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Our Fixation With Polio and Zika

dog staring down ball
Before long, Zika will become synonymous with microcephaly—much like polio has become synonymous with severe paralysis.

This is the second in a series of thought pieces on the poliovirus and Zika virus, and how sometimes history has a way of repeating itself. The first article was “Poliovirus and Zika: What’s Past is Prologue.”

Imagine 100 people who have symptoms of severe paralysis somewhere on their body… say, their legs. They are all permanently paralyzed, but some of the people have one or more of the following conditions which can produce paralysis similar to polio:

Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP); Arsenic Poisoning; Bilious Remittent Fever; Chinese Paralytic Syndrome; Cholera Morbus virus; Coxsackie virus; DDT Poisoning; ECHO; Enteroviral Encephalopathy; Epidemic Cholera; Ergotism; Famine Fever; Guillain-Barré Syndrome; Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease; Inhibitory Palsy; Intermittent Fever; Lead Poisoning; Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome); Post-Polio Syndrome; Reye’s Syndrome; Spinal Apoplexy; Spinal Meningitis; Transverse Myelitis; Traumatic Neuritis; Undiagnosed Congenital Syphilis; Viral or Aseptic Meningitis; Worm Fever… and “provocation of limb paralysis by intramuscular injections of many types, including a variety of vaccines.”1 2

How would you know which of these individuals had “polio”? The answer is all those who test positive for the presence of the “poliovirus.” If they don’t test positive for poliovirus, then they don’t have “polio.” They’re still paralyzed for good, but they are not diagnosed as having polio paralysis.

Now, remember that there’s a possibility that even those individuals who are paralyzed and test positive for the poliovirus may not have been paralyzed by the poliovirus. No one knows exactly why less than 1% of people who become infected with poliovirus and develop complications that lead to some form of temporary or permanent paralysis, and the more than 99% who  become infected with poliovirus either do not exhibit any clinical symptoms or have minor symptoms, such as fever, sore throat, headache and fatigue, and do not become paralyzed.3 4

Thus, it is entirely possible—even likely—that the people who become paralyzed and test positive for poliovirus could have become paralyzed as a result of something else, perhaps one of the more than two dozen conditions listed above. What if, for example, 50 of the 100 paralyzed people had gone for a long swim in a lake highly contaminated with arsenic, DDT and lead from nearby industries a few days prior to developing the paralysis? What if they also tested positive for poliovirus? What is the likelihood that all of them developed complications of poliovirus infection, as opposed to becoming paralyzed by exposure to arsenic, DDT or lead poisoning? Is simply testing positive for poliovirus the real test of whether poliovirus is to blame for the paralysis?

If scientists still don’t know why some people with the poliovirus become paralyzed and others don’t, and if we know that the poliovirus in more than 99% of people who carry it is either completely harmless or mild, then how do we even know that the poliovirus is ever the culprit (and not something else) when paralysis does occur? Is it scientific to assume that a person who becomes paralyzed and tests positive for the poliovirus has, in fact, been paralyzed by the poliovirus?

Think of the Zika virus that is making so much news in both the national and international media.  We know that only 1 in 5 people who get Zika ever show any symptoms. Other symptoms include “fever, rash, joint pain, or conjunctivitis (red eyes)” and “muscle pain and headache.”4

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “People usually don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital, and they very rarely die of Zika. For this reason, many people might not realize they have been infected.”5

So Zika virus, like poliovirus, is relatively harmless. Yet, scientists, medical researchers, and public health officials are feverishly trying to establish a causal relationship between Zika and the cases of microcephaly (smaller than normal baby heads and associated neurological damage) in Brazil.

Before long, Zika will become synonymous with microcephaly—much like polio has become synonymous with severe paralysis. As with cases of paralysis in the presence of the poliovirus, there is a tendency to want to believe that microcephaly is caused by Zika merely because of the presence of the Zika virus.

But correlation, no matter how strong it may be, does not equal causation. Science doesn’t doesn’t work that way.

According to the CDC, microcephaly is caused by a number of factors, including:

  • Certain infections during pregnancy, such as rubella, toxoplasmosis, or cytomegalovirus
  • Severe malnutrition, meaning a lack of nutrients or not getting enough food
  • Exposure to harmful substances, such as alcohol, certain drugs, or toxic chemicals
  • Interruption of the blood supply to the baby’s brain during development6

As there are many causes of the symptoms that we have come to associate with polio, there are many causes of microcephaly. For some reason, however, we have remained strangely fixated on poliovirus, and now Zika virus.


