One of the problems with a dogma is that it makes people intellectually lazy. Even if the core idea is true, it leads to people making absurd arguments if it gets them applause from the echo chamber the dogma creates, and because it encourages the acceptance, as an absolute truth, of every new addition to the dogma.
In the case of “Immune to Evidence”, reprinted from The Tyee, the authors make an argument that contradicts their support of the dogma, and they don’t even realize it.
The facts are that the syptoms of Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) are the symptoms of polio – the distinction is that the virus is not found. The World Health Organization monitors AFP and is now counting more than 100,000 cases a year [1]. But the argument that antagonism towards vaccines is preventing the elimination of this scourge is nonsense, because WHO itself admitted, back in the early 1990s, that there probably is no single cause, and the causes might be environmental, not infectious, such as exposure to pesticides [2].
We have to ask whether the “March of Dimes" was trying to eliminate juvenile paralysis in the 1950s or whether it was an academic exercise to eliminate a virus. The world has almost accomplished the latter, but what I believe was the obvious original goal is slipping away, with far more cases of juvenile paralysis occuring now, than in the early 1990s when WHO started to monitor AFP.
Although it is an article of faith for vaccine dogmatists that the polio vaccine is one of the clearest successes of vaccination, the simple historical evidence belies this. The last major polio epidemic in the United States (which has the best statistics), was in 1952 when the rate was 37 (cases per 100,000). That had fallen to less than half (18) by the time the vaccine was approved in 1955. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1961 complained that, in the previous year, less than half of the vulnerable population (young children, pregnant women) was vaccinated. But at the same time the epidemic had fallen by more than 95% to a rate of 1.8. So polio disappeared without the vaccine even being half of the explanation. In fact, in the first couple of years after vaccination started, the rate of polio increased, before dropping again.
It is quite possible that many of the cases of so-called polio in the 1950s were actually environmental, caused by the post-war love affair with DDT and other organochlorines that, during WWII, were state secrets, used only on military bases (that did have some polio outbreaks). Canada also had an upsurge in cases in 1959, in the midst of the vaccination campaign [4]. The environmental theory is bolstered by the recognition in the 1930s, and possibly earlier, that polio has a dramatic seasonality that corresponds with the fruit harvest season in countries all around the world [4][5]. I am not overusing the word ‘dramatic’. In 1943, in Utah, cases were between 2 and 5 in January through June, but peaked at 211 in the middle of the apple harvest season in September. The same year, in New York State, there were between 3 and 5 cases in each of January through June and 300 during apple and pear harvest in September.
The focus on a polio vaccine forced a focus on a virus. The focus on a virus changed the goal from eliminating juvenile paralysis to eliminating a virus. When paralysis was not eliminated, it was redefined, except under very strict conditions, as Guillain-Barré Syndrome, Meningitis, AFP, etc.
Today there is more focus on measles than on the opioid epidemic (or AFP). The years before any vaccine was available, the US rate of deaths from measles had already fallen 97% from the high rates in the early 1900s. And I use US statistics because Canada stopped counting measles cases from 1959 until the modern vaccine was approved in 1968, probably because it was considered such a trivial health problem. But all we care about today is the last 3% of deaths, which might not all be due to the measles vaccine, and without considering that vaccinating millions of people to prevent a few hundred deaths could cause more problems than it solves. What else are we missing by eliminating vaccine critics from the debate?
- David Crowe
Calgary
403-861-2225
References
[1] AFP (Acute Flaccid Paralysis)/Polio case count. WHO. 2019 Jan [accessed]. https://extranet.who.int/polis/public/CaseCount.aspx
[2] Acute onset flaccid paralysis. WHO, AIREN. 1993. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/1993/WHO_MNH_EPI_93.3.pdf
[3] Alexander ER. The extent of the poliomyelitis problem. JAMA. 1961 Mar 11; 175(10): 837-40. http://davidcrowe.ca/SciHealthEnv/papers/6125-TheExtentOfThePolioProblem.pdf
[4] Kubryk D. Paralytic poliomyelitis in Canada, 1950. Can J Public Health. 1960 Oct; 51: 389-99. http://davidcrowe.ca/SciHealthEnv/papers/5428-ParalyticPolioCanada1959.pdf
[5] Toomey JA. Poliomyelitis: Comparison between the epidemic peak and the harvest peak. Am J Dis Child. 1933 Aug; 46: 262-79. http://davidcrowe.ca/SciHealthEnv/papers/6454-toomey1933-polio_seasons.pdf
[6] Gebhardt LP et al. Epidemic poliomyelitis. J Pediatr. 1946 Jan; 28: 1-13. http://davidcrowe.ca/SciHealthEnv/papers/6043-EpidemicPolio.pdf
[7] Measles – Canada, 1924-1975. MMWR. 1976 Dec17; 25(49). https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/1123
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