The World Health Organization
launched its Global Polio Eradication Initiative will the goal of eliminating the
disease by 2000.
However, by 2000 it became clear
that polio was still around, and new strains
derived form the vaccine itself were
emerging.
In 1983, some researchers realized
that a “vaccine-derived” polio virus had caused an outbreak in Egypt. [Reuters
Health. “Polio outbreak in Dominican Republic
and Haiti caused by vaccine-derived virus.” Reuters Medical News (December 4, 2000)]
In 1993, Dr. Radu Crainic of the
Pasteur Institute discovered that strains of the polio
virus have the ability to spontaneously
recombine with themselves and create new strains.
Crainic showed that if you
vaccinate a child with polio strains 1, 2, and 3, you can produce a new strain,
strain 4, out of the child's stool. Crainic concluded that the polio vaccine
creates favorable conditions contributing to the evolution of viral
“recombinations.”
In 2000, virologist Hiromy Yoshida found a new infectious polio virus in Japanese rivers and sewages. The virus had mutated from
the polio vaccine and regained much of its original virulence, as confirmed by
genetic sequencing. According to Yoshida, this poses a “persistent
environmental threat” and the live oral polio vaccine is to blame.
According to a 2000 Reuters
Medical News article, a polio outbreak in Haiti and the Dominican Republic
resulted in numerous cases of flaccid paralysis.
Laboratory examinations confirmed
health authorities' worst suspicions: the disease was caused by “an unusual
viral derivative” of the polio vaccine. The virus demonstrates genetic
similarity to the parent vaccine strain, “but it has assumed the
neuro-virulence and transmissibility” of the wild polio virus.
Health officials are obviously
concerned, “because a wild poliovirus has not circulated in the Western
Hemisphere since 1991,” and if the newly mutated polio virus spreads, it could
cause new epidemics of the disease.
People around the world continue to
be stricken with vaccine-derived polio viruses (VDPVs), and the aforementioned
case in India is just one example. Under certain circumstances, polio viruses
within the vaccine “regain both
neuro-virulence and the capacity to circulate and cause outbreaks.”
For example, from 2001 to 2005,
there were several vaccine-derived polio outbreaks in the Philippines,
Madagascar, China and Indonesia. In 2006, additional cases of vaccine-derived
polio were recorded in Cambodia.
In 2010, a study was
published in Finland with a title
that just about says it all: “Highly divergent neurovirulent vaccine-derived
polioviruses of all three serotypes are recurrently detected in Finnish
sewage.”
Although no cases of “suspected
poliomyelitis” have reportedly occurred in Finland since 1985, “Since December
2008, 21 genetically highly divergent, neurovirulent vaccine-derived
polioviruses (VDPV) have been isolated from sewage in Tampere, Finland. While
the source of the VDPV is unknown, characteristics of the viruses resemble
those of strains isolated from immunodeficient, persistently infected persons.”
Unfortunately, animal matter and
questionable drugs are still used in making the polio vaccine.
Despite the polio vaccine's long
history of causing polio, and the manufacturer's inability to protect the
public from dangerous microorganisms that perpetually contaminate an ever
expanding repertoire of “new and improved” products, the currently available
inactivated, or “killed-virus” polio vaccine continues to be manufactured in
much the same way as earlier versions.
In the United States, today's polio
vaccine is a sterile suspensions of three types of poliovirus. The viruses are
grown in cultures of “a continuous line of monkey kidney cells...supplemented
with newborn calf serum...” The vaccine also contains two antibiotics (neomycin
and streptomycin), in addition to formaldehyde as a preservative.
In Canada, the inactivated polio
vaccine is made in “human diploid cells” instead of monkey kidneys. Some
researchers believe this is a safer alternative. According to
Barbara Loe Fisher, president of
the National Vaccine Information Center in Virginia, “With mounting evidence
that cross-species transfer of viruses can occur, the United States should no
longer be using animal tissues to produce vaccines.”
Dr. Arthur Levine of the NIH,
however, believes that
making polio vaccines using human
cells isn't risk-free either, “because they must be tested for human
infections.”
Levine also worries that even
discussing these issues will frighten parents, “We do a grave disservice to the
public if we were now to question the safety of the current polio vaccines on
the basis of SV40.”
It is perhaps this attitude that
prompted the CDC to recently remove the section of their website devoted to
SV40 information. However, how can this be justified when hundreds of studies
have now been conducted linking SV40 to cancer?
Barbara Loe Fisher would like to
see changes in the way vaccine safety is governed. She believes that agencies
like the FDA have an inherent conflict of interest because of their mandate to
promote universal vaccination on one hand and regulate vaccine safety on the
other. “Who's minding the store when the FDA has allowed drug companies to
produce vaccines grown on contaminated monkey kidneys?”
Dr. Urnovitz is even more resolute
in his convictions. He thinks that an extensive study of human exposure to
simian microbes is long overdue. “Half of the people in this country are baby
boomers who were born between 1941 and 1961 and are at high risk for having
been exposed to polio vaccines contaminated with monkey viruses. Are we just a
time bomb waiting to happen, waiting to develop lupus, Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's disease?”
Urnovitz sums it up nicely, “You
have to realize that if you mess around with nature, you're going to pay the
price...”
END