What then can cause Polio?

[Guest guest]

would love to have all read this and have some discussion

Sheri

" But this ‘Manhattan project' was slow to bring

results. It commenced in the 1890s and by 1950

little had been achieved. The most famed of the

poliovirus experiments reveal, when read in

detail, that sixty years of this hunt failed to

isolate any virus proved to cause polio. What

were being experimented with, and named as

polioviruses, were fluids from cultures, filtered

extracts from diseased tissues and even from the

excrement of sick children. In other words, they

were still working with toxic fluids they called

viruses and it was these that they were testing to see if they caused polio. "

Lesson 10, Part 27R - What then can cause Polio?

Trouble with poliovirus

Written by Janine

Wednesday, 27 August 2008 13:08

What then can cause Polio?

an extract from the book " Fear of the Invisible " by Janine

Koch taught in the late 19th century that

there was one causative germ per disease. His

doctrine has ever since dominated much of virology.

But, in 1951 the vaccine scientists reported that

to their surprise they could not find the

designated poliovirus, a gut virus, in many polio

victims! This should have stopped the vaccine

trials dead. If the virus were not there, the

vaccine would be useless. Even worse was to

come. They found a different virus might be

present, such as the sackie, and speculated

this also might cause polio. This news was grimly

received. The Koch Postulates state that an agent

could not be claimed to cause an illness if it is not present in all cases.

Salk and Sabin could not stomach the idea that

they might have got the wrong cause. They were

still wed to the idea that the cause had to be a

virus - but if other viruses could cause polio,

this was disastrous to their hopes of success

with their vaccine. It meant that their vaccines

would not give the protection promised against

all forms of polio. AL Hoynel reported in the

journal The Medical Clinics of North America that

there was ‘some feeling of dismay ... [it] added

one more problem to the nebulous conditions

surrounding poliomyelitis... the more we learn

about poliomyelitis, the less we know,' An

editorial in the Lancet stated this discovery

brought ‘a crop of new snags' to developing a

vaccine. If other viruses were involved, the

vaccines in development would at best diminish, not stop, the polio epidemics

But, from all that I have read, that the health

authorities then promptly resolved this dilemma

by forgetting about it, for I could find no trace

of any subsequent attempts to develop vaccines

for these other polio-causing viruses. It must

have been hoped that no one would notice. This

was indeed likely. At that time polio cases were

diagnosed by clinical symptoms, as with other

diseases. This meant in diagnosis the poliovirus

was presumed to be present and not actually looked for.

With the other viruses seemingly obliterated from

memory, from now on finding the poliovirus in the

excrement of victims became essential to

diagnosing polio, This diagnostic rule still

applies and is on the World Health Organization's

website. They demand that samples of two turds

from each victim of infantile paralysis be sent

to their laboratories. If no poliovirus is found

in these, the cases are declared not to be polio,

even if these children are suffering from the

same severe paralysis symptoms and pain as found

in the worst cases of polio during the American epidemics.

When I discovered this, I thought this was an

insane way to prove the illness was caused by the

poliovirus. They were excluding by fiat all cases

where another virus is present! Also, surely the

absence of the poliovirus in such cases suggests

it might be misidentified as a major cause of this disease?

All this made me sit back and think. If the

nominated viruses were not present in all polio

cases - could the disease be caused by a toxin

or environmental factor that worked with several

viruses? I went back to reading the accounts of

the doctors who treated the polio cases during

the great epidemics, hoping that their research might shed some light on this.

I soon found that, outside the hothouse of

virological research, there were doctors treating

the casualties of the polio epidemics who had

very different ideas about what caused polio,

based on their observations during clinical

diagnosis. I found they were inclined, from the

evidence they observed, to blame the polio

epidemics on toxins rather than on viruses.

The germ theory is so well established that I did

not feel I had any right to reject it - but I now

wondered if there might be a compromise? Even if

one accepted that poliovirus had a major role in

causing polio, could some other factor be needed

to make this virus dangerous? Could an

environmental factor affect the victims' immune

systems,' making children susceptible to this

virus? Might bacteria also be involved? Could

toxins produced by bacteria or coming from other

sources make the suspected viruses more virulent,

and thus help create these epidemics?

