Polio in China

[Reasonable Hank]

Hi Meryl,

My name is Peter Tierney, a private citizen who is hopeful that
parents can make an informed choice regarding whether or not to
vaccinate, based on accurate, reputable information.

I am not in favour of mandatory vaccination for families, and I'm not
aware of too many people who are. I believe that parents should have
the option of making informed decisions for themselves, guided by
accurate information regarding the real risks from vaccination, and
the real risks from vaccine preventable disease.

I'm not a big fan of huge conglomerates, such as pharmaceutical
companies, media empires, and the like. If I see any hint of
corruption from people like this, big or small, I like to ensure that
justice is done.

On the topic of providing accurate information in relation to
vaccination, can you please clarify this statement for me?

"More vaccine associated polio? What type of vaccine do they use in
China - is it oral or injected? Anyone know? The picture looks like
someone getting oral in which case, that is most likely where the
outbreak is coming from."

This comment was from yourself, attached to this article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14997307

The second paragraph in the article, cited by you, states this:

"It said a strain of polio (WPV1) found in China was genetically
linked with the type now circulating in Pakistan."

Given that the article clearly states that the strain of Polio is Wild
Polio Virus 1, do you think the comment from yourself is accurate, or
helpful for your readers to understand? Will you ensure that you make
a correction underneath your post, ensuring that your readers are
receiving accurate, reliable information?

Kind Regards,

Peter

[shotinfo]

Dear Peter,

At the time that I wrote that post, I also sent a question to a group of doctors and specialists around the world that I am in touch with. The question was - when an oral polio vaccine reverts to neurovirulence, does it still show up as a vaccine virus. After all, it has combined, in the person's gut, with their own DNA and been changed back into a virus that can cause clinical polio. So when one tests for that, how does the virus appear - as wild type or as vaccine type?

I have been getting responses back ranging from no, it shows up as vaccine type and WPV1 is always wild to no, it shows up as wild type because it has changed back to its wild form in combination with the person's own DNA.

I am not sure of what the answer is. Do you know? 

I think it is very important to give reliable information - that is what the AVN is involved with. And I always try to provide reliable information. But how can information be reliable if such a basic question doesn't seem to have a clearcut answer? If you can shed more light on this situation, I would be grateful.

Also, while we are at it, I have a question for you. 

It has been 10 years and more (longer in the US than here in Australia) since the oral vaccine was removed from use (in most cases) because it is a cause of polio. It is known that not only can the vaccine cause polio in those recently vaccinated and their close contacts, but that it is excreted into water systems and can spread the disease via that route too - especially where there aren't good facilities for water treatment (which of course describes most developing nations).

Do you then think that it is a good policy to use the oral vaccine in these countries? If so, why? 

Thanks,

Meryl

[Otw...@yahoo.com.au]

The reason for opv in developing countries are.
extremely low risk of paralysis
Does spread from person to person
So more people are protected
As not everyone can be vaccinated
Equals better vaccination coverage

Controversial I know....not sure I agree but currently what the WHO
believe is the best public health measure.
Ben

[shotinfo]

Hi Ben - the reason for not using the vaccine in developed countries
is because it causes polio in vaccine recipients and close contacts.
It seems to me that if it's too dangerous to use in developed
countries, it is no less dangerous in developing countries. In fact,
with poor sanitation, the risk of developing VAPP increases - not
decreases - so that is all the more reason not to use the oral vaccine
in the third world. The only plus to this vaccine is that it's cheaper
than the shot and that is why it is used. Surely a child's life is
worth more?

All the best,
Meryl

On Sep 27, 6:40 am, "Otwo...@yahoo.com.au" <Otwo...@yahoo.com.au>
wrote:

[JC]

Hi Meryl,
A brief look at the WHO literature reveals the following for
understanding the use of OPV. cVDPV, for those of you that don't
know, is circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus which is the rare
mutant OPV strain.

