Human Interference
Aaron Nieze

Polio has no cure. This is a fact from multiple sources, including the CDC. Interestingly though, these sources (yes, even the CDC) leave out the fact that the body is perfectly capable of creating antibodies for poliovirus and curing the disease in the same time it takes to fight off a cold. So there's no cure, no drugs, no injection that destroys the virus, but your body could take care of it and successfully create antibodies for complete immunization. Does this mean that the Salk Polio Vaccine in 1955 was unnecessary?

The Salk Polio Vaccine was quite necessary actually. Even with less deaths than that of people with the flu, polio was considered an epidemic (only 2,700 deaths from polio in 1949). So why was everybody so worried about getting Polio and dying? Well the truth is, up until the polio "epidemic", everybody had already gotten polio... mostly children 6 months to 4 years of age! "Oh no! Those poor babies were sick and paralyzed!"...wrong. Arthur Schoenstadt states it perfectly, "Approximately 95 to 99 percent of people who are infected with poliovirus never develop polio symptoms". Just like the chickenpox, children are so vulnerable to the smallest of illnesses and get it almost immediately when introduced to the bacteria/virus. But, why isn't it life threatening?

Here's a concept you'll probably never hear from the CDC, or even health class for that matter. When a brand new baby hits the streets of the open world, they haven't been exposed to any sort of illness yet, so this means they're susceptible to everything. What the CDC and probably your family doctor tells you to do seems obvious, "Get them vaccinated." And it makes sense! Preventative care, right? Well, sure, but no.

"What? No vaccines? You must be one of those crazy hippies." Right around the early 1900's is when major cities were conducting major business, reaching economic stability, and keeping an upwards trend towards a massive civilization. As the years went by, some popular studies came around to the media, one of them being very important, "Bacteria and viruses live on dirty things. If you don't keep a clean space and good hygiene, you'll get sick." and this is still the rule of thumb we follow today. So families disinfected everything and kept dishes impeccably spotless.

You might be wondering where the heck I'm going with this, so let's tie it all up in one moment of "Awe". In these spotless households in which infants and children would grow up, they were never exposed to polio, so there were no issues... so it seemed. Children would continue to grow up, but even into adulthood, they inevitably came into contact with one little poliovirus. But this wasn't the normal polio that infants have been getting for years before. This was the poliovirus that this adult had none of the antibodies to that he should've gotten when he was a child.

"Better hygiene meant that infants and young children had fewer opportunities to encounter and develop immunity to polio. Exposure to poliovirus was therefore delayed until late childhood or adult life, when it was more likely to take the paralytic form." (Robertson S. 1993).

At this point, polio wasn't just another case of the chicken pox. People were becoming paralyzed from a once harmless virus (around 16,500 paralytic cases in 1949). This is when the epidemic was declared. Thankfully, Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine to combat this paralyzing polio infection in 1955, which was extremely effective.

It wasn't polio that caused this crazy epidemic. Polio was a harmless virus, just like getting the cold, you just shake it off. It wasn't until civilization had decided that we should disinfect the spoon we feed our children with, that food dropped on the ground is inedible. It was human interference that created the paralyzing illness. It was when we created the illness that we created the vaccine.

On the Epilogue

The age old argument of getting vaccines seems to have an obvious answer. Get the vaccine and then you don't get sick! It seems almost brainless and idiotic to never get a vaccine. But if you've read the above article, you may know that there's a deeper root problem here. The human body's immune system is built for input. It needs bacteria and viruses as soon as possible so it can create antibodies and complete immunity.

This may sound familiar, because this is exactly what vaccines do. So what's the difference? Honestly, there's not much of a difference. Being naturally exposed to small amounts of viruses is what your body is meant to do. It's why mankind has been around for, oh, about 2.2 million years. Getting a vaccine is just a preventative form of your immune system's natural preventive response. But as we know from "past experiences", the more we interfere, the more chances there are for failure. Epidemics are still happening from the same reason polio became an issue: we're not letting ourselves be exposed to naturally occurring amounts of bacteria/virus. Until we fix this root problem, we'll always need unnatural vaccines to protect us from the unnatural illnesses we create.

Personal Response

Q. So why not get our children vaccinated?
A. When I bring a child into the world, you better believe I’ll drop their pacifier on that dirty, dirty floor and then put it back in his mouth. I’m not going to severely over-cook all of our meals so that once the inevitable random food bacteria comes around, it doesn’t start a freakin’ epidemic in our household. And (don’t read this part if you’re squeamish) I won’t purchase anything that says “anti-bacterial” on it. Go ahead, tear my response apart if you want. Kill me before the common cold turns into Super Dooper AIDS Cancer and does it for you.

Conspiracy is Always Fun!
(This isn't on the official article, this is just for fun.)

Money and Bribery

There is one HUGE difference between being naturally exposed to viruses and getting one from a vaccine. The difference is around $10 billion in 2006 from sales alone. Think about the opportunity to provide incentives to doctor's offices everywhere to push this product.

The US Government gave about $5.7 billion to vaccine manufacturers in 2011. This sort of "donation" seems pretty high for companies that already generate billions of dollars in sales. That would be like giving a few billion dollars to Walmart to keep selling food...oh wait... (http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/24/news/fortune500/walmart_subsidies/)



Some Citation:

Annual Deaths from the flu in America with the vaccine (1993) = around 36,000
Source: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=195750

Annual Deaths from Polio in America without the vaccine (1949) = 2,700
Source: Arthur Schoenstadt, MD July 13, 2010

Paralytic Polio infections in America without the vaccine (1949) = 16,500
Source: Arthur Schoenstadt, MD July 13, 2010

"Approximately 95 to 99 percent of people who are infected with poliovirus never develop polio symptoms"
- Arthur Schoenstadt, MD July 13, 2010

"Better hygiene meant that infants and young children had fewer opportunities to encounter and develop immunity to polio. Exposure to poliovirus was therefore delayed until late childhood or adult life, when it was more likely to take the paralytic form."
- Robertson S. 1993

Money in Vaccines
http://www.whale.to/a/vacc7.html