1955: Did Salk's Polio vaccine reduce polio "cases" or was it due to "the power of the pen"?
Diagnostic criteria for claiming a "case" of poliomyelitis changed the exact same year the polio vaccine was introduced - creating the imediate illusion of the vaccine was "working"!
Last week I added some extra points to Totality of Evidence relating to the history of the polio vaccine - I want to share some of those insights.
As you read this realise history you may see the parallels to COVID-19. History repeating itself.
1952
“57,628 polio cases were reported in the United States in 1952, a number that heightened parents’ fears of the disease and focused public awareness on the need for a vaccine.”1
Problem = Polio Cases (not deaths)
Reaction = Fear of the disease
Solution = Vaccine (“we’ll save you”)
Problem → Reaction → Solution - HERE
April 12, 1955
On April 12 1955, the exact same day researchers claimed their vaccine clinical trials showed the Salk inactivated polio vaccine as “safe and effective”, the US licensed it for use. The vaccine “offer[ed] protection from a disease that was debilitating tens of thousands of Americans a year” and “Relief from Fear”.2
During the clinical trials, and prior to 1955 the case definition for poliomyelitis required ONLY 24 hours of paralysis and not further confirmatory tests - many things can cause temporary paralysis - but all cases were called polio, with the shear number caused people to be fearful of “polio” at the time.
Sometime in 1955
In 1955 according to historical records referenced by Dr Suzanne Humphries & Roman Bystrianyk in their book Dissolving Illusions3 on pages 230-233 they reveal that the practice among doctors before 1954 was to diagnose all patients who experience even short-term paralysis (24 hours) to be diagnose with polio.
In 1955, the year the Salk vaccine was released:
“the diagnostic criteria became more stringent” – “[i]f there was no residual paralysis 60 days after onset, the disease was not considered to be paralytic polio…”
“Thus, simply by changes in diagnostic criteria, the number of paralytic cases was predetermined to decrease in 1955-1997 whether or not any vaccine was used”
A case definition can instantly change the incidence of a disease:
Before the polio vaccine: 24 hours of paralysis was required for polio diagnosis
After the polio vaccine >60 days of paralysis required for polio diagnosis,
with a bias towards unvaccinated being given a polio diagnosis, and the vaccinated another “paralysis” diagnosis
It’s been done before
The same happened for chickenpox hospitalisation in New Zealand, they changed the definition for what constitutes hospitalisation and instantly chickenpox increased in “severity” and becomes the “rationale for introducing the chickenpox vaccination in New Zealand”.
You’ll find these references at Totality of Evidence, Topic: Definition Manipulation - Paralytic Poliomyelitis: https://totalityofevidence.com/definition-manipulation/
CDC 1999
According to CDC’s April 2, 1999 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report - PDF
Before the vaccine rollout
“During 1951–1954, an average of 16,316 paralytic polio cases and 1879 deaths from polio were reported each year.
After the Salk vaccine rollout
Polio incidence declined sharply following the introduction of vaccine to <1000 cases in 1962 and remained below 100 cases after that year.”
Was the sharp decline in cases because of the polio vaccine or “the pen”?
I also note that the CDC quotes morbidity and not mortality for all of these diseases. Why? A case does not mean death, or even long term morbidity.
Also note the one case of polio in 1998 was because of the vaccine! (This has continued such as the paralysed children in India and Pakistan following their polio vaccination…. but I digress.)
April 30,1955
Less than one month following the introduction of the Salk polio vaccine in America the Cutter Laboratories’ vaccine was suspended due to "cases of paralytic poliomyelitis occurring among children who have been vaccinated".
It was later found that the vaccine virus were not inactivated, but “found to contain live poliomyelitis virus of the Type 1 Mahoney strain” these children became polio virus carriers!4
Post vaccination 1957-59
In an old article from Britain (circa 1961) titled The Salk Anti-Poliomyelitis Vaccine5 - they provided some statistics from American Polio Surveillance Reports
“In 1957 very nearly half the paralytic cases in children between the ages of 5 and 14 years occurred in vaccinated children...The early failures in America led to the decision that the vaccination had to be repeated two or three times to be effective."
Sound familiar???
"As in America, the vaccine has been pressed upon the public with every resource of advertisement, persuasions and threat of paralysis by the doctors, the Government, the newspaper, the B.B.C. and in other ways."
Sound familiar???
Ignore vaccine injury and death, promote death in unvaccinated
June 1959 - Collin Deaton, former member of the Stamford Rovers Football Club, became paralysed from the waist down 8 days after inoculation for poliomyelitis on board his ship at New York in June 1959" - crickets
Contrast with Jeff Hall, the unvaccinated Birmingham City of England footballer - received enormous amount of propaganda made of his death from polio.6
Sound familiar???
April 17, 1961
UK Parliament:
"a person is regarded as fully immunized only if he has concluded a primary course or received a reinforcing inoculation within the pervious five years"
Thus casting suspicion on the data - sound familiar???
The power of the pen
In Dissolving Illusions page 247 the authors clearly state:
The paralysis that the world witnessed in the first part of the 20th century was largely from toxins in the environment like DDT, lead, and arsenic. Those toxins seriously disrupt mucosal immunity, allowing a previously benign virus to bypass the innate immune system and cause paralysis and other clinical symptoms.
This was often transient…and the patient recovered. Hence the 24 hour window was increased to more than 60 days after the vaccine was introduced!
They go on to state:
Where those chemicals are still used today, you will see reports of paralysis, which used to be called polio, but authorities now call it “acute flaccid paralysis”.
A change a definition can make a disease both come and go!
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https://web.archive.org/web/20101114142407/http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/poliomyelitis
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-lively-biography-of-jonas-salk/2015/05/11/f907fdbc-ee92-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html
https://dissolvingillusions.com/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/1-s2.0-S0007078589801292/first-page-pdf
https://www.informedparent.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/1961c.-The-Salk-Anti-Poliomyelitis-Vaccine.pdf
https://www.informedparent.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/1961c.-The-Salk-Anti-Poliomyelitis-Vaccine.pdf