Polio Special Part 2: Polio: Are pesticides to blame? and The case against the polio virus

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http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=457 & category=76

 

 

Polio Special Part 2: Polio: Are pesticides to blame? and The case against the

polio virus

 

 

Date Published: 01/05/2004

Author: Janine Roberts

 

Endocrinologist Morton Biskind said the spread of polio after WWII was caused by

the `most intensive campaign of mass poisoning in human history' - the spraying

of some 3.1 billion pounds of pesticides

 

and

 

The case against the polio virus

Polio: are pesticides to blame?

 

The first epidemic of poliomyelitis in a tropical nation was contemporaneous

with the introduction of the pesticide DDT in that country. Towards the end of

WWII, US military camps in the Philippines started to be sprayed daily with DDT

in order to kill flies.(29) Writing in The Journal of the American Medical

Association two years after the war, Albert Sabin reported that poliomyelitis

became, after conflict, the major cause of death among the troops stationed at

these camps. And yet unsprayed neighbouring populations were not affected by the

disease.(30) At the end of the war, the US military's stocks of DDT were sold

onto the public - despite the gravest warnings from establishment scientists.

 

In 1944, the US federal research centre the National Institutes of Health

reported that DDT damaged the same part of the spinal cord (the anterior horn

cells) that is damaged in infantile paralysis. Endocrinologist Dr Morton Biskind

further described in 1949 how DDT caused `lesions in the spinal cord resembling

those in human polio in animals'. He commented: `Despite the fact that DDT is a

highly lethal poison for all species of animals, the myth has become prevalent

among the general population that it is safe for man in virtually any quantity.

Not only is it used in households with reckless abandon so that sprays and

aerosols are inhaled, the solutions are permitted to contaminate skin, bedding

and other textiles.' The same year in Germany, Daniel Dresden found that acute

DDT poisoning produced `degeneration in the central nervous system' that seemed

identical to that reported in severe cases of infantile paralysis.(31)

 

Yet DDT was used to replace lead arsenate as a pesticide in fruit farming and

with which to wash dairy cows. Heavy levels of DDT were soon reported in milk

supplies. The organochlorine pesticide DDE (which is several times more

dangerous than DDT) was also widely used in the US. Both were known to penetrate

the blood-brain barrier that protects the human brain from viral invasion.

Housewives were actually advised to spray DDT to stop infantile paralysis.

Children's bedrooms had wallpaper pre-soaked in DDT. Epidemics of infantile

paralysis started to occur every year.

 

By 1952 the number of cases of infantile paralysis was three times higher than

the figure for 1940.

 

Biskind treated over 200 patients affected with such neurological disorders. He

found that many of these patients recovered when foods contaminated with

pesticides were removed from their diets; this applied particularly to milk

products. Biskind found high concentrations of DDT in butter purchased in New

York. In 1949 he wrote: `Though it was originally observed in 1945 that DDT is

absorbed through the skin, accumulates in the body fat and appears in the milk

of animals, it has recently become almost universal practice to spray cattle

with DDT... Although young animals are much more susceptible to the effects of

DDT than adults, so far as the available literature is concerned, it does not

appear that the effects of such concentrations on infants and children have even

been considered.' (32)

 

Despite the official complacency about substances like DDT and DDE, a few

doctors did consider the effects of toxins. Some reported successfully treating

paralysed patients with dimercaprol, an anti-toxin that is still used in

hospitals since it `binds' heavy metal poisons such as arsenic and lead and

renders them non-toxic. In 1951 Dr Irwin Eskwith reported successfully using

dimercaprol to cure a child suffering from bulbar paralysis, the most severe

form of infantile paralysis.(33) A medical journal also reported that 17 acute

cases of polio were cured after treatment with very large doses of another

anti-toxin - ascorbic acid.(34)

 

