times they repeated this the larger, more begun to replace it with its main rival, withdrew from doing this, other And another memo forced out into Immunology at the London School for
stable and purer the seed-stock of polioviruses produced for the the Sabin oral vaccine. companies would irresponsibly continue. the open revealed that Lederle had Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, headed a
vaccine would become. The UK and US Health Departments, and totally ignored the FDA regulation that team working on new vaccines, so I
ehind the scenes, news of Eddy’s the World Health Organisation, likewise asked him about children who fell

B
Salk thus injected the diseased tissue into the brains of 14 bound manufacturers to ensure ‘each
monkeys one after the other. Each time he would extract fluid from unauthorised research had irresponsibly continued to endorse the seed virus used in the manufacture shall severely ill shortly after taking vaccines
the infected brain and then re-inject this into another. Finally he reached Merck, Sharpe and safety of these vaccines, which were be demonstrated to be free of extraneous based on living viruses. One of my
poured the virus-rich fluid from the last monkey into a vessel Dohme, who were then manufacturing known to be contaminated. microbial agents’. Lederle had not even questions was: ‘Could their parents
containing minced monkey testicles. The viruses grew in number. both the Salk and Sabin vaccine. They Privately, among the scientists bothered to check to see if they were. possibly be right in suspecting the
The fluid from this was then poured onto more testicles where the put two scientists, Ben Sweet and involved, a joke circulated. The Sabin This was supported in a US government vaccine?’ His reply was: ‘What else
virus multiplied further. This viral-rich fluid was then filtered, spun and Maurice Hilleman, on to checking to see vaccine had just been tested on some 80 memo, which recorded; ‘It should be would you expect?’ I expressed surprise.
roughly purified, before being put into bottles labelled as the Salk if her research on the Salk vaccine also million Soviet citizens. The joke was that made clear that Lederle did not test the He continued, ‘We all know the current
vaccine seed. applied to the Sabin. They found it did. they had made sure the Russians would original Sabin seeds for extraneous living viral vaccines are dangerous – that
Salk then sent his patented vaccine ‘seed’ to various In a 1960 paper they reported the ‘Sabin not be able to compete at the coming agents or neurovirulence’. 8 is why I am heading a team to try to
manufacturers where it would be mixed with vast quantities of live polio virus vaccine was Olympics – as they would be riddled In 1976, with the withdrawal of Pfizer, develop safer vaccines.’ 10
minced monkey kidney on which the virus would multiply a million- contaminated’ and ‘SV40 has oncogenic with cancers! 4 Lederle became the only manufacturer of Quite simply we still do not have the
fold – before being killed by poisoning with formaldehyde prior to [cancer-causing] properties in hamsters.’ The Merck letter did not lead to the the Sabin vaccine in the US, and that technology available to completely purify
being put into bottles of his vaccine. Six manufacturers would thus They added that this ‘raises the health authorities withdrawing the polio same year, researchers at the US Bureau of these vaccines; at least at a price the
make up 27 million doses of his vaccine in 1955, in absolute important question of the existence of vaccines. They continued to distribute Biologics found its polio vaccine manufacturers are willing to pay. WHO
confidence that it would be officially approved. other such viruses.’ them until, in 1961, a doctor in contained between 1,000 and 100,000 instead has set a ‘recommended’ level for
Asked many years later why they had Scotland, who presumably had read simian viruses per millilitre of vaccine. maximum vaccine contamination. It
SABINS OPV not warned the public, Hilleman replied; Sweet and Hilleman’s report, decided to In 1978, John Martin, Director of the recommended in the mid 1990s that ‘the
As Sabin wanted to use a ‘live’ polio ‘Because you could start a panic. They test the children to whom he had just Viral Oncology Laboratory at the US amount of cellular DNA [contaminating]
virus, he needed to weaken or had already had production problems administered the Salk vaccine. 5 He was government’s Bureau of Biologics biological products should be limited to
‘attentuate’ the virus, in much the same with [vaccinated] people getting polio. If shocked to find that half the children inspected the samples of polio vaccine 100 picagrams [100,000 billionths of a
way as one could weaken a plant if it you added to that the fact that they were contaminated with SV40. He held at his lab. He reported: ‘There was a gram] per dose’. 11
were rapidly and repeatedly moved from found live [monkey] virus in the vaccine, immediately reported this to the Lancet lot of extraneous DNA in the vaccine’.9 This limit however seemingly proved
one type of soil to another. there would have been hysteria.’ medical journal. But he was told to do nothing about it, ‘unrealistically low’. So the
