This is a horrifying reminder that yellow journalism exists and the internet is no remedy against ignorance. Let's talk about polio more in depth, to get a clearer picture.

1. The clinical definition of polio has changed multiple times; it was specifically changed in 1954 at the height of the "polio epidemic" in a way that would cause a pre-determined decrease in the amount of cases, vaccine or not.

The practice among doctors before 1954 was to diagnose all patients who experienced even short-term paralysis (24 hours) with "polio". In 1955, the year the Salk vaccine was released, the diagnostic criteria became much more stringent. If there was no residual paralysis 60 days after onset, the disease was not considered to be paralytic polio. This change made a huge difference in the documented prevalence of paralytic polio because most people who experience paralysis recover prior to 60 days. Dr. Greenberg, head of the department of biostatistics of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health and chairman of the Committee on Evaluation and Standards of the American Public Health association, said:

"The change in 1955 meant that we were reporting a new disease, namely, paralytic poliomyelitis with a longer-lasting paralysis. Furthermore diagnostic procedures have continued to be refined. Coxsackie virus and aseptic meingitis have been distinguished from paralytic poliomyelitis. Prior to 1954 large numbers of these cases were mislabeled as paralytic poliomyelitis. Thus, simply by changes in diagnostic criteria, the number of paralytic cases was predetermined to decrease in 1955-1958, whether or not any vaccine was used." H. Ratner et al., "The Present Status of Polio Vaccines," Illinois Medical Journal, vol. 118, nos. 2, 3, pp. 84-93,160-68. Spoken by Dr. Greenberg, edited from a transcript of a panel discussion presented before the Section on Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the 120th annual meeting of the Illinois State Medical Society in Chicago, May 26, 1969.

1. Only after the widespread use of the vaccine, post 1958, did the clinical definition of polio become stringent enough to exclude instead of include the following list which could have been categorized and documented as polio prior to 1958:

Enteroviruses such as coxsackie and ECHO, undiagnosed congenital syphilis, arsenic and DDT toxicity, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, hand foot and mouth disease, and lead poisoning.

"In a large number of paralytic as well as nonparalytic patients poliovirus was not the cause. Frequency studies showed that there were no obvious clinical differences among infections with Coxsackie, ECHO, and poliomyelitis viruses. Coxsackie and ECHO viruses were responsible for more cases of 'nonparalytic poliomyelitis' and 'aseptic meningitis' than was poliovirus itself." G.C. Brown, "Laboratory Data on the Detroit Poliomyelitis Epidemic 1958", Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 172, February 20, 1960, pp.807-812.

1. The iron lung hasn't gone away. Approximately 33,000 people are afflicted by transverse myelitis in the United States, with 1,400 new cases per year (these would have been classified as polio in the early 1950s). Dr. Douglas Kerr from Johns Hopkins stated in his foreword to The Autoimmune Epidemic published in 2009: "Infants as young as five months old can get transverse myelitis, and some are left permanently paralyzed and dependent upon a ventilator to breathe . . . my colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and I hear about or treat hundreds of new cases every year".

2. DDT use was wipespread in the 1950s (with commercial songs claiming "D-D-T is good for ME-E-E"). DDT exposure induces symptoms that are indistinguishable from poliomyelitis, even in the absence of a virus. The symptoms include: "pain in the joints, generalized muscle weakness, apprehension and exhausting fatigue are usual; the latter are often so severe in the acute stage as to be described by some patients as 'paralysis'". M. Biskind, "DDT Poisoning and the Elusive 'Virus X': A new Cause for Gastroenteritis," American Journal of Digestive Diseases, vol. 16, no. 3, 1949, pp. 79-84.

3. The Salk vaccine from Cutter Laboratories, one of the first vaccines sold as a 'relief' for 'polio', was rushed through approval and ended up infecting hundreds of thousands with live poliovirus. The vaccine was approved in just two hours by the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the members specifically noted they did not have the chance to read the Francis report on which their approval was to be based ("We were in effect pressured into an earlier decision than we ordinarily would have made", Dr. Howard Shaughnessy).

Dr. Paul Meieir attested, "NFIP (National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) did form an advisory committee. And they reformed it five or six times. Each time somebody didn't agree, they dropped them and got somebody who might agree. By the time they were done forming the committee, everybody on it was distinguished, but very agreeable".

Dr. Paul Offit summarized the estimate of known damage, "In the end, at least 220,000 people were infected with live polio virus contained in Cutter's vaccine; 70,000 developed muscle weakness, 164 were severely paralyzed, 10 were killed."

1. The Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) is no longer recommended in the United States. Up until the late 1980s, these vaccines were contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV40). SV40 has been associated with certain types of cancers in humans. This topic has paralyzed the medical research field.

2. Rates of Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), designated as 'non-polio', increased drastically in India after an experimental, high-potency polio vaccine was introduced. "Non-polio AFP rate increases in proportion to the number of polio vaccine doses received in each area . . . Nationally, the non-polio AFP rate is now 12 times higher than expected. In the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which have pulso polio rounds nearly every month, the non-polio AFP rate is 25- and 35-fold higher than the international norms . . . The non-polio AFP rate during the year best correlates to the cumulative doses received in the previous three years . . . Association of the non-polio AFP rate with OPV doses received in 2009 was 41.9%. Adding up doses received from 2007 increases the association (R2 = 55.6% p < 0.001)." N. Vashisht and J. Puliyel, "Polio Programme: Let Us Declare Victory and Move On," Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, vol. 9, April-June 2012, pp. 114-117.

In summary, this article paints and ignorant picture of polio that is designed to scare you and sell a vaccine. I'm not entering into any debates about vaccines one way or another; I merely want to present information that most are unaware of, because I am concerned with protecting my right to informed consent to vaccines.