I found this article on the polio vaccine fascinating if anyone wants to take a look. Warning, it's very long, but it reads quite quickly.
Now, before anyone freaks out, I just want to say again that I find this interesting; partially from a cultural studies perspective, partially from a sociology perspective, partially from a poli sci perspective, and partially from a "Amber is always super critical of every damn thing in life" perspective. Anyway, I go on a little tangent below about some of the (I think) critical issues surrounding vaccination specifically and medication in general. But first, the article.
Some excerpts that I found particularly fascinating (bolding is mine):
"That the polio virus is the sole cause of polio is accepted by most people as gospel, and that the Salk and Sabin vaccines eradicated polio in the western world is etched into our collective consciousness as the major medical miracle of our time. But the history of polio and its vaccines is shrouded in a murky mist of politico/scientific manipulation, altered statistics, redefinition and reclassification of the disease, increased cases of vaccine induced paralytic polio, and monkey viruses transmitted by contaminated vaccines to millions of people worldwide. Live virus oral polio vaccine continues to be the only source of paralytic polio in North America. And the fallout continues as researchers find the imprint of SV40 virus in a wide range of cancers and tumours, even in people who were not exposed to contaminated polio vaccine...Was the polio virus really to blame for all those cases of polio in the '40s & '50s -- and what factors other than a virus are precipitating polio-like paralytic disease?"
"...despite polio having been officially conquered in the western world, crippling disease still strikes young and healthy people, the majority being children between the ages of 6-10. In Canada, health officials eagerly monitor all cases of Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) because it is the yardstick by which they monitor polio."
"Health Canada says that 59 confirmed AFP cases were reported in 1999 in children under the age of 15. "The number of cases in 1999 represents a 40% increase over the number of cases reported in an equivalent reporting period for 1998, indicating continued improvement in reporting and that the majority (83.1%) of cases were diagnosed Guillain-Barre syndrome, followed by transverse myelitis (10.2%)." No speculation is offered as to what may have triggered the paralytic illnesses...One can almost hear a collective sigh of relief every time a paralysis is diagnosed as AFP--never mind what caused it--it's not polio!"
"A fascinating chapter in the Rodale Encyclopedia of Common Diseases (1962) gives a year by year report of the Salk polio vaccine drama. Fast tracked through government approval processes, rigorous safety testing thrown to the winds, and a massive propaganda campaign oiled to the nines, the vaccine was thrust onto a fear filled public."
"As the Salk vaccine program expanded, cases of paralytic polio began to increase...Dr. Harold Fletcher predicted in the Journal of the American Medical Association (April 9, 1960) that of a probable 6,000 paralytic cases expected by the end of 1960, 1,000 were likely to have had 3 shots."
"One of the heroes that emerged during the Salk polio vaccine debacle was Dr. Herbert Ratner, MD. As public health director in Oak Park Illinois, assistant professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago, and editor of the Bulletin of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, Dr. Ratner took on the corrupt polio vaccine establishment. In an eloquent editorial in the Bulletin, he criticized the blatant manipulation of statistics, the "double standard" in reporting vaccine induced paralytic polio, and the secrecy that shrouded the 1954 polio vaccine field trials saying, "One questions the propriety of imposing upon the medical profession at large, and local health officers in particular, an 'enforced' innoculation program in the absence of making available to them the written report on the basis of which the program was presumably launched. Such a failure has the effect of converting the medical profession into slave technicians." Dr. Ratner was referring to the Francis Report--a key evaluation of the field trials that tested the vaccine on humans. Fraudulently, it failed to disclose to the medical community "that those who contracted polio after their first inoculation and before their second inoculation were placed on the 'not inoculated' list."
"In May of 1960, Dr. Ratner chaired a panel discussion, at the 120th Annual Meeting of the Illinois Medical Society to review the increasing rise in paralytic polio in the U.S. The proceedings were reprinted in the August, 1960, Illinois Medical Journal which exposed the Salk vaccine as a frank and ineptly disguised fraud. One of the experts on the panel, statistician Dr. Bernard Greenberg, who went on to testify at Congressional hearings, revealed how data had been manipulated to hide the dangers and ineffectiveness of the vaccine from the pubic. Dr. Greenberg explained that the perceived overall reduction in polio cases was achieved by changing the criteria by which polio was diagnosed.
Prior to 1954, all that was required was an examination on admittance and another 24 hours later; if the classic polio symptoms were discernible, the patient was considered to have polio. No lab test, and no residual paralysis were required to establish a paralytic polio case definitely. When the new criteria was established in 1954, for a case to be reportable as polio, residual paralysis had to linger for 60 days or longer. From this time onward, all cases in which paralysis lasted less than 60 days would no longer be classified as polio! Overnight, the majority of cases that would have been diagnosed as polio, were now shifted into a new disease category, cocksackie virus, or aseptic viral meningitis.
In Canada, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics issued an official bulletin in June 1959 titled Poliomyelitis Trends, 1958. "Data shown in this report are confined to paralytic poliomyelitis only. It may be noted that the Dominion Council of Health at its 74th meeting in October 1958 recommended that for the purposes of national reporting and statistics the term non-paralytic poliomyelitis be replaced by 'meningitis, viral or aseptic,' with the specific viruses shown where known."
