The New York Times reported on August 26 that more than 1.2 million doses of polio vaccine arrived in Gaza as part of an effort to vaccinate more than 640,000 Palestinian children with the aim of preventing an outbreak of the potentially paralyzing disease, but Israel’s continued military campaign and blockade of humanitarian aid poses an obstacle to the vaccines being distributed.
One case of paralytic polio has been confirmed in a 10-month-old child in Gaza who became paralyzed in one leg, which was the first case of polio in Gaza in a quarter-century.
Last week, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed concern about this development while reporting that the child “is currently in a stable condition.”
In the US during the pre-vaccine era, most people infected with polio never developed the disease, most people who did had mild flu-like symptoms and fully recovered, and it was in less than one percent of cases that paralysis occurred, sometimes resulting to permanent disability or death.
Poliovirus is transmitted via a fecal-oral route, and its global decline was largely due to advances in sanitation, better nutrition, and other improvements to societal standard of living. As noted in the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) journal Pediatrics, nearly 90% of the decline in infectious disease mortality observed in the US during the twentieth century occurred before there were vaccines available to help explain the decline, which was instead mainly due to factors related to an increasing standard of living.
Changes in the diagnostic criteria for poliomyelitis also resulted in an artifactual decline of cases in the US falsely attributed to vaccination. Prior to 1955, large numbers of paralysis cases due to other causes, such as coxsackie virus infection, were incorrectly attributed to poliovirus, and diagnostic changes introduced that year created a perceived decline in paralytic polio that was largely a statistical artifact.
A famous example of potential misdiagnosis is President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Americans are taught in school was wheelchair-bound for life because of a poliovirus infection, but whose symptoms some scientists have argued were more likely caused by an autoimmune disease known as Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS).
The reappearance of polio in Gaza, the Times reported on August 16, is a result of “the destruction of the territory’s waste and water systems, which, along with malnourishment bordering on famine, has caused a multitude of grave health threats for Palestinians sealed in the territory.”
The Times also incorrectly reported that the vaccination effort “would involve giving recipients two rounds of injections”. While the polio vaccine used in the US and other developed countries is the inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), which is administered by injection, the oral polio vaccine (OPV) is still widely used in developing countries, and it is the orally administered vaccine that would be given to Palestinian children if the vaccination campaign were able to proceed, according to the WHO.
The Times also failed to inform its readers in both of its aforementioned articles that the strain of poliovirus found in wastewater in Gaza is not the wild type but vaccine-derived poliovirus.
The inactivated vaccine is less effective and does not prevent infection and transmission of the poliovirus, whereas the “live” virus vaccine administered orally does confer immunity in the intestinal tract. However, the live-virus vaccine also carries the risk of itself causing paralytic polio in rare cases, and vaccinated individuals can shed vaccine-strain virus that can revert to virulence and hence infect and cause disease in others.
In the US, every case of paralytic polio occurring after 1979 was caused by the oral polio vaccine, which is why the switch was eventually made around the turn of the century to exclusive use of the less effective but safer “killed” vaccine.
Illustrating how the US government has long placed the policy goal of achieving a high vaccination rate over the goal of properly informing the public so individuals can make their own informed choice, in 1984, with the risk of paralytic polio being greater from the vaccine than from the wild virus and an inactivated vaccine already available, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared with respect to the continued use of the oral polio vaccine, that “any possible doubts, whether or not well founded, about the safety of the vaccine cannot be allowed to exist in view of the need to ensure that the vaccine will continue to be used to the maximum extent consistent with the nation’s public health objectives.” (Emphasis added.)
In 2019, the WHO reported that the world had crossed the threshold whereby more cases of polio were being caused by the vaccine than by the wild virus. The polio strain found in wastewater samples in Gaza and in the confirmed child case of paralytic polio was “circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2)”.
The horrific sanitary conditions and widespread malnutrition in Gaza are the result of Israel having waged a genocidal military campaign against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip for over ten months now, with indiscriminate bombardment that has systematically targeted the civilian infrastructure, including Gaza’s health care system, and killed over 40,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, coupled with a blockade policy that has been condemned by international human rights and aid organizations as the illegal use of deliberate starvation as a weapon of war.
In December of last year, the government of South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), sometimes called the “World Court” because it is the international community’s highest authority on interpretation and application of international law, accusing Israel of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. The following month, the ICJ issued a preliminary ruling finding that Israel was committing a plausible genocide and ordering the Israeli government to take actions to demonstrate its commitment to compliance with the convention. Israel ignored the order.
