The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended on Monday that doctors abandon oral polio vaccines entirely for routine childhood vaccinations and switch over to safer injections, which contain no live polio virus. "U.S. Pediatricians urge end to oral polio vaccine." biz.yahoo.com
The safer inactivated polio vaccine that will now be used exclusively is Jonas Salk's polio vaccine and the live vaccine that is being discontinued is Sabin's.
For those who don't know the United States is the only country that has continued to have eight to nine cases of polio each year, and since 1979 all these cases resulted from the live (oral) polio vaccine.
A group called 'Informed Parents;' families whose children got polio from the oral vaccine, issued a statement saying the academy was wrong in the saying that the remaining supplies of oral polio vaccine could be used in the transition. They just discovered that another case of polio was reported in upstate New York resulting from the use of the oral vaccine in the first dose, even though the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends against that.
The World Health Organization has set the end of the year 2000 as its target for eliminating polio worldwide. I guess it wouldn't look very good for the United States to be the only country in the world left still reporting cases of polio.
Below is a Salk interview ~1995. achievement.org
Interviewer: "Today, there is debate about the vaccines. You've gone through this for 35 years now. There was widespread use of Sabin's vaccine, beginning in the '60s, until very recently. As you know, it's been proven to be the leading cause of polio in this country. Did the AMA (American Medical Association) make a mistake in endorsing Sabin's vaccine?"
Salk's reply: "Well, it's a good way to put the question. The oral vaccine developed by Sabin is a live vaccine. That decision, that deliberate shift in policy, was made at a time when we already knew that the vaccine-associated cases were occurring, and I had difficulty understanding the logic of that, I must say. ...If you look at the story in the Scandinavian countries, where the killed-virus vaccine was used, polio has been eradicated. Here we continue to have vaccine-associated polio, even though there are parts of the world, underdeveloped countries, where the live-virus vaccine is not working and the killed-virus vaccine is being used. I always find policies like that really political rather than scientific."
"It's clear now, from everything that we know, that it is safer and more certain to vaccinate by injection (killed) than by mouth (oral vaccine). ....." I will predict that, in time, in order to eradicate polio from the population so that you don't have to immunize against polio anymore, that the killed virus vaccine will have to be used in order to produce that effect. It wasn't believed to be so by others; I knew it was. So many assertions were made to discredit the use of the inactive virus vaccine which had no basis in scientific reality." In my own judgment, if they had not taken that position at that time, polio would have been eradicated from the United States much sooner. ...... But the idea of shifting from one preparation to another had reasons that were beyond the realm of science. (Salk)
achievement.org
Interviewer: "We've interviewed a couple of heart surgeons who had a pretty bad rift going back decades. We all know about the AIDS competition, the French versus American scientists. It's unnerving to find that scientists who are bent on helping mankind get into these very bitter rivalries. Is that just a part of the field?"
Salk: "The contradiction is in your assertion. You say these scientists have a bent to help mankind. That's not what their objective is. If that was their objective, they might approach it somewhat differently. You project your own perception of what a scientist is like, or what he should be, or what you expect him to do. The motivation that drives us to do what we do is different in each instance."
Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine, saying that to do so would be "like patenting the sun."
"Salk spent a lifetime stubbornly pursuing his ideas - first for a polio vaccine and later for a vaccine-like AIDS treatment (Remune) - even when he drew skepticism from other researchers..""There have to be people who are ahead of their time," Salk once said. "And that is my fate."Jonas Salk Remembered as Gracious Hero of Century sddt.com
Personally, I think Salk will be vindicated in his belief in Remune as a therapeutic vaccine for HIV infection. It is too bad there is so much politics in science; it is the patients who suffer:
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, a division of the NIH, and researchers Clifford Lane and Joseph Kovacs (all at the NIAID) share the patent for IL-2 treatment. The patent belongs to the government and Chiron holds the license. The researchers are each entitled to a maximum of $150,000 each year any payments are made, and Fauci donates his to charity. The NIAID recently approved a controversial $43 million five year multi-center study of IL-2.
Along the same lines: Groups Contend NIMH Misspends"
Washington Times (12/06/99) P. A4
A new report from the Stanley Foundation Research Programs and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill claims that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) uses only one-third of its budget for severe mental illness research, spending more to study AIDS than schizophrenia. In response to the findings, NIMH director Dr. Steve Hyman stated that much of the spending in question is directed by Congress or pertains to basic research.
According to the report, NIMH spends $60.2 million on AIDS research, compared to $57.1 million on schizophrenia research, even though many more Americans have schizophrenia than HIV. The study also concluded that the agency was funding basic research that has little concern with severe mental illness. |