A year earlier investigators from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had

announced: `The finding of [liver] cell alteration at dietary levels as low as

five parts per million of DDT, and the considerable storage of the chemical [in

body fats]... makes it extremely likely that the potential hazard of DDT has

been underestimated.' Polio epidemics had been becoming more and more severe

from 1945 onwards. Biskind reported that this was due to the `most intensive

campaign of mass poisoning in known human history', the spraying of some 3.1

billion pounds of pesticides.(35)

 

In a 1953 paper published in the American Journal of Digestive Diseases Biskind

said: `It was known by 1945 that DDT is stored in the body fat of mammals and

appears in [their] milk... Yet, far from admitting a causal relationship

[between DDT and polio] so obvious that in any other field of biology it would

be instantly accepted, virtually the entire apparatus of communication, lay and

scientific alike, has been devoted to denying, concealing, suppressing,

distorting and attempts to convert into its opposite the overwhelming evidence.

Libel, slander and economic boycott have not been overlooked in this campaign.'

(36)

US farmers had been officially recommended to stop washing cattle with DDT in

1949, but this advice was not enforced and was mostly ignored. In 1950 supplies

of US milk were found to contain up to twice the amount of DDT that was needed

to produce severe illness in humans. Biskind and fellow poliomyelitis researcher

Ralph Scobey were invited to testify to Congress in 1950 and in 1951,

respectively.(37) They drew up a formidable case for banning DDT, citing the

work of many scientists. In 1951 the US Public Health Service said: `DDT is a

delayed-action poison. Due to the fact that it accumulates in the body tissues,

especially in females, the repeated inhalation or ingestion of DDT constitutes a

distinct health hazard. The deleterious effects are manifested principally in

the liver, spleen, kidneys and spinal cord... DDT is excreted in the milk of

cows and of nursing mothers.'

 

 

Effective action was slow to be taken, however: the health establishment was in

total denial as far as pesticide effects on humans were concerned. Precautions

were put in place too slowly and too late to stop the greatest of all the

infantile paralysis epidemics - that of 1952, when some 57,700 cases were

reported across the US, of which a third had paralytic symptoms.

 

By the end of the 1952 epidemic there was a vast amount of evidence to suggest

that infantile paralysis was not caused by a virus:

 

1 Farm and domestic animals were paralysed at the same time as children.

Chickens that had become lame were found to have suffered motor neurone damage.

The poliovirus only infected humans and thus could not have caused the animals'

paralysis. Exposure to poisons, on the other hand, can damage many different

species at the same time.

 

2 Most cases of paralysis were incurred within 48 hours of each other. That is

not the pattern for infectious outbreaks, which start slowly, grow faster as the

infection spreads and then diminish as immunity develops. It is the pattern of a

mass poisoning event.

 

3 Parents reported that some children fell ill immediately after eating fresh

fruit Fruit was sprayed heavily with lead arsenate at the time.

 

4 The illness was relieved by the administration of antidotes for chemical

poisoning, and chemicals associated with poisoning appeared in the diseased

tissues of the victims of paralytic polio - including oestrogenic chemicals now

widely associated with environmental poisoning.

 

5 The spread of poliomyelitis was not affected by the closure of schools, as it

should have been if the disease was infectious. Nor did close contact with

paralysed children spread paralysis. Yet the virus presumed to cause the illness

was highly infectious, as was shown by the widespread presence of antibodies for

it among healthy individuals.

 

6 There was little or no correlation between the prevalence of polio antibodies

in the population and the incidence of paralytic polio. In fact patients deemed

to be recovering from paralytic polio were found to `be completely lacking' in

polio antibodies.(38)

 

7 And the most virulent viral epidemics occur when viruses are newly introduced

into populations. The poliovirus had been present long before the epidemics

started. The use of chemical pesticides, in contrast, began just before the

epidemics started.

 

Slowly, the US authorities began to act. Following the FDA secured legislative

restrictions on the use of pesticides in 1954(39) and 1956(40), the incidence of

infantile paralysis in the US plummeted immediately. By the time Jonas Salk's

polio vaccine was publicly released in 1955, the level of infantile paralysis in

the US was already below a half of what it had been in 1952. The figures for the

UK were even more dramatic: the incidence of infantile paralysis fell by more

than 82 per cent between 1950 and the first mass administration of the vaccine

in 1957.