"Although quite rare, cVDPVs are not a new phenomenon and have
occurred in various parts of the world. Nonetheless, the benefits of
oral polio vaccine far outweigh the risk of a cVDPV:
- In the past 10 years worldwide (as of September 2007), more than 10
billion doses of oral polio vaccine have been administered to more
than 2 billion children.
- During the same period, nine cVDPV outbreaks have occurred in nine
countries, in communities with low immunization coverage, resulting in
under 200 polio cases.
- In the meantime, more than 33 000 children were paralysed by wild
poliovirus while more than 6.5 million polio cases were prevented by
the oral polio vaccine."

Whether you like it or not, WHO makes their decisions - have to make
their decisions - based on this big picture. OPV is cheap, and can
therefore be administered at low cost to many more people that the
injected form. There were 200 polio cases due to cVDPV, in
communities where the coverage was low. If coverage was higher, then
there'd be even less. At the same time, there were 33,000 cases of
polio from the "wild type", and 6.5 million cases were prevented!
It's a cost / benefit analysis, which is ugly and scary for those that
don't deal with these things all the time, but it is a necessary
"evil". OPV has prevented many more polio cases than it has caused:
200 vs 6.5 million. If an injected form was used, the vaccination
coverage would be lower, and the incidence would rise of wild polio.

I think it's a great policy, and i'm glad I was able to assist in this
informed debate.

John

[JC]

Meryl,

On an individual basis it's easy to make an emotive claim like "Surely
a child's life is worth more?", and it's difficult to disagree. But I
will. It's ugly, it's not desired, but a necessary evil is for people
to make cost / benefit analysis, on a very large scale. When funds
are limited, WHO needs to provide the most bang for the buck, in order
to cover the highest number of people they can with what they have.
As I pointed out before, OPV has probably caused about 200 cases of
polio, compared to the many many thousands of cases from the wild
type. The cases, both cVDPV and wild type, occur in communities with
low coverage. Increase the coverage, and both rates decrease anyway.
Please have a read of http://www.who.int/features/qa/64/en/index.html.
That way you will be able to make more informed comments in the
future.

As an aside, since 1977 Sanofi has been donating it's strain for
production. Now they've actually handed it all over to WHO.
http://www.polioeradication.org/tabid/408/iid/156/Default.aspx
In other words, there's no "Big Pharma" making money out of polio, and
there hasn't been since 1977.

As well, the current outbreak in China is not related to cVDPV, but
the wild type of polio which the OPV will protect against.
http://www.polioeradication.org/Mediaroom/Newsstories/Newsstories2011/tabid/408/iid/148/Default.aspx
Again, I hope you can make more informed comments next time.

John

[Meryl Dorey]

John, I don't want you to think that I am ignoring you but I don't have time to give this answer the time it deserves and won't for a couple of days. If someone else would like to talk about polio in the meantime (there are many very informed people who have already joined this list), that would be great!

Take care everyone - will speak with you in a couple of days' time.

Meryl

On 27/09/2011, at 11:58 AM, JC wrote:

> Meryl,
>
> On an individual basis it's easy to make an emotive claim like "Surely
> a child's life is worth more?", and it's difficult to disagree. But I
> will. It's ugly, it's not desired, but a necessary evil is for people
> to make cost / benefit analysis, on a very large scale. When funds
> are limited, WHO needs to provide the most bang for the buck, in order
> to cover the highest number of people they can with what they have.
> As I pointed out before, OPV has probably caused about 200 cases of
> polio, compared to the many many thousands of cases from the wild
> type. The cases, both cVDPV and wild type, occur in communities with
> low coverage. Increase the coverage, and both rates decrease anyway.
> Please have a read of http://www.who.int/features/qa/64/en/index.html.
> That way you will be able to make more informed comments in the
> future.

> <snip>

[Greg Beattie]

Hi John

I normally don't get too interested in which strain of which virus was
circulating where at which time. I tend to leave that to the
scientists who have microscopes and an interest in such things. As a
parent, my concern is paralysis. Poliovirus doesn't mean a thing to
me, but paralysis does. I think I speak for all parents when I say
that the term polio simply conjures up a frightening image of
paralysed children.