In May, the ICJ ordered Israel to halt its military assault on Rafah in southern Gaza, where civilians had been ordered to flee by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and where 1.5 million Palestinians, over half the population of Gaza, were sheltering. As with the provisional measures the ICJ had previously issued, Israel ignored the Court’s order and proceeded with its genocidal campaign.
In a separate case brought before the ICJ by the UN General Assembly, the Court was asked to determine the legal consequences of Israel’s persistent occupation of Palestinian territory, and it issued its advisory opinion on July 19, ruling not only that a multitude of aspects of Israel’s occupation violate international law but that the occupation itself is illegal, amounting to an apartheid regime.
In May, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a separate body at the Hague in the Netherlands, announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for three top Hamas officials, including Ismail Haniyeh, whom Israel assassinated in Tehran, Iran, on July 31, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, the ICC has yet to issue the warrants, which require the approval of a three-judge panel.
The US government under the administration of President Joe Biden has been supporting Israel’s genocide while cynically feigning to care about the lives of Palestinian civilians and colluding with Israel in a public relations campaign aimed at creating the false perception that the only obstacle to a cessation of hostilities is Hamas’s rejection of an Israeli ceasefire proposal, when in fact Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly made clear that Israel will not end its genocidal military operation in Gaza before achieving the stated aim of eliminating Hamas and otherwise making demands transparently intended to ensure that no ceasefire can be achieved—a policy that has angered families of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups during the murderous attacks in Israel on October 7 last year.
While it is unlikely to happen given the perversity of the existing world governmental order, the US government could theoretically also be charged with violating the 1948 Genocide Convention for its complicity in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Thank you for providing more information than ever comes from even so called alternative news sources.
I’m glad you found it informative!
How, when poliomyelitis is evidently not infectious, but a poisoning disease? Unless Israel is using chemical warfare…
It is a widely accepted belief that the paralytic disease formerly known mainly as poliomyelitis (from polios{gray} myelos {marrow} itis {inflammation}), commonly shortened to “polio,” is an infectious disease, caused by the enterovirus that was blamed and named for it.
However, the actual heavily censored and obscured evidence indicates the condition is not infectious at all, and the virus was a convenient scapegoat for poisoning due to very profitable paralytic agricultural pesticides, peak use of which preceded the mid-20th century peak of poliomyelitis like a shadow image. The most notorious of these paralytic pesticides was DDT, preceded by other toxic pesticides, such as lead arsenate (yes, a compound of lead and arsenic, nice).
The evidence most frequently cited to prove the effectiveness of the vaccine actually serves as evidence the vaccine did not bring about its decline, especially if one stretches the time axis, as I have below. Poliomyelitis began to decline sharply a few years before introduction of the vaccine, as arguably the most deadly of these pesticides, BHC (benzene hexachloride, a.k.a., lindane, hexachlorobenzene) was phased out because it imparted a bad taste to food!
The poliomyelitis rate had almost halved before widespread introduction of the polio vaccine in April 1955 (approximated by red line on the curve below, reference: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/salk-announces-polio-vaccine). Poliomyelitis rate and pesticide use reference: http://harvoa.org/polio/overview.htm
Scientists then wondered about the “paradox” of absence of paralytic disease among indigenous people who had 100% polio virus infection rates, almost 100% rates of 3 different strains. These people used no pesticides. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1932461/pdf/ajhg00547-0066.pdf (see pgs. 72-78 of the PDF)
Excerpt: “There is a high proportion of individuals with antibodies to poliomyelitis (sic), but there is little or no evidence for paralytic disease in the population, a paradox already recognized in many populations of low economic level.”
Note also the absence of outbreaks among the very large percentage of adults in the US who have not been boosted for polio in decades. And I wonder what the rate of polio virus “infection” is among those who are unvaccinated for polio. Where are the outbreaks of paralytic disease among unvaccinacted Amish populations?