I soon found that the doctors who blamed toxins

had precedents to draw on. It is now mostly

forgotten that environmental factors were

frequently blamed for causing epidemics before

the 20th century. Several epidemics were

successfully brought to an end simply by the

provision of clean water and better sanitation.

Most of us are thus unaware of the historical

importance of the hunt for the poliovirus during

the first half of the 20th Century. It was the

decades-long ‘Manhattan' project of virology; the

project that established this science in the

pattern that it has followed until today. It set

out to prove a virus caused a major disease and

took forty years to do so. It effectively removed

from consideration other possible causes of

epidemics. It would make vaccine provision a

prime responsibility of governments, given this

priority in practice over the provision of good

water supplies and adequate nutrition.

Before this it had been bacteria that featured in

the ‘germ theory' of disease. A virus was then

either Jenner's cowpox pus or a theoretical

entity, a liquid containing invisibly small

bacteria that might explain the spread of disease

when no bacterial infective agent could be found.

But this ‘Manhattan project' was slow to bring

results. It commenced in the 1890s and by 1950

little had been achieved. The most famed of the

poliovirus experiments reveal, when read in

detail, that sixty years of this hunt failed to

isolate any virus proved to cause polio. What

were being experimented with, and named as

polioviruses, were fluids from cultures, filtered

extracts from diseased tissues and even from the

excrement of sick children. In other words, they

were still working with toxic fluids they called

viruses and it was these that they were testing to see if they caused polio.

Before the invention of the electron microscope,

the identifying characteristics of a virus,

according to published research, was to be

invisibly present in finely filtered fluid taken

from laboratory cell cultures, or sick humans.

They were thus identified as ‘filterable agents.'

It was presumed that invisibly small

mini-bacteria had gone through the anti-bacteria

filter - as the resulting fluid was still

pathogenic. Their final defining feature was

that these particles could ‘replicate'. This

meant in practice that cells made ill with this

noxious brew, seemed to produce more of this brew.

But we now know there are many things smaller

than viruses that might pass through the same

filter and still be potentially hazardous - such

as DNA and RNA fragments, proteins, prions,

enzymes - and chemical toxins. There was also the

‘alien' factor. Human material was being put into

monkeys or other animals, and since this was

alien to them, this might be what was poisoning them.

Scientists tried to exclude these possibilities

by ‘passaging' samples of their culture from one

animal to another to another, as in the monkey

experiments described in another article on this

site. They mostly picked monkeys, as these were

most like to humans. They hoped the repeated

‘passaging' though monkey tissues would remove

anything in their fluid that was not being reproduced, or ‘replicated.'

In the early stages of polio research they had no

idea how their postulated viruses might be

reproducing themselves. As the poisonous liquids

seemed to be passed from one individual to

another without losing virulence, they presumed

these must contain dangerous mini-bacteria, able

to divide and reproduce themselves.

It was not until the 1930s that electron

microscopes made it possible to see tiny

particles that might be the sought after viruses.

These were apparently too simple in construction

to be able to reproduce themselves, but since

they were observed to be produced by cells and to

be going into cells, it was postulated that the

cells' massive reproductive chemistry must be

‘hijacked' by them in order to preserve their viral species.

These viruses were presumed nearly equal to

bacterial cells in aggressive ability, but we now

know that the genetic codes of viruses are vastly

smaller than that of bacteria. The former

averages around 500 million base pairs long,

while that of a typical virus is around ten thousand long.

The scientists engaged on this hunt had to

establish that these particles caused the illness

in question. This in itself was a long and

difficult process. According to Koch, they should

be given to an animal, to see if they caused the

same illness. Logically they should have been

given to a human. This was rarely done. It was

clearly unethical without informed consent.

To help in this work, they developed a technique

called ‘plaque purification.' This involved

diluting a filtered sample of the culture to the

point when to dilute it further would stop a drop

of the culture from killing some of the cells

grown in laboratory cultures. But, to tell the

truth I could see flaws in this process. What if

many things could be present and contributing to

the cells' deaths - as Koch himself said of

septicaemia? What if something else than the

designated virus was present and doing this

damage? The cellular culture used could easily

contain a multitude of things. We now know, for

example, that SV40 was in it undetected.

