The hunt for a virus that cuases polio began in the first years of the 20th Century as an emergency response to the horrifying onset of major epidemics of paralytic polio in Sweden and the United States. It was guided by a new scientific hypothesis then gathering strength that we now know of as the 'Germ Theory of Disease'.
These polio epidemics were new - and yet poliomyelitis, to give it its full name, was not a new disease. It had been around for centuries and was lnog associated with metal working. But the virus we now blame for polio is a common human gut virus with no obvious connection to metalworking. This virus is produced solely by human cells, and spreads from us to be common in soil. Human infants acquire lifelong immunity to it as soon as they go into the garden and put a grubby hand in their mouth, as stated in a paper published on the website of the Centers for Disease Control (DCD) in the US.*
So - how did this virus come to cause these crippling and eadly epidemics? Sit back comfortably and read on, for this is also the story of the birth of modern virology and much of modern medicine. It took me some time to untangle it - but I think i can now explain it quite straightforwardly.
Polio at its worst causes paralysis of the chest muscles of children, thus suffocating its victims. It was thus formerly known as Infantile Paralysis. The critical damage is to the motor neurone cells inside the backbone that control the chest muscles. Some children were so crippled that they could only breathe through being put into 'iron lungs'. Many died - but fortunately these were only a small proportion of those afflicted. In most cases the paralysis was only temporary and minor, some victims scarely felt paralysed at all - but nevertheless these epidemics were unpredictable and thus totally terrifying. They hit at kids and they struck in the manner of bushfires in summer, sometimes destorying a whole neighbourhood but then not returning for years.
'Poliomyelitis' comes from the Greek for 'inflammation of the grey spinal cord'; the grey marrow of our backbone where live the motor neuron cells that control our muscles. Damage to these cells can cause paralysis. Going by skeletons and paintings of victims, it has been around from the time of ancient Egypt. What was new, when the polio epidemics started at the end of the 19th century, was that it had never before struck at so many at once and had never before been epidemic.
These epidemics grew to a climax in 1952 when some 3,000 Americans died - but one should put this in context. In 1957 an influenza epidemic reportedly killed 62,000 in the US and in 1950 34,000 died of tuberculosis.
But polio was considered worse because it mostly targeted children - and inexplicably children not living in poverty. It mostly struck at middle-class children who presumably had good sanitary cnditions at home. Also, winter is normally the time when infections kill, when cold and damp affect immune systems, so why were these 'Summer Plagues'?
The British Medical Journal currently reports on its website for students: 'Polio was never a big killer, but the evil of this diesease was its ability to reappear and disappear every summer and autumn.'** Why was the virus only active around harvest time? This is still an enigma for virology although, as you will find, the toxicologists had an explanation ...
[Page and a half explaining how polio was often associated with dirty water; that good diets including lots of fruit did little to protect children; that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a victim after swimming in polluted seawater; laboratories in the US became involved in a race to develop a vaccine, in what became the present day 'war on viruses]... I was surprised to discover that during the major US polio epidemics in the first half ot he 20th Century, some scientists did not agree that a virus was to blame. Doctors who were treating polio victims sometimes blamed the new powerful pesticides, particularly those sprayed repeatedly on crops durin gthe summer months. These were neurotoxins that killed insects by paralysing them. Were they doing the same to humans? These doctors presetned evidence supporting their diagnosis to the US Congress, but they did not win much media or political support. The virology specialisits at that time, and ever since, have firmly dominated our major health institutions, such as the Centers for Disease Research, and persuasively held that epidemics must be caused by infectious agents, either bacteria or viruses.
I long believed the same. It seemed self-evident. In any case, as far as I then could judge, the very fact that polio vaccines now protect us from polio is sufficient proof that polio is caused by a virus.
Still, I would not be a reasonable investigative journalist if I did not read all sides of arguments. I have often found that the vital clues lie in minutia, in details often overlooked. I was intrigued by learning polio was associated with metal working prior to the beginning of the epidemics. Why would a virus linger around metal forges? And what would make it suddenly start to spread so widely? Something must have happened.
When I read the related research, I was surprised to discover how little we know of how the poliovirus causes polio. Professor Akio Nomoto of Tokyo University stated in 1996, "little is known about the mechanisms by which the poliovirus causes paralysis ... it is not known how the virus moves into the blood from the primary multiplication site [the guts], how the virus invades the CNS [Central Nervous System ] ... Humans are simply lucky that the polio vaccines worked." He also noted the only way 'polio can be shown to damage brain cells is to directly inject it across the barrier into monkey brains'.*** This was a very major surprise; if this virus could not naturally get to these cells, how could it cause polio?
But I knew that toxins make their way with relative ease across the blood brain barrier. The scientific papers of toxicology are full of documented cases. For example,
The Journal of Immunology reported: "Neurotoxins are known to directly damage or kill neurons, including: lead, mercury."
This made me pause, for both lead and mercury are found in metalworking. If they damaged neurons, could this explain the paralytic illness that once plagued metal workers? Also, lead arsenate was widely introduced as a summer-sprayed pesticide at the end of the 19th century, both in the US and parts of Europe. This was immediately before the polio epidemics started! It was then used intensively for about fifty years.
The same paper went on to say: "Some organophosphate chemicals (including some pesticides) can cause death or loss of a portion [of a nerve cell.]**** Organophosphates were introduced in the States just before the major polio epidemics of 1950-1952.
Could these pesticides then be co-factors, alngside the poliovirus, in causing the dreadful polio epidemics? But before, I went into this, I needed to know how the poliovirus was proved to cause this paralysis...
*See Dr. John H. Lienhard of the University of Houston, author of 'Polio and Clean Water' on the CDC website
**
http://www.studentbmj.com/issues/04/11/ ... on/399.php***
Molecular Mechanism of POliovirus Replication - Control Of Poliomyelitis. Akio Nomoto (Professor, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan) 1996
**** The Journal of Immunology, vol. 140, p. 564
11 Sep 2008, 12:51 pm