Hence, the poliovirus was weakened by But their reports led the giant Merck This exposure led to instant but secret since a protest might cause Lederle to stop recommended maximum was increased
mutation, brought about through rapidly Corporation to decide that both the Salk action. The authorities in the US and UK production and ‘vaccine manufacturing ten thousand fold to 10 nanograms (ten
transplanting it up to 51 times from one lot and the Sabin vaccines were much too stopped distributing the Salk vaccine and was an essential component of industry, billionths of a gram). However, a safety-
of monkey kidneys to another. It was also dangerous for it to continue to make replaced it with the Sabin vaccine. But none this country’s protection against potential supervising scientist admitted in 1999
weakened by having to adjust to growing in them. And despite being begged by the US of the contaminated vaccine distributed was biological warfare’. John Martin would that ‘for live viral vaccines, … it may not
different species of monkey cells. Both Indian Rhesus and African Surgeon General to continue, they to be withdrawn. The authorities didn’t later discover in damaged human brain be possible to limit the total amount of
Green monkeys cells were employed - thus giving the vaccine ‘seed’ declined, writing in December 1960 , want to alarm the public. It would take two cells another monkey virus, SCMV. He DNA to ten nanograms’. In case this
every opportunity to become contaminated with incompatible viruses ‘having again reviewed our decision in the years before all the contaminated stocks of found this was from the African Green level of contamination seems
from two continents before being bottled as the patented ‘Sabin light of your letter… Our scientific staff Salk vaccine were exhausted. Monkey, the same species that are inconsequential, I believe ten nanograms
Original Merck’ polio virus seed lot. This was ‘safety tested’ by being have emphasized to us that there are a currently used to make the polio vaccine. is greater than the approximate weight
number of serious scientific and technical n self-defence the US health of 250 million polioviruses or 200

I
injected into the brains of about one hundred chimpanzees. Thus monkey viruses and DNA fragments
A leading scientist, Leonard Hayflick, wrote in 1958: ‘Monkey problems that must be solved before we authorities have since repeatedly continued to be administered to hundreds million SV40. The seriousness of this
kidneys were notorious for their content of unwanted viruses, could engage in large-scale production of claimed that the measures they took of million of children under the guise of level of contamination is still
potentially dangerous viruses.’ He said the Sabin vaccine was grown live poliovirus vaccine. Most important in March 1961 ensured that the polio the polio vaccine. undetermined, but it has been noted
on ‘constantly contaminated monkey kidneys.’ Joshua Lederberg of among these is the problem of extraneous vaccine was totally clear of SV40 from The consequences are now coming that the presence of a single SV40 virus,
Stanford University would warn ‘crude virus preparations, such as contaminating simian viruses that may be then on.6 But this would be exposed as a out in scores of scientific papers. The or a piece of free DNA, in a cell, may
those in common use at the present time, are vulnerable to frightful extremely difficult to eliminate and which lie when the private correspondence first human cancers containing SV40 suffice for that cell to be damaged, and
mishaps of contamination and misidentification.’ may be difficult if not impossible to between government and vaccine were discovered around 1970. One of possibly made cancerous.
We now know the polio virus seed lots they produced were a virtual detect at the present stage of the manufacturers became public in the these was that of Mark Moreno. He had And we still do not know what effect
maelstrom of monkey and human viruses, all circulating among great technology.’ 3 But again none of this course of litigation by parents. a large brain tumour removed in 1970, this vaccine cocktail of monkey viruses,
numbers of DNA fragments and much cellular debris, all potentially disquiet was made public. This letter and In 1961, the government’s man in and has since had several operations. His DNA debris, nanobacteria and toxins,
highly dangerous. This was inevitable, given Salk and Sabin’s choice of decision would only be disclosed some charge of vaccine safety, a Dr Murray, tumour was riddled with SV40. (He is and the possible resultant re-
production methods and the technology available to them. thirty years later through a legal action secretly authorised Lederle Inc (the major currently suing for compensation.) Many combinations and mutations of viruses,
brought by the parents of an allegedly Sabin polio vaccine maufacturer in the similar cases have since been found. has had on the some four billion children

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 to which the contaminated polio vaccine
The case against SV40 has been given in repeated doses through
In 1988, a review of a study conducted between 1959 and 1965 on their most vulnerable years.
