New Paper – Polio Vaccine – Disease Caused by Vaccine Twice As Fatal – Third World Duped – Scarce Money Wasted – Polio Eradication Impossible

According to a new paper published today in the April issue of Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, polio vaccine appears to cause a clinically identical disease which is twice as deadly as polio and the WHO polio eradication programme should be halted: ‘Polio programme – let us declare victory and move on‘ [click title for full .pdf download] by Neetu Vashisht and  Jacob Puliyel of the Department of Pediatrics at St Stephens Hospital in Delhi [for online web version click here and for PubMed abstract click here].

The paper records a failure to investigate NPAFP [non polio acute flacid paralysis] which is clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly.  Data from India’s National Polio Surveillance Project shows the NPAFP rate increased in proportion to the number of polio vaccine doses administered.  Independent studies show that children  identified with NPAFP “were at more than twice the risk of dying than those with wild polio infection”.

India was polio-free in 2011, but that year there were 47500 cases of NPAFP.  NPAFP has increased in incidence  in areas where many doses of polio vaccine were used.  

The authors report that, nationally, the NPAFP rate is now twelve times higher than expected.  In the states of Uttar Pradesh  and Bihar — which have pulse polio rounds nearly every month–the NPAFP rate is 25 and 35 fold higher than the international norms.

 ….. while India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP).  In 2011, there were an extra 47500 new cases of NPAFP. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated. The principle of primum-non-nocere was violated.”

[ED:  Does this paper appear to confirm that the claimed eradication of polio has been achieved by redefining cases of paralytic polio as something else in order to remove from the statistics cases of paralytic polio caused by polio vaccines?  See Inside Vaccines: Polio and Acute Flaccid Paralysis which suggests that the “polio” eradication campaign by WHO appears to have always been a “fools errand” and the unsuspecting world  (third and all else) has been duped.]

Additionally, WHO’s polio eradication campaign will never end because it will never eradicate polio:

The long promised monetary benefits from ceasing to vaccinate against poliovirus will never be achieved,”

India was taken off the list of polio-endemic countries by the World Health Organisation (WHO) two months ago but will now have to continue spending scarce health funds on the programme forever.  They argue that the huge costs of repeated rounds of OPV and the parallel rise alongside the use of the vaccine of the more deadly non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) shows that monthly administration of OPV must cease.  

Our resources are perhaps better spent on controlling poliomyelitis to a locally acceptable level  rather than trying to eradicate the disease.”

The authors point out that while the anti-polio campaign in India was mostly self-financed it started with a token donation of two million dollars from abroad.

The Indian government finally had to fund this hugely expensive programme, which cost the country 100 times more than the value of the initial grant.”

The doctors note that it was long known to the scientific community that eradication of polio was impossible because scientists had synthesized poliovirus in a test-tube as early as in 2002.  “The sequence of its genome is known and modern biotechnology allows it to be resurrected at any time in the lab,” they report.  “Man can thus never let down his guard against poliovirus.”

According to the authors it was unethical for WHO and Bill Gates to promote this programme when they knew 10 years ago that it was never to succeed.

Getting poor countries to expend their scarce resources on an impossible dream over the last 10 years was unethical.  This is a startling reminder of how initial funding and grants from abroad distort local priorities, ”the authors note.  “From India’s perspective the exercise has been an extremely costly both in terms of human suffering and in monetary terms. It is tempting to speculate what could have been achieved if the $ 2.5 billion spent on attempting to eradicate polio, were spent on water and sanitation and routine immunization.”

In conclusion they say that:

the polio eradication programme epitomizes nearly everything that is wrong with donor funded ‘disease specific’ vertical projects at the cost of investments in community-oriented primary health care (horizontal programs).”

The WHO’s current policy calls for stopping oral polio vaccine (OPV) vaccination  three  years after the last case of poliovirus-caused poliomyelitis.  Injectable polio vaccine (IPV), which is expensive, will replace OPV in countries which can afford it.

The risks inherent in this strategy are immense, ”Puliyel and Vashisht warn. “Herd immunity against poliomyelitis will rapidly decline as new children are born and not vaccinated. Thus, any outbreak of poliomyelitis will be disastrous, whether it is caused by residual samples of virus stored in laboratories, by vaccine-derived polioviruses or by poliovirus that is chemically synthesized with malignant intent.”

[ED: This article includes quotes from the authors’ news release.]