Poliomyelitis rates were also highest in the summer in the north and central US, contrary to typical viral illnesses, but perfectly consistent with pesticide exposure. Beaches were sprayed with DDT then. https://ia601000.us.archive.org/17/items/SuzanneHumphriesMDDissolvingIllusionsDiseaseVaccinesAndTheForgottenHistory2013Pdf/Suzanne%20Humphries%20MD%20-%20Dissolving%20Illusions%20-%20Disease%2C%20Vaccines%2C%20and%20The%20Forgotten%20History%20%282013%29%20pdf.pdf (p. 222)
Note the spike of poliomyelitis fallowing the introduction of the Salk vaccine in April 1955 and lesser decline from 1954-55, as opposed to previous and following years. Also note that this mid-20th century spike in poliomyelitis went counter to an overall decline in infectious diseases, and yet the polio virus was hardly novel.
And a Michigan outbreak in 1958 found most people didn’t even HAVE the polio virus, a large percentage with no indications of viral “infection” at all. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/327642
That is because viruses evidently did not cause the paralytic disease, at very least not by themselves. But poisons in vaccine certainly can, as they do to tens of thousands in India, who are stricken with acute flaccid paralysis, which IS poliomyelitis, just differently named, and the incidence of which was found to correlate with polio vaccine doses, in a tragic medical irony. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30111741//2243960
Here is a checklist of characteristics, and how they fit with the infection vs. poisoning:
Characteristic and cause with which it is consistent:
No outbreaks among people who haven’t been boosted for decades – Poisoning
Mid-20th century peak – Poisoning
Beginning of decline – Poisoning (BHC/lindane phasing out, years prior to vaccine)
Mid-latitude summer peak – Poisoning
Absence of paralytic disease in indigenous populations with 100% polio virus antibody rates – Poisoning
Physical therapy effectiveness – Poisoning
Vitamin C effectiveness – Either infection or poisoning detox
Michigan 1958 outbreak – Poisoning
Paralysis in India – Poisoning by the vaccine itself!
Poliovirus is infectious, but you are right to point out the role of toxins, which harmed people’s immune systems and otherwise made them more susceptible to the disease. This explains the observation of 100% infection but no disease among that indigenous population. Thanks for that and the other links! And also for bringing up AFP and that tragic irony.
Well, when there is war, there is poisoning and severe weakening of resistance. Thereby, this “bug” that may be a harmless enterovirus for healthy people, as it evidently was for the indigenous Xavante tribe, could be very harmful to the weakened hosts.
I still have yet to see any evidence the polio virus is harmful in and of itself. It was “proven” harmful by injecting it into the brains of monkeys through holes that were drilled in their skulls. Try that with DDT, and see how things go. Never proven by transmission that could not also be explained by parallel exposure to a poisoning agent. Outbreaks were local, and did not spread.
I would agree that host factors are probably determinative as to whether poliovirus infection causes disease or not. Unfortunately, thanks to government and industry funding, the scientific community seems totally uninterested in determining the risk factors for various infectious diseases because they are so narrowly focused on mass vaccination as the solution. It is institutionalized myopia.
This is worrying because the WHO/UNICEF have got form for using the oral polio vaccine (OPV) polio vaccine in disaster areas – with disastrous results.
They did it in the Philippines in 2013 despite there not having been a case of polio there since 1993.
They also went to Syria in 2013 to administer the OPV because there were 13 cases of polio – and polio cases appeared soon afterwards. Subsequently it transpired that UNICEF had also been in Syria in November 2012, vaccinating the under 5s. They may have caused the very outbreak that they came back in 2013 to stop.
There was another outbreak in the Philippines in 2019 and even the WHO admitted it was vaccine derived polio virus type 2.*
What is most concerning is that (as your article states) the OPV can *cause* the very disease it is supposed to stop. You know it, I know it – and the Oxford Journals Clinical Infectious Disease periodical published a 2005 editorial titled “When can we stop using the Oral Poliovirus Vaccine”. The scientific community knows it – so the WHO and UNICEF absolutely must know the dangers of using the OPV.
Why is UNICEF and the WHO still doing this?
The WHO and UNICEF keep making the claim that “95% of children under 5 need to be vaccinated to stop the spread of polio”. This claim is pure conjecture and not based on any scientific proof.
They shouldn’t be using the OPV at all and shouldn’t have been doing so for 20 years. As if it’s not bad enough that the Palestinian kids have to fear the Israeli brutality, they also have to fear the ignorance of the WHO.
