Polio: the virus and the vaccine

In extreme cases the disease starts with a fever, which is followed by vomiting, delirium and spreading pain. Within days of being infected, the motor-neurone cells in victims’ spines cease to function properly. Pain intensifies as victims’ limbs are paralysed. In the very worst cases, their chests are also paralysed, which prevents them from breathing.

Even when the children recover, the illness often returns in later life. Health authorities say it has no cure. The number of cases increased by over 250 per cent worldwide between 1996 and 2003.  It is a disease with a long history and many names. The condition’s official name now is ‘Acute Flaccid Paralysis’ but it was once known as ‘infantile paralysis’/ ‘poliomyelitis’ (polio for short). Some people called it ‘the crippler’.

A shot in the dark

Polio is a devastating disease; the preferred method for fighting it is vaccination. Yet there is a mass of historic evidence that suggests it is not caused by a virus but by industrial and agricultural pollution.

During the first half of the 20th century infantile paralysis surged like a bush fire,...

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