What of toxins? Could they be present? What also

of cellular waste products - could these pass on

illnesses? Comparatively little scientific work

seems to have been done to exclude this

possibility. Also, could viruses be a natural

product of poisoned cells? Again I could find

little research on this possibility. But, I

thought it was unlikely that toxins were

involved, for how could toxins have caused the

massive summertime polio plagues? Surely the

cause had to be something infective?

I went back to the first medical reports on the

polio outbreaks. They were from Vermont in New

England and issued by the Government Inspector,

Dr Caverly. He noted the families

affected did not know each other, so his report

explicitly ruled out it being a ‘contagious'

disease (much to my surprise). He also noted

without comment that some parents told him their

children fell ill after eating fruit.

His official report surprisingly stated that the

outbreaks of infantile paralysis ‘usually

occurred in [a single child from] families of

more than one child, and as no efforts were made

at isolation it was very certain it was

non-contagious.' He thus concluded the paralytic

outbreak was probably caused by a toxin, and not

by a microorganism. Reading this, I wondered if

the vaccine scientists had ever bothered to consult with him?

What toxin could it be? There was an

outstanding candidate. Jim West had noted, on his

well-documented website, that this report was

dated 1892, just two years after lead arsenate

pesticide started to be sprayed many times every

summer to kill the codling moth on apple crops.

Vermont was a major apple-growing region - and

its polio epidemics started shortly after this

pesticide came into widespread summer use.

It seems Caverly's report had rung alarm bells

among other doctors than virologists. Some

remembered that metal workers had suffered for

centuries from a seemingly identical paralysis

caused by the lead and arsenic in metals they

were processing - the very same ‘heavy metals'

that were sprayed up to 12 times a summer over

apple orchards. The pesticide was made of

neurotoxins that paralysed - for that was how

they killed the moths. The toxins suffocate the

moths by attacking the nerves that go to the

muscles that enable them to breathe - the very

same nerves that are damaged in humans in the

worse cases of polio, that forced patients to use

iron-lungs to breathe! Seemingly, no one seemed

to have thought that what was done to insects might also affect humans.

The paralytic effect of these metals had been

observed as far back as 1824, when the English

scientist Cooke observed: ‘The fumes of

these metals, or the receptance of them in

solution into the stomach, often cause

paralysis.' The common name for this illness then

was ‘palsy,'­ short for paralysis. This was an

ancient disease ­ - there is evidence that the

ancient Egyptians suffered from it (see leg in

picture) - but I do not know if there it were among their metal workers.

In 1878 Alfred Vulpian had experimentally

established that lead damages the motor-neurone

cells of dogs. This is the same damage that is

found in children with infantile paralysis. Then

in 1883 the Russian Popow discovered the same

damage could be done with arsenic.

They had completed their research while Koch

was developing the germ theory, but his focus was

on epidemics. These heavy metal poisoning cases

involved no general epidemic. They were only then among metal workers.

Perhaps if their work had been better known in

the West, lead arsenate would never have been

used as a pesticide? The spraying was in summer

and autumn - so this would explain why polio

epidemics struck in summer and autumn. It would

also explain why the first of these epidemics

occurred in orchard-rich New England - for that

is where lead arsenate was widely introduced from

1892. It would also explain why some New England

children went down immediately after eating fresh

fruit. This was making much sense. None of these

observations were explained by the poliovirus theory.

Lead arsenate was not the only new pesticide then

coming into wide use. In 1907 calcium arsenate

was introduced primarily for use on cotton crops

and in cotton mills. A year later in a

Massachusetts town with three cotton mills and

apple orchards 69 children suddenly fell ill with

infantile paralysis. This was apparently the

world's second outbreak of epidemic polio.

Other cases were linked to milk supplies. At

that time formaldehyde was added to milk to

prolong its ‘shelf life.' This might also have

been responsible for some cases of polio. In 1897

The Australian Medical Gazette reported that

formaldehyde in milk had caused several cases of

paralysis. Lead arsenate was also used in the cow dip.

The UK banned apple imports from the States

because they were so heavily polluted with lead

arsenate. Today many former US apple orchard

sites are listed as heath hazards, on which no

building can take place without the total removal of poisoned soil.