 

 

 

The case against the polio virus

 

When it was eventually photographed using an electron microscope, the poliovirus

was shown to be tiny: an elegant sphere made up of triangular equal-sized sides,

and in all just 25 millionths of a millimetre across. Is this `poliovirus' the

cause of infantile paralysis / polio? Or is it an ancient and harmless companion

of the human race? All the evidence suggests the latter:

 

1 It had been around humans for thousands of years and in nature only reproduces

in human throats or guts. Such viruses are normally totally harmless, since we

have become adapted to them and they to us. It lived in the dirt ingested by

human infants, and did not hurt them. Instead it helped activate their immune

system, giving them a stronger resistance to illness.

 

2 If it were the dangerous pathogen that causes infantile paralysis, then it

would be more common in countries with infantile paralysis epidemics, and less

common in countries with no infantile paralysis epidemics. But the reverse is

true.

 

3 To say it causes polio may violate one of the most famous laws of virology.

These are called the Koch Postulates. They set up the rules for declaring a

disease to be caused by a virus. The 1st Postulate states that the virus must be

found in every case of the disease as defined by its symptoms - but the

poliovirus was not always present in such cases of poliomyelitis.(25)

 

4 It widely infects children without causing them any illness. The Koch

Postulates lay down that if it causes a disease, it should do so whenever it

infects.

 

5 It seemed mostly to infect the cleanest children of middle-class parents.

Infectious viruses are not supposed to behave in this way: they are

indiscriminate as to social class, and do not thrive in conditions of good

hygiene.

 

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published a theory

to explain this extraordinary behaviour. The children of US middle-class parents

were uniquely liable to fall ill with infantile paralysis because in their

infancy parents kept them away from the dirt in which the virus lives. This

meant these children were not infected when it was safest - while protected by

their mothers' milk. Once again, this theory contradicted everything known about

infectious illness: good hygiene nearly always stops epidemics; with infantile

paralysis, the CDC argued, good hygiene was the cause.(26)

 

Furthermore, the CDC's theory was based on the assumption that working-class

children are uniquely exposed to ordinary dirt. Yet surely middle-class children

also go out into the garden? The theory was also conceived without checking

medical reports on the early epidemics of infantile paralysis. Referring to a

1908 epidemic in Massachusetts, US health inspector Herbert Emerson noted that

most cases occurred in households with no sewers and low hygiene. If the CDC's

theory was sound these children would have had antibodies and been immune to

polio. In reality, they were the ones who fell ill.

 

6 If guilty of causing paralysis, it would have to travel from the gut through

the formidable blood-brain barrier that protects our brains and spinal cords. We

still have not observed it doing this, despite many decades of intense research.

 

7 It is rarely found in human blood - the easiest route from the gut to the

blood-brain barrier. Yet this is where Jonas Salk's vaccine was supposed to

intercept it.

 

8 It has never been observed reproducing in victims' motor neurone cells.27

 

An alternative proposition

 

Poliomyelitis researcher Dr Ralph Scobey suggested in 1954 a reason why viruses

might be found on damaged motor neuron cells in cases of infantile paralysis. He

posited that the body itself might activate or produce these viruses, perhaps

when under threat or to clean up cellular damage. While `the fundamental cause

of human poliomyelitis appears to be a poison or toxin', Scobey said, `the virus

is synthesised or activated within the human body as a result of the poisoning'.

He suggested that the virus might remain `dormant' within cells until something

activates it. We now know that the poliovirus can be dormant. It is also widely

known that toxic-damaged tissues attract viruses. One of the standard tests for

toxins, the Ames Assay, utilises the fact that if viruses mutate and multiply in

the presence of a certain amount of a chemical then that amount is dangerously

toxic. Scobey went on to list anti-toxins that had proved effective in curing

polio, citing 11 scientific papers

written between 1936 and 1949.(28)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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