References:

1 Humphries S. Smoke, Mirrors, and the “Disappearance” Of Polio. International Medical Council on Vaccination Nov. 17, 2011.
2 Humphries S, Bystrianyk R. Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History. July 27, 2013.
3 Polio. GlobalHealth.gov.
4 Mayo Clinic. Polio Symptoms. May 11, 2014.
5 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Zika Virus. CDC.gov.
6 CDC. Birth Defects. CDC.gov.

16 Responses

  1. Greed, greed and more greed. Maybe it wasn’t always this way…but today it seems that vaccines were a good idea, gone awry.

    1. Sadly, vaccines have always been about greed, if not something worse, like population control (aka genocide). Edward Jenner, the inventor of the smallpox vaccine, the granddaddy of all vaccines and just as destructive and ineffective as vaccines today, weaseled 30,000 pounds out of the British government for the development of his vaccine—millions in today’s money.

  2. As always, I guess they’ll do anything to take the blame of what might be the real cause – vaccinating pregnant women, with a vaccine that has a listed side effect of microcephaly. Why? Because they’ll never admit vaccines are anything but safe, and also so they can add a new vaccine for Zika. And sadly, the probable real cause will be ignored. Their mantra is “Vaccines are Safe.” Mine is, “Do your own research from independent sources!” Or you can believe WHO, CDC, those who make vaccines, and the media at your own peril.

  3. This is a really thoughtful article that makes a good point: why do only some people (1%) that are infected with Polio have nerve invasion? And similarly, why has Zika suddenly begun to cause an epidemic of Microcephaly? These are great questions. The only theories that I have heard with regard to Polio that make sense are that the Polio epidemic of paralysis occurred simultaneous to DDT use at its highest. DDT is fat soluble, so crosses the blood/brain barrier, and opens Na+ channels leading to paralysis. Maybe there was some sort of piggybacking going on with the Polio Virus? It strikes me that, as many people have pointed out, Brazil has been the site of an enormous amount of GMO production, which includes high amounts of herbicides and pesticides. Maybe there is something similar going on here? But it doesn’t make sense to question whether Zika causes microcephaly any longer. It has been shown that, in vitro, it does. The better question is WHY NOW?

  4. . . . and nary a word about the Zika virus

    Posted by HAZEL, Guest
    http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=113977
    05-08-2002

    New Human Species in Brazil?

    http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-113977.html

    I’m currently reading Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky edited by Peter R. Mitchell & John Schoeffel, published 2002 by The New Press, New York. The editors put the book together by transcribing tapes of Q&A sessions at public talks by Noam Chomsky held between 1989 and 1999. The book’s footnotes are on line at

    http://understandingpower.com/

    In chapter two of the printed book, on page 65, Chomsky, in discussing conditions in Central America, says:

    “. . . in northwest Brazil, for example, which is a rather fertile area with plenty of rich land, just it’s all owned by plantations. Brazilian medical researchers now identify the population as a new species with about 40 per cent the brain size of human beings, a result of generations of profound malnutrition and neglect – and this may be unremediable except after generations, because of the lingering effects of malnutrition on one’s offspring.”

    Here’s the footnote for this:

    54. On the new human species in northeast Brazil, see for example, Isabel Vincent, Life a struggle for Pygmy family, Globe & Mail (Toronto), December 17, 1991, p. A15. An excerpt:

    “A diet consisting mainly of manioc flour, beans and rice has affected [northeastern Brazilian laborers’] mental development to the point that they have difficulty remembering or concentrating. Fully 30.7 per cent of children in the Northeast are born malnourished, according to Unicef and the Brazilian Ministry of Health. . .

    Brazilian medical experts have known of undernourishment in the country’s poorest region for more than two decades, but they confirmed only recently the existence of a much more startling problem — a severe lack of protein in their diet that is producing a population of Brazilian Pygmies known by some medical researchers in Brazil as homens nanicos. Their height at adulthood is far less than the average height recording by the World Health Organization and their brain capacity is 40 per cent less than average. . . . In the poorest states of the Northeast, such as Alagoas and Piaui, homens nanicos comprise about 30 per cent of the population. . . . Much of the Northeast comprises fertile farm land that is being taken up by large plantations for the production of cash crops such as sugar cane.”

    Okay, I note that Chomsky refers to the Brazilian Pygmies as having 40% of the normal human brain size, while the article excerpt in the footnote says their brain capacity is 40% less then normal. Assume that the article has it right, and Chomsky, speaking from memory, reversed the percentages. We’re still talking about people with a brain capacity that is only 60% of the norm for homo sapiens.