58,807 pregnant women12, discovered that the risk of brain tumours The evidence seems to lead to the
among offspring of mothers who had received the Salk vaccine was inescapable conclusion that the polio
13 times higher than the risk among offspring of mothers who had vaccine has been an unmitigated disaster.
not. The conclusion was that the cancers were probably caused by a It was made to stop epidemics of
still-unidentified infection originating in the polio vaccine, which infantile paralysis but they are still
(according to the reviewers) was known to have been contaminated happening, and mistakenly tried to do so
with numerous simian viruses.13 by targeting a virus that, given the
Also in 1988, Michele Carbone, a researcher in Chicago, found SV40 evidence, is most likely never to have
in around 85 per cent of the cancers associated with asbestos. It been the principal cause of this disease.
appeared to make this toxin more dangerous. He found it switches off a Instead it has spread monkey viruses and
key human gene, the p53, which helps to protect us from cancers. other contaminants around the world,
In 1997 I attended a National Institutes of Health emergency perhaps causing far more serious illness
workshop in Washington called, because laboratories worldwide had than the poliovirus ever did.
found SV40 in over 33 per cent of all the human bone cancers tested At the root of this disaster as always,
and in over 85 per cent of the childhood brain tumours. The FDA that lies money. The drug companies made
same year also reported: ‘The discovery in 1960 that a DNA tumour the choice for the UK and much of the
[carcinogenic] virus, designated simian virus 40 (SV40), was an rest of the world. They chose to continue
inadvertent contaminant of rhesus monkey cells...it confronted the to use monkey kidneys instead of safer
scientific and regulatory community with the very problem that they cells since it was for them a few pennies
had sought to avoid in vaccine development...’ 14 cheaper a dose, despite knowing that
Late in 1999 an extensive study in China reinforced those results. It these kidneys carried monkey viruses
found SV40 in common brain tumors among children. It also found the into the vaccine, despite knowing from
virus in 33 to 90 per cent of five other kinds of brain tumour examined.15 early on that at least one of these was
In 1998 SV40 was found for the first time in English cancers. At linked to cancers. They have thus
that time no laboratory in England was equipped for such a search. It knowingly and dangerously
was only found because I went looking for it with colleagues while contaminated our children – and,
working on a documentary for Channel 4’s Dispatches. Our team used tragically, are still doing so.
a laboratory in Italy to test about 20 cancer samples from English
patients. We found SV40 present in a bone cancer and in a terminal
case of mesothelioma. Resources
Two very recent studies, from Finland and Turkey, found no SV40 in 1 To follow up the footnotes in this report please
domestic mesothelioma (cancer caused by asbestos) samples but did visit The Ecologist website: www.theecologist.org
find it in American and Italian samples. Neither Turkey nor Finland used
2 The author’s website at www.vaccines.plus.com
SV40-contaminated vaccines, while Italy and the US did. Today Finland
contains many of the documents to which she refers
has one of the lowest rates of mesothelioma in the Western world.
in this special report. These resources can also be
In the last few years SV40 has been linked to more and more
obtained on a CD via this website.
cancers, such as Non-Hodkin’s lymphoma, the fifth most common
cancer in the US and one that has been rapidly increasing since the 3 Other valuable resources:
contaminated polio vaccine was released. • Jim West’s Images of Poliomyelitis Website – a
A recent German study found that if one put SV40 into lactating new definition of polio
female rats they all got breast cancer, (as did 70 per cent of the non- www.geocities.com/harpub/newdef.htm
lactating) but the SV40 did not stay in the tumours it helped create. • A very useful collection of research on vaccines
Could this explain the growth in human breast cancer? 16 www.whale.to
NIH researcher Dr. Jeffery Kopp has also uncovered a link between • Testimony to Congress on SV40 in 2003
SV 40 and a new and deadly form of kidney disease. Prior to 1980 so- www.909shot.com/Loe_Fisher/blfsv40testimony
called ‘collapsing’ renal disease was unknown. Since that time, however, • Research on polio vaccine, SIV and HIV
it has been rapidly increasing. Fully 60 per cent of those with the new, venus.soci.niu.edu/~sociclass/bmartin/dissent/d
virulent ‘collapsing variety’ showed evidence of SV 40. ocuments/AIDS/
It seems from all the research that SV40 is dangerous because it is • A parents’ website – note the great 2003 letter to
badly adjusted to living in us, perhaps because it only recently infected the US congress www.ouralexander.org/
humans and has not yet adapted to us. It attaches to our cells in such a • The No Spray Coalition – trying to stop
way that it disables two key immune system defences. It also damages organophosphate spraying against West Nile
our chromosomes by adding or deleting whole sections. Once inside a Virus - www.nospray.org/
cell, Joseph Testa reported, ‘it looks as if somebody set off a bomb • Virusmyth.com – a website that very extensively
inside the cell’s nucleus.’ documents research by top academics on how
chemical pollutants could also have led to AIDS.

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