Polio cannot be eradicated, say experts.

[Guest guest]

E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTERVienna, Virginia http://www.nvic.org* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *UNITED WAY/COMBINED FEDERAL CAMPAIGN#8122* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *"Protecting the health and informed consent rights of children since 1982." ==========================================================================================BL Fisher Note:Polio is here to stay! So says a professor who chaired the World HealthOrganization's smallpox eradication campaign using Sabin's live oral poliovaccine. He is calling for every child in the world to be vaccinated withSalk's killed version of the vaccine.He says polio infection often is mild without symptoms so it is harder totrack down than the more visible smallpox

infections. He's right.Ninety-nine percent of all polio infections in the pre-vaccine era were mildand either went unnoticed or resolved within three weeks, leaving the personwith antibodies to protect against future infection. It was the rare caseof polio that progressed to paralytic polio. But those crippling, oftendeadly, cases got all the publicity.It isn't a mystery why polio won't go away. Seems the M.D./Ph.D. braintrusts who brought us live oral polio vaccine (OPV) contaminated with SV-40(a monkey virus present in Sabin's original seed stocks) failed to takeinto account the fact that OPV could spread the vaccine strain polio virusfrom child to child and child to adult. Live vaccine strain polio virus caneven be detected in water supplies. It is everywhere!The U.S. stopped used OPV in 1999 and switched to inactivated polio vaccine(IPV), which cannot cause polio. But vaccine strain polio virus is alive

andcirculating among children and adults in Africa, South America, India andother countries where relentless mass vaccination campaigns take place twoto five times a year. Often government and WHO health officials accompaniedby soldiers with guns sweep into a community and hunt down the children inorder to squirt one more dose of live oral polio vaccine down their throats.Save us from the vaccinologists and drug companies who exploit the people inorder to pursue eradication of infectious microorganisms with a religiousfervor not seen since the medieval Crusades. And let the citizens of theworld vote out of office the politicians who use our money to pay them to doit.http://theaustralian.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,19134268%255E23289,00.html-----------------------------Polio here to stay, says smallpox scientistLeigh Dayton15may06HE helped rid the world of smallpox but eminent Australian virologist FrankFenner claims we will never see the end of polio.Despite an 18-year global effort to eradicate polio, Emeritus ProfessorFenner claimed the most that experts could hope for was "effective control"of the crippling central nervous system disease.He chaired the World Health Organisation commission that declared in 1980that smallpox had been eradicated after a 10-year campaign.But polio remains a serious issue in 16 nations in the Indian subcontinent,the Middle East and Africa. Last year, 1948 cases were reported."The best thing to do

would be to include the inactivated Salk poliovaccine -- that's the one used in America and Australia -- in a(combination) vaccine and give it to every child worldwide," said ProfessorFenner who, at 91, still works at the John Curtin School of Medical Researchat the Australian National University in Canberra.The current $US4 billion ($5.2 billion) polio eradication campaign --co-ordinated by the WHO -- relies on saturation vaccination for all childrenyounger than five when outbreaks occur or where the disease remainsuncontrolled.Along with Isao Arita, of the Agency for Co-operation in InternationalHealth in Japan -- another central player in the eradication of smallpox --and the ACIH's Miyuki Nakane, Professor Fenner argues political, economicand biological factors work against this type of strategy.Writing last week in the journal Science, the trio claimed resources spenttrying to eradicate every polio

case would be better used ramping up routinechildhood vaccination.They said that meant continuing emergency vaccinations to limit the spreadof polio in hard-hit nations such as Nigeria, Africa's most populouscountry. Fewer than 13 per cent of Nigerian children are routinelyvaccinated against disease.Once the annual global number of cases is fewer than 500 -- and the numberof nations with polio is fewer than 10 -- all efforts should be folded intoa global immunisation and surveillance program.Commenting in a separate Science article, Donald A. Henderson, director ofthe smallpox program, agreed polio eradication was unlikely. "Let's create aprogram to keep it under moderate control and say that is the best we cando," he said.According to Professor Fenner, the key difference between polio and smallpoxis that every infectious smallpox patient had obvious symptoms. But thereare as many as 200

"invisible" polio infections for every person who becomesparalysed.He said extreme poverty, increased warfare and population growth have madeglobal co-ordination more difficult today than during the Cold War.=============================================News is a free service of the National Vaccine InformationCenter and is supported through membership donations. Learn more aboutvaccines, diseases and how to protect your informed consent rightshttp://www.nvic.org "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." -

Aurobindo.

See the all-new, redesigned .com. Check it out.