A toxic cause for polio would crucially explain

why farmyard chickens and animals were reported

as suffering paralysis at the same time as the

children. This should not have happened,

according to the virologists, for their poliovirus can only infect humans.

I had never before questioned if the poliovirus

were responsible for polio. I had taken it as a

given fact - so I was extremely surprised at

finding this research. It was fascinating to find

evidence that so challenged established theories.

It stretched my mind, helped me think laterally.

But I said to myself, none of this explained why

a polio vaccine stopped the epidemics. Surely

this by itself finally proves the poliovirus

causes the illness, that the vaccine scientists,

despite many blunders, had eventually got things

right? If they had not - why were there now no polio epidemics?

The answer was none too clear to me. Again I

thought, perhaps it was that the virus and the

toxins were co-factors; that the toxins weakened

the immune systems to allow the virus to attack?

I read how Dr. D. Bodian of Baltimore found in

1954 that injecting a ‘poliovirus sample' into

the hearts of monkeys made half of them

paralysed. But he had then found, if he injected

them first with toxins or irritants, including

penicillin or DPT vaccine, the number paralysed

went up to 80 per cent and the paralysis

frequently occurred in the limb injected!

This raised the issue for me of whether the DPT

vaccine could also be a factor. I knew that UK

doctors had observed paralysis occurring in some

of the arms vaccinated. This vaccine was also

introduced around the time of the polio epidemics.

Once I started on this line of inquiry, the

evidence poured in like a flood. I learnt other

pesticides could also cause paralysis. In the

mid 1940s powerful neurotoxin pesticides were

introduced, including the organochlorine DDT. A

local polio epidemic in the UK town of

Broadstairs, Kent, was linked to a dairy where

the cows were washed down with DDT. It ended when

the dairy was stopped from supplying

milk. Apparently local doctors discovered this toxin link.

Albert Sabin, a major developer of polio

vaccines, had earlier reported some crucial

evidence, the significance of which he did not

seem to fully appreciate. He discovered that

poliomyelitis was the major cause of sickness and

death among the American troops based in the

Philippines at the end of the Second World War,

while the neighbouring Philippines settlements

were not affected. US military camps in the

Philippines were sprayed daily with DDT to kill mosquitoes.

But stronger evidence came, to my surprise, from

the great American national laboratories. The

National Institutes of Health reported in 1944

that DDT damaged the same anterior horn cells

that are damaged in infantile paralysis.

However these reports did not prevent DDT from

making its way into shops to be sold as a common

household pesticide - or from being advertised as

‘good for you.' DDT after the Second World War

rapidly replaced lead arsenate as the pesticide

of choice. By 1950 the number of cases of

infantile paralysis had increased nearly

threefold over those of 1930. On the right: an advertisement of the time.

Endocrinologist Dr Morton Biskind found in 1949

that DDT causes ‘lesions in the spinal cord

resembling those in human polio.' In Germany in

that same year, Dresden found acute DDT

poisoning produced ‘degeneration in the central

nervous system' seemingly identical to that found

in severe cases of infantile paralysis. Both DDT

and the new more powerful organochlorine

pesticide DDE were found to penetrate the

blood-brain barrier that protected the central nervous system.

Then two years later in 1951 the US Public Health

Service reported: ‘DDT is a delayed-action

poison. Due the fact that it accumulates in the

body tissues, especially in females, the repeated

inhalation or ingestion of DDT constitutes a

distinct health hazard. The deleterious effects

are manifested principally in the liver, spleen,

kidneys and spinal cord.' Again, I noted that the

spinal cord was where the damage was done that caused polio paralysis.

Dr. Biskind, a practitioner and medical

researcher, also came to the conclusion that

pesticides were the major cause of the polio

epidemics. He presented the evidence to the US

Congress, but the medical establishment ignored

it. The germ theory of polio had captured its

attention - and nearly all the available

funding. He lamented: ‘Despite the fact that DDT

is a highly lethal poison for all species of

animals, the myth has become prevalent among the

general population that it is safe for man in

virtually any quantity. Not only is it used in

households with reckless abandon so that sprays

and aerosols are inhaled, the solutions are

permitted to contaminate skin, bedding and other

textiles.' Children's bedrooms were ‘protected'

against the suspected poliovirus by having their

walls covered with wallpaper pre-soaked in DDT.