  5. For more information on the real cause of Polio look up Jim West and Polio. Well documented information.

  6. why now? Because roughly a year before that Zika craziness the Brazilian government mandated ALL pregnant women get tetanus vaccine. Et voila – a year later women starting having sick children. Why nobody makes this connection???

    1. Because they have been paid NOT to make the association. However, that is not the whole picture. Far from it. Please see my post above/below with the links to Yoichi Shimatsu who has the most accurate picture of what is happening. His research checks out.

  7. A group of physicians in Argentina has challenged the idea that an increase in babies with brain damage is linked to microcephaly. They instead claim it is due to Brazil’s water supply. Specifically, larvicide which is added into Brazil’s water. According to Yahoo!, Zika really has nothing to do with the situation at all.

    The group, Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns (PCST), says a chemical larvicide called pyriproxyfen was added to Brazil’s water supplies in 2014 in order to stop the development of mosquito larvae in drinking water tanks. The organization alleges that pyriproxyfen, not Zika virus, is to blame for the rise in cases of infants born in Brazil with unusually small heads, a condition known as microcephaly.
    Pharmaceutical companies have a lot riding on Zika being the main culprit in the microcephaly outbreak yet sources around the world continue to dispell the notion pointing out a variety of other causations. Tdap vaccine links, as I have cited in the past, are much stronger links to microcephaly than Zika. Pharmaceutical companies, the CDC and WHO all need to villainize Zika for their own self-interest. The Zika fear mongering machine continues to hit stumbling blocks and I continue to hope more people become more reasonable over this ridiculousness. The WHO also has a lot riding on the matter. Of course, the article also features an M.D. quickly trying to shove the idea of larvicide under the rug.

    Board-certified infectious disease specialist Amesh A. Adalja, MD, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, tells Yahoo Health that he’s doubtful. “I don’t think this is the cause for microcephaly because the levels consumed in the drinking water are much lower (300 times) than the World Health Organization (WHO) limits,” he says.

  8. “In Brazil, microcephaly, in which babies are born with unusually small heads, is said to have surged from an average of about 150 cases annually to more than 4,300 cases since October 2015. Of these, fewer than 500 cases have been confirmed, and the Zika virus has only been identified in 41. Meanwhile, in the U.S. approximately 25,000 infants are diagnosed with microcephaly each year — without Zika”.

    (+source: The Guardian, 2/16/16)

    Continuing:

    “As I wrote last month, the evidence suggests implicating Zika virus may be a matter of convenience — leaders of the public-private partnership between industry and government may be quickly blaming the rise in microcephaly on disease-carrying mosquitoes in order to sell more GE mosquitoes, to sell more toxic insecticides, and to have an excuse to develop and sell more vaccines.

    All the while, they are keeping hidden some of the most likely culprits of microcephaly, namely poor nutrition and toxic environmental exposures like pesticides, as well as vaccines given during pregnancy when the fetus is most susceptible to harm. By throwing up a convenient veil in the form of Zika-infected mosquitoes, business can not only go on as usual but also grow and expand profits to boot”.

    (+Source: Dr. Mercola, 3/1/16)

  9. Here is the best information on zika, Brazil and microencephaly to date.

    http://www.rense.com/general96/genebrazilroots.html

    http://www.rense.com/general96/cdc_oxford.html

    http://www.rense.com/general96/genewash.html

    Yoichi Shimatsu is an Asia-based science writer based in Hong Kong. I have checked out many of his references at a university medical library and they have all been credible. This can be seen as a sort of “Ebola 2.0” as a way to try and enforce mass vaccinations. It is ALL fraudulent and we better make damn certain that whoever ends up in the WH is not beholden to the pharmaceutical/drug cartel. That leaves Killary out of the picture.

  10. Zika has been around since the 1940’s. In the news today is the contrast between Colombia and Brazil. Where as Colombia knows and is tracking a huge outbreak of Zika there are no microcephaly cases to report. Of the huge number of microcephaly cases originally reported by Brazil the report has been changed to say the number of cases is actually closer to 400. This puts the number very close to that which we see in the USA even though we do not have Zika. Of the remaining 400 cases in Brazil only 17 tested positive for Zika. (Taken from lecture, Dr. John Bergman) The link between Zika and microcephaly has not been proven to exist. Still President Obama has directed that more than a billion dollars US be used to develop a vaccine for a virus that affects 1 in 5 with mild cold like symptoms which last 2 to 7 days and after will produce immunity to Zika for life. True microcephaly although tragic is very rare and probably caused by industrial and agricultural pollution more than by any other factor. In fact the area most stricken in Brazil is an area known to have agricultural pollution concentrations.How sad.

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