Polio Vaccine Blamed for Outbreaks in Nigeria

– December 3, 2009Posted in: Articles
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Joseph Mercola, DO

December 01, 2009

Polio is spreading in Nigeria — and health officials say in some cases it’s caused by the very vaccine used to fight the paralyzing disease. The World Health Organization has issued a warning that this particular virus might extend beyond Africa. More than 120 Nigerian children have been paralyzed this year — twice the number afflicted in 2008.

Nigeria and many other nations use an oral polio vaccine because it’s cheaper, easier, and protects entire communities. But it’s made from a live polio virus which carries a risk of causing polio. In even rarer instances, the virus in the vaccine can mutate into a deadlier version that ignites new outbreaks. Genetic analysis has proven that such mutated viruses have caused at least seven separate outbreaks in Nigeria (1).

Polio, a contagious disease caused by an intestinal virus, can cause paralysis, difficulty breathing and death in its worst form. However, what is often NOT shared is that in most cases polio is a mild illness, causing flu-like symptoms that disappear in two to 10 days. Often, polio can occur and show no symptoms at all. Even the Mayo Clinic states: “The vast majority of people who are infected with the polio virus don’t become sick and are never aware they’ve been infected with polio.” What else might surprise you is that all cases of polio after the introduction of the vaccine, in the developed world, came from the vaccine itself. Mayo Clinic continues: “In the U.S., the last case of wild polio — polio caused naturally, not by a vaccine containing live virus — occurred in 1979.”

Nigeria has also been facing outbreaks of polio that are caused by the polio vaccine itself! The nation has faced at least seven separate polio outbreaks caused by a mutated polio virus from the polio vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

How Does the Polio Vaccine Cause Polio?

Nigeria and many other poorer nations use an oral polio vaccine that contains a live polio virus. This live virus can not only cause polio in the vaccine recipient, it can mutate into an even more dangerous version that triggers new outbreaks. For instance, a polio outbreak that occurred in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 2002 was traced to a strain of oral polio vaccine (OPV) that mutated back to virulence. In the United States, every case of polio that’s occurred since 1979 has been the result of the live-virus vaccine.

According to a report by Neil Z. Miller of the Global Vaccine Institute, the live polio virus from the vaccine can remain in your throat for one to two weeks and in your feces for up to two months. So not only is the vaccine recipient at risk, but he or she can potentially spread the disease as long as the virus remains in feces.

In 1999, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended that the United States replace the live-virus vaccine with an inactivated “killed” virus vaccine, which is what remains in use today. However, the inactivated polio virus vaccine has not been without its share of serious side effects either.

The Polio Vaccine’s Cancer Link

During the 1950s and 1960s, the polio vaccine, which is still given in the United States, typically four times during a child’s first 16 months of life, was widely contaminated with the monkey virus, SV40, which had gotten into the vaccine during the manufacturing process (monkey kidney cells, where SV40 thrived, were used to develop polio vaccines).

In lab tests, the virus was found to cause several different types of cancer, including brain cancer, and now SV40 is showing up in a variety of human cancers such as lung, brain, bone and lymphatic.

According to the authors of The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the Millions of Americans Exposed, leading scientists and government officials turned their heads to repeated studies showing that SV40 was in the vaccine, and even today some well-known agencies are still dismissing study results.

The virus is even showing up in children too young to have received the contaminated vaccine, and some experts are now suggesting the contaminated virus may have been in the polio vaccine up until as late as 1999.

It is because of risks like this that Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, said: “With mounting evidence that cross-species transfer of viruses can occur, the United States should no longer be using animal tissues to produce vaccines.”

This is also the same reason why Donald Miller, a cardiac surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Washington, suggests in his more User-Friendly Vaccination Schedule, that if you choose to get your child vaccinated against polio, you request only an inactivated (dead) virus vaccine that is cultured in human cells, not monkey kidney cells.

How to Lower Your Risk of Polio by Avoiding Sugar

Polio is not common in the United States, but it is still a problem in many countries. Well, did you know that you can lower your risk of this disease simply by cutting back on sugar? There’s plenty of research showing that consuming refined sugar increases your risk of contracting polio. According to one such study, a substance produced during the sugar refining process, such as deoxysugars, may be responsible for polio. Even if the polio virus is present in a population, you’re not likely to get it unless you consume large quantities of refined sugar.

One of the most potent clinical examples I can share that supports this surprising conclusion comes from animal experiments done over 50 years ago. Researchers repeatedly tried to infect rabbits with polio but were unsuccessful until they lowered the rabbits’ blood sugar levels with insulin injections, which likely crippled the rabbits’ immune systems and allowed them to contract polio. Polio, and other infections, only tend to cause complications when your immune system is weakened, which can easily happen through poor nutrition, stress, and lack of sleep.

The polio vaccine is not the ultimate solution to prevent this disease.As opposed to loading up on vaccines, limiting your sugar intake is one of the most potent actions you can take to drastically improve your overall health, as it helps keep your immune system strong, which in turn will reduce your risk of any number of diseases, including polio.

1. MSNBC August 14, 2009

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