(I can supply references for all the events if anyone wishes)
Thanks. I believe this is the article you are referring to:
When Can We Stop Using Oral Poliovirus Vaccine?
https://doi.org/10.1086/498171
In the years before the introduction of live, attenuated oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV), there was a vigorous debate between advocates of killed and live vaccines. Proponents of live vaccine took the position that OPV would produce immunity more similar to that produced by wild viruses, providing superior individual and population protection. Proponents of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) felt that there was a risk that attenuated viruses would regain their virulence and that person-to-person spread could permit continuous circulation of vaccine virus
On the basis of 50 years of experience with Salk’s killed poliovirus vaccine and >40 years of experience with Sabin’s live, attenuated OPV, who was right? As is so often the case, both sides were. The first killed vaccine significantly reduced, but did not eliminate, polio. Mass campaigns with 3 monovalent OPVs brought the number of polio cases close to 0 in the United States. Although monovalent OPVs proved impractical for routine use, high coverage with trivalent OPV eliminated the disease from the United States; the last case caused by wild virus occurred in 1978, more than a generation ago. In 2004, 1255 confirmed polio cases were reported worldwide, a >99.5% reduction from the estimated 350,000 cases that occurred in 1988. This reduction was achieved by using mass OPV campaigns, as originally envisioned by Sabin. As the global polio eradication initiative nears its ultimate goal of stopping circulation of all wild polioviruses, the questions of if and how OPV vaccination can be stopped have become increasingly important
Why must OPV vaccination be stopped? Vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis was recognized shortly after the introduction of OPV, with cases occurring in both vaccinees and their contacts. The time is coming when the only cause of polio is likely to be the vaccine used to prevent it. Ample molecular data are now available to demonstrate that vaccine viruses can revert to full neurovirulence [1]. Outbreaks of polio in China, Egypt, Haiti, Madagascar, and the Philippines caused by circulating, neurovirulent vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPVs) demonstrate that these revertent strains are fully transmissible and pose significant population risks. VDPV outbreaks are associated with incomplete vaccine coverage over a period of years, allowing a large population of susceptible children to accumulate [2]. Worldwide, only 70%–80% of children receive 3 routine doses of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and OPV in their first year of life. Many of the poorest countries in the world are unable to vaccinate even 50% of their children. Under these circumstances, continuing to use OPV after eradication is very risky
Some have proposed the global replacement of OPV with IPV. For example, in this issue of the Journal Laassri et al. [3] demonstrate that enhanced-potency inactivated vaccine reduces both the titer of poliovirus excreted in stools and the duration of excretion. These findings suggest that currently available IPV will inhibit circulation of polioviruses and, consequently, should provide a greater degree of herd immunity than the original Salk vaccine. Because the reductions in virus excretion are smaller than those produced by OPV, Laassri et al. propose further enhancement of IPV to improve the population protection afforded by that vaccine. However, the effectiveness of such an improved vaccine in inhibiting poliovirus transmission would have to be verified experimentally, particularly in high-risk tropical developing countries where the immune response to both IPV and OPV is suboptimal [4]. The time and expense of developing, testing, and securing regulatory approval for a new IPV makes it unlikely that such a vaccine could be available on a timely basis
Apart from the public health and ethical issues associated with continued vaccination against a nonexistent disease, OPV cannot simply be supplanted by IPV. Production capacity for the currently available enhanced-potency IPV is insufficient for global use. Expanding production capacity by building new facilities is both time consuming and extremely costly. Even with a massive, global financial commitment, sufficient quantities of IPV could not be available for the rapidly approaching date when the changeover would be necessary. Furthermore, low rates of immunization achieved in routine vaccination programs in the least-developed countries would mean that a high proportion of their populations would still remain unprotected, despite adequate vaccine supply [5]
A final reason for stopping vaccination with OPV—a reason that would also apply to IPV—is that the economic benefits of eradication will not be achieved if vaccination continues. The global savings in direct vaccination costs are estimated to be at least US $1.5 billion each year. The public-sector funding used to pay for polio vaccination will then, hopefully, be transferred to other important domestic and international public health programs
There are, however, risks associated with stopping vaccination. For example, despite intensive virological surveillance for 3 years before eradication being certified, wild polioviruses might still be circulating at undetectably low levels when vaccination is stopped. Polio could also reemerge though inadvertent release of viruses used in vaccine production or the laboratory, similar to the last case of smallpox in Birmingham, England. The World Health Organization has recently developed a plan for stopping the use of OPV worldwide after the certification of global polio eradication [6]. The principal components of the plan are as follows: (1) biocontainment of all polioviruses, including wild, Sabin, and vaccine-derived strains, to reduce the risk that a laboratory accident will reintroduce poliovirus into a susceptible population; (2) maintenance of highly sensitive surveillance for circulating polioviruses, so that outbreaks are detected quickly; (3) stockpiling of monovalent OPV strains, to control any outbreak that might occur; and (4) simultaneous global OPV cessation, so that population immunity is at the highest possible level when the last dose of OPV is administered, to minimize the chances of circulating VDPV emerging