His words made me stop and think. Surely it was

mostly the middle-class households that used

pesticide sprays with such

abandon? Working-class households had less

money to spray - and would instead have clouted

flies with rolled up newspapers - or so I

surmised. Could this be why the middle classes

suffered from polio so much more?

They sprayed because they were terrified of the

widely reported, but scientifically still

undiscovered, poliovirus. Posters everywhere

asked parents to stop the virus by keeping their

kids clean. No medical help was available. They

begged and begged the authorities to find a cure.

Yet for decades the only advice the health

authorities had for these distraught parents was

to wash hands, disinfect doorknobs, keep the

children clean, indoors and away from public

swimming pools - all for fear of the unknown poliovirus.

These scary posters were distributed by the

1938-founded National Foundation for Infant

Paralysis, and designed, not just to educate, but

to motivate people to fund the hunt for the

poliovirus - which in the 1950s consumed $200

million dollars raised in the ‘March of Dimes.'

Other medical research was neglected

Many middle class parents went further to protect

their children. They feared the invisible virus

as if it were hunting their children. They turned

their homes into sterile zones by constantly

spraying insecticides and washing down the walls

with disinfectants. Their fear became contagious

and their zeal fanatic, encouraged by health

authority posters showing giant flies attacking

children. Parents literally hid their children

from all strangers lest they might infect them.

Their excessive use of household pesticides made

the argument that pesticides were to blame for

these epidemics seem ever more plausible - but I

still thought, if pesticides were involved, how

then could the success of the polio vaccines be explained?

Biskind of course was doing his research before a

vaccine was released and so was not affected by

such doubts. He was not primarily a laboratory

scientist but a doctor treating the victims of

polio. He thought pesticides caused their

illness so treated them as victims of poisoning.

The first step in such a treatment is to remove

the toxin from their food and environment. He

did so and found many recovered, especially when

contaminated milk products were also stopped. He

tested butter purchased in New York and found

high concentrations of DDT. The government

ignored his important discovery, so he wrote in

anger: ‘Although young animals are much more

susceptible to the effects of DDT than adults, so

far as the available literature is concerned, it

does not appear that the effects of such

concentrations on infants and children have even been considered.'

Other doctors reported success in treating polio

patients with dimercaprol, an anti-toxin still

used in hospitals to treat poisoning. In 1951 Dr

Irwin Eskwith reported he thus cured a child with

most severe form of polio, bulbar paralysis. I

was surprised also to read that a Dr. F. R.

Klenner had reported in the July 1949 issue of

the Journal of Southern Medicine and Surgery that

he had cured 17 acute cases of polio with large

doses of another anti-toxin, ascorbic acid! He

reported: " In the poliomyelitis epidemic in North

Carolina in 1948, 60 cases of this disease came

under our care. ... In 15 of these cases the

diagnosis was confirmed by lumbar puncture. ...

The treatment employed was vitamin C in massive

doses every two to four hours. The initial dose

was 1,000 to 2,000 mg, depending on age. ...

Children up to four years received the injections

intramuscularly ... All patients were clinically well after 72 hours.'

But this remarkable news left the government

totally unmoved. This led to angry and extremely

frustrated complaints. These medical

professionals could not understand why government

health officers would not question the viral

theory of polio despite it providing no cures.

Why was their work ignored, when they had solved

the enigma and provided a cure? Yet public health

officials stubbornly ignored their reports as ‘illogical and impossible.'

Nevertheless, Biskind in 1950 gained an

invitation to present his evidence to a US

Congressional Hearing. By now he was by no means

alone. Dr. Ralph Scobey had found clear evidence

of poisoning when analysing the blood of polio

victims: ‘There are two abnormal findings in

cases of poliomyelitis that point strongly to

poisoning as the cause of this disease. One

consists in the appearance of increased amounts

of porphyrin in the urine; the other is the

presence of increased amounts of guanidine in the

blood. It is a well-known fact that porphyria can

follow poisoning by a number of chemicals.