Interjection: as of today (April 2009) we still have no vaccine available for viral meningitis. In fact, according to the CDC themselves "Viral ("aseptic") meningitis is serious but rarely fatal in persons
with normal immune systems. Usually, the
symptoms last from 7 to 10 days and the patient recovers completely."
Source (emphasis mine). Don't you find this, along with the bolded part in the last paragraph, interesting, to say the least?
"In her soon to be published book Vaccination and The Making of Mass Mind, author, educator and historian Walene James exposes the ruthless methods employed by the medical/pharmaceutical industry to forward their toxic agenda with the complicity of government and the media as willing co-conspirator. Having lived through the polio era, she bears witness to the hideous charade that masqueraded as a public health measure. With keen insight, she dissects the statistical and epidemiologcal evidence that was suppressed to forward the big lie."
"Another important discovery was forwarded by North Carolina physician,
Dr. Benjamin Sandler, MD, who found that polio could be prevented by a diet that eliminated refined carbohydrates, sugar, candy, cookies, pop and ice cream, which were ingested in enormous quantities in the summer months when polio was rampant. His research showed that hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) was a common disorder in children and adolescents and was at the root of polio attacking this age group. Low blood sugar is readily induced by wrong diet, followed by over-exertion. Many people followed Sandler's recommendations, and the
incidence of polio in North Carolina dropped from 2,402 cases in 1948 to 214 cases in 1949 when the country as a whole showed an increase in the number of cases in that time frame.""
Around the turn of the 20th century, people began reporting paralytic illness after smallpox vaccination. By the 1920s, infantile paralysis (later renamed polio) began to emerge as an important new disease that often afflicted the limb that had been vaccinated...Provocation polio is a well known phenomenon precipitated by "diverse factors that provoke or increase the severity of polio in its victims, or localize it to a certain section in the nervous system." Some of these factors included: vaccination, trauma, tonsillectomies, pertussis vaccines, and the injection of numerous substances such as cortisone, bismuth, guanine and penicillin."
Hmmm, is all I have to say about that.
I recently came across a statement made by someone online that was something to the effect of: a) "vaccines are thoroughly tested for safety before being made available to the public" and b) "vaccines have been used without problems for
generations" (emphasis mine).
a) "Vaccines are properly tested." How do we know? How do we know that they're thoroughly tested for safety when more often than not they are being tested by the very companies who develop and manufacture them? Merck and Wyeth and the rest are not charitable organizations (not that those can't have their own agenda...they clearly can and do); these are publically traded, for-profit businesses, and anyone who has taken a cultural studies course, or a corporate law course, or read Joel Bakan's book, "The Corporation" knows that companies such as these are
legally mandated to make money for their share-holders; that
must be their first priority, by law. Show me a vaccine that has been tested by an unbiased (either way!) source and I'll show you a vaccine that doesn't exist.
At this point one would say, well enter the CDC, or the FDA, or Health Canada, or the WHO. And well, I guess I'll just suggest that these organizations have been caught in lies so many times that I have a hard time believing much of what they say on points related to the safety of substances that, in any other circumstances, would be considered dubious at best. I have a particularly hard time trusting any US-based governmental organizations when it comes to health and safety because of the lobby-system that is so thoroughly entrenched in that country's political process. President Obama has stated many times that he hopes to change this as much as possible during his time and office and I hope he succeeds, because the fact of the matter is that most pharmaceuticals are developed and manufactured in the US and that's just a little bit scary for the rest of the world, I think.
Again, I ask, how do we know? Does Big Pharma have a history of being transparent and forthcoming with all it's empirical research and data? The answer to that question is "no". Does the FDA operate with integrity at all times; does it steadfastly refuse to cover-up or fudge information? A quick bit of research, online and off, will quickly lead you to the fact that answer to that question is "no". Does
every person ask for even limited information on the substances they're injecting into themselves and their children on a regular basis? The answer to that question is "no". So, I really am curious, how do we know?
How much testing is "thorough testing"?How long do those tests have to be conducted and in what circumstances? How do we know about long-term side effects when people who are given vaccines are not typically followed in long-term, latitudinal studies? And why is it that we, as a collective, don't demand this kind of information?
b) "Vaccines have been used for generations." That's just simply not true, at least not in the broad-sweeping way it that it comes across. Generally speaking, we started using vaccines in the 1940s and 50s. I'm 23 years old, I have a parent who was born in the early 50s and aunts and uncles who were born in the 40s. That's 2, possibly 3 generations. Furthermore, a large number of the vaccines in use today were not developed until the 1970s and even 80s. Now we're going back 1-1.5 generations. Add in the fact that our parents were not vaccinated on even remotely the same crazy schedule that we were and that we were not vaccinated on even remotely the same crazy schedule that babies and children are today and well...that "it was safe then, it's safe now" argument goes out the winow, doesn't it?
Anyway, I found that article utterly fascinating. She has her sources listed at the bottom, note that this was published in 2001 so the web-based ones might not be working anymore. She does have couple of "personal websites" listed as sources, but I went back and looked at what they refer to and it isn't things that would require a more "official" source--just pictures and additional information.
If you're interested in this kind of thing you might also want to look at
"
The Environmental Aspects of Post Polio Syndrome" by Rea et al.
Furthermore, if you're interested in how governments and other interested parties work in conjunction with the media to create what essentially become moral panics, you should read Gustave le Bon's book, "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind".