A remaining risk is the long-term excretion of polioviruses by certain classes of immunodeficient individuals, a phenomenon recognized >30 years ago. Hypogammaglobulinemic patients are particularly susceptible to vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis and have been most commonly found to be long-term excreters after developing paralysis. Some, however, have remained asymptomatic for many years. Stopping OPV use will prevent additional immunodeficient persons from becoming chronically infected through vaccination. Studies of cohorts of immunodeficient persons have shown that chronic infection is, fortunately, rare. So far, only 28 persons with primary immune deficiency disorders and chronic poliovirus infection have been identified in the 40 years that OPV has been used [6]. Presumably, countries with identified chronic excreters of poliovirus will continue to use inactivated vaccine until these persons die or until it is clear that they no longer pose a threat. Because 1 person has been excreting VDPV for at least 20 years and remains healthy [7], IPV may still be needed for decades
In developing countries, the full scope of chronic poliovirus infection still needs to be better defined. Most of the population will not have access to sophisticated care that will prolong the life of an immunodeficient person. There is particular anxiety, though, about the large number of HIV-infected persons, especially in Africa, who might become chronically infected and transmit VDPV to others. This concern persists despite the qualitative differences between the immunodeficiency associated with HIV and the B cell defects associated with vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis. Chronic infections would be likely to occur only during the advanced stages of immunodeficiency, when life expectancy would be short because treatment is, essentially, unavailable. The article by Hennessey et al. [8] in this issue of the Journal is an attempt to address that concern. They cultured stool samples from 325 HIV-infected persons in Cote d’Ivoire during the months after a mass OPV campaign. No polioviruses were found, leaving them 95% confident that the rate of chronic poliovirus infection is <1%
Does Hennessey et al.’s study answer the question definitively? No. In fact, no healthy long-term excreter has been found by the kind of rational approach employed by Hennessey et al., even in hypogammaglobulinemic patients who are apparently at the highest level of risk [9]. All long-term excreters have been found by serendipity, and negative studies simply cannot demonstrate that an event never occurs. Could cohort selection in their study have been better? Yes. It would have been better if all study subjects had young children in their household and all were severely immunocompromised. However, the difficulty of conducting research in developing countries should not be underestimated. With the crowding and poor sanitation existing in African slums, it is likely that subjects would have been in contact with recently vaccinated children and/or exposed to vaccine viruses from environmental sources. Is the study reassuring? Yes, but additional studies should be performed, and with some urgency
Although we can better define the extent and duration of chronic excretion of VDPV, the biggest threats to polio eradication now come from politics and complacency—threats that have the potential to keep eradication from ever being achieved. The eradication initiative has been ongoing for 17 years. There is a risk that donor fatigue may set in and financial support may dry up. A mixture of politics and religion led to a cessation of vaccination campaigns in northern Nigeria. The consequent outbreaks there not only have paralyzed >1000 children but also have seeded wild polioviruses across Africa and beyond. Polio-free countries were complacent about routine immunization, allowing pockets of low coverage to develop. Wild poliovirus reached Mecca from North Africa and then spread to Yemen and Indonesia, where it found fertile soil. As of 28 October 2005, 473 cases of polio caused by wild poliovirus have been identified in Yemen, and 278 have been identified in Indonesia. Mass campaigns have been conducted to control these outbreaks and other smaller ones that followed importation into additional countries that had been previously free of polio. These expensive campaigns add a further stress to a program short of funding
As scientists, it is easy for us to look for technical solutions to problems, but the mundane issues of having the fortitude and mobilizing the resources needed to complete the daunting tasks before us are the biggest challenges that we face. We are fortunate that the&ranks of polio eradication workers are staffed with optimists who know it can be done and will see the job through to completion.
Thank you Jeremy
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One issue they’re definitely ignoring is the poisons in the oral polio vaccines themselves. I would not be surprised if the main cause of paralytic disease in absence of accidents in the US is vaccination. Wouldn’t be surprised at all. But who’s looking?
Guillain Barre Syndrome is an example of a paralytic disease known to be caused by vaccination (i.e., flu shots).