Guanidine has been found in increased amounts in

the blood in arsenic, chloroform, and carbon tetrachloride poisonings.'

I had not heard of this before. However, on

checking, I found his work is by no means

out-dated. Today it is established in toxicology

that certain kinds of poisoning can be measured

by analysing the amount of the chemical porphyrin in a patient's urine.

Dr. Scobey was invited to testify at Congress in

1951. That year also the US Public Health Service

reported: `DDT is a delayed-action poison. Due to

the fact that it accumulates in the body tissues,

especially in females, the repeated inhalation or

ingestion of DDT constitutes a distinct health

hazard. The deleterious effects are manifested

principally in the liver, spleen, kidneys and

spinal cord... DDT is excreted in the milk of

cows and of nursing mothers.' For a while it even

seemed just about possible that Scobey and

Biskind might succeed, and that the virus theory of polio would be abandoned.

But it seems the medical establishment was so

wedded to the viral theory of polio that it was

adamant that this theory could not be questioned.

Instead some doctors subjected their ideas to

ridicule. This made Biskind absolutely fume. He

angrily reported, in a 1953 paper published in

the American Journal of Digestive Diseases: ‘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] that is so obvious, which

in any other field of biology would be instantly

accepted, virtually the entire apparatus of

communication, lay and scientific alike, has been

devoted to denying, concealing, suppressing,

distorting and attempts to convert into its

opposite this overwhelming evidence. Libel,

slander and economic boycott have not been overlooked in this campaign.'

but - if the vaccine stopped the epidemics - it

surely must be a virus that causes polio? This

was an enigma that I must investigate - read 'the Hidden Epidemic' here

CS Caverly; Yale Med J.; 1:1; 1894. I obtained

this report from Mr Jim West, a researcher who

maintained an extensive online library on the

relationship between polio and pesticides - and

on the West Nile Virus - at a website Images of

Poliomyelitis. This is not currently online

(April 2008) but his highly recommendable work

can also be found at

http://www.westonaprice.org/envtoxins/pesticides_polio.html

Cooke, : Treatise of Nervous Diseases, 1824

Vulpian, A.: Quoted by R. W. Lovett, Ref below.

CS Caverly; Yale Med J.; 1:1; 1894. Also CK

Mills; [boston M & S J]; 108: 248-250; 15 March 1883

Australian Medical Gazette; 24 August 1897

Bodian D. (1934) .Amer. Jour. Hygiene. 60, 339.

Albert Sabin in The Journal of the American Medical Association. June 1948

I am grateful to Jim West's website, ‘Images of

Poliomyelitis' for unearthing these posters.

D Dresden; Physiological Investigations into the

Action Of DDT; GW Van Der Wiel & Co; Arnhem; 1949

MS Biskind and I Bieber; ‘DDT poisoning: a new

syndrome with neuropsychiatric manifestations';

American Journal Of Psychotherapy; page 261; 1949

MS Biskind; Statement on clinical intoxication

from DDT and other new insecticides, presented

before United States House of Representatives to

investigate the use of chemicals in food

products; Journal Of Insurance Medicine; May, 1951

I.S. Eskwith; American Journal of Diseases of Children; 81: 684-686; May 1951

Pages 211-212.

MS Biskind; Statement on clinical intoxication

from DDT and other new insecticides, presented

before United States House of Representatives to

investigate the use of chemicals in food

products; Journal Of Insurance Medicine; May, 1951

Dr Ralph R. Scobey The Poison Cause of

Poliomyelitis Archives of Pediatrics, vol. 69, p172 (April 1952).

For example, from the Oxford Journal ‘Previous

studies from this laboratory have described

metal-specific changes in the urinary porphyrin

excretion pattern (porphyrin profile) associated

with prolonged exposure of animals and humans to

low levels of mercury, arsenic, lead, and other

metals (reviewed in Woods, 1995

<http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/61/2/234>http://toxsci.oxford\

journals.org/cgi/content/full/61/2/234

MS Biskind; ‘Public health aspects of the new

insecticides'; American Journal of Digestive Diseases; 20: 330; 1953

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

Vaccines - http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htm

Vaccine Dangers & Homeopathy Online/email courses - next classes Sept 10, 2008