The epicenter of our biggest polio outbreak was 3 miles from a lab that was working with poliovirus in monkeys. Sound familiar?
The 1916 Polio Outbreak
In 2011, H.V. Wyatt published an interesting paper titled “The 1916 New York City Epidemic of Poliomyelitis: Where did the virus come from?” He describes the epidemic, which was unusual at the time and extraordinary in many ways, never to be repeated again. He writes: “the origin was remarkably definite in time and place; there was a strikingly uniform radial spread from this focus with intensity progressively decreasing in proportion to the distance from the original focus.” The case fatality rate was the highest ever recorded (25%). The number of children aged 2 year was the highest ever recorded. The epidemic started in May, well before the normal summer polio season.
“The epidemic is unique in having such a pronounced focus, extraordinary infectivity and very high incidence and fatality rates. The virus must have mutated to an extent never seen before or since. It was as though a new virus had suddenly been dropped at the focus. The 1916 virus was so different that several mutations would have been required and each in turn selected although no prior cases of paralysis were discovered.”
The author proposes a possible explanation: Just three miles from the epicentre of the outbreak, Simon Flexner and his associates at the Rockefeller Institute at 63rd Street and York Avenue on Manhattan Island had been passaging spinal cord tissue containing poliovirus from one Rhesus monkey spinal cord to another.
In 1911, Flexner was quoted in the New York Times saying:
“Careful experiments here at the institute have done something, however, toward addition to our useful working knowledge of the disease. When we have learned the portals of ingress and egress of an infectious agent we have fone far toward learning how it may be controlled, and experiments with monkeys here have indicated that the germ of infantile paralysis is expelled an is received, at least often, through the nose….But, at any rate, extreme care should be taken to keep hands and clothing free from such excretions.”
What are the odds that there is a science lab working with poliovirus, passaging this poliovirus through neural tissue in monkeys, just a few subway stops from the biggest unexplained polio epidemic in US history and it’s not related? Also, keep in mind back in 1916 this lab wouldn’t have the biohazard “safety measures” we have today, not that that would definitely make a difference, ie. Wuhan Lab.
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Tom |