Among your WHO-referenced polio info I notice you didn't include
trends in acute flaccid paralysis. Can you confirm for us using WHO
data what the trends in acute flaccid paralysis have been worldwide
since the Global Polio Readication Initiative? Thanks in advance.

Greg

[Greg Beattie]

And sorry but that would be "Eradication" of course. Must get that
seen to.
Greg

[Reasonable Hank]

Hi Meryl,

Who are the "doctors and specialists" to whom you sent your questions?

I can only reiterate my question to you:

"Given that the article clearly states that the strain of Polio is
Wild
Polio Virus 1, do you think the comment from yourself is accurate, or
helpful for your readers to understand? Will you ensure that you make
a correction underneath your post, ensuring that your readers are
receiving accurate, reliable information?"

"WPV1" was very clearly stated in the article. You assumed, relying on
a thumbnail picture of a child receiving OPV, that there must have
been a vaccine strain involved. There was not. It clearly states
"WPV1". The WHO clearly stated that the virus is "genetically linked"
to the Pakistan strains.

You state in your reply to me: "I am not sure of what the answer is."
Well, if you are not sure, then, why state "The picture looks like

someone getting oral in which case, that is most likely where the

outbreak is coming from."? Is it "most likely"? Is that accurate,
given it is known that the strain is genetically linked to Pakistan
WPV1? Should you be inferring such claims when you "don't know"? This
is important.

I'm not sure why you would need to search for a myriad of alternate
theories in defiance of Occam's Razor. Why can't you just accept that
the virus arrived in an Islamic province of China, via travellers from
Pakistan?

Again I ask, will you provide a correction for your readers?

John has answered your other questions regarding the policy of using
OPV.

Kind regards,

Peter

On Sep 27, 1:05 am, shotinfo <avn...@gmail.com> wrote:

[JC]

Greg,
I might suggest you do get interested in viral strains as it helps us
understand polio much better. As an author, perhaps you've ignored
some very important information when witting your books, and perhaps
this has lead to your opinions being not as well informed as they
could have been. Scientists with microscopes should even be consulted
next time you put pen to paper.
Polio should certainly scare people. It's a horrible disease and I'd
you travel to India as I recently did you see it first hand.
Fortunately in Australia we don't see it anymore. I may treat one or
two people a year with it's sequelae. They are either "imported" cases
(no offence intended) or very elderly Australians. Acute flaccid
paralysis, as you mentioned, is a very rare phenomenon without the
deadly and long term consequences of polio. Why do you ask?
John

[Greg Beattie]

John

I think I already explained to you why I asked my question. The owner
of a company likes to know if his bank balance is going up or down.
Discussions of the physical attributes or cultural interests of
members of his workforce may be less interesting to him. I am your
market. I've asked a question about what's important to me. It's up to
you whether you wish to answer it.
Greg

[Otw...@yahoo.com.au]

John,
I think Greg is inferring that polio has been renamed as acute flaccid
paralysis. Interesting though considering that acute flaccid paralysis
has more than one cause, not just poliovirus.
Ben

On Sep 27, 8:00 pm, JC <jc_bige...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

[JC]

Greg,
With all due respect, you didn't explain why you asked the questions
at all. You made a statement, and asked a question. That is why I
asked you why you asked it. Quite simple really.
I didn't quote WHO data on AFP because I can't see the point. It's a
medical oddity with many causes. It's got nothing to do with polio. It
is neither as common as polio was, nor does it have the short and long
term consequences. That's why I asked you about your interest in it. I
understand that you have no formal qualifications and you admitted
yourself you leave science to the scientists, so I'm trying to perhaps
clear up a misunderstanding you may have. In other words, trying to
contribute to an informed debate. So, why do you ask about AFP? do you
think it has something to do with polio?
John

[JC]

How odd.
Greg, a list of the causes of AFP can be found here.
http://www.uwo.ca/cns/resident/pocketbook/approach/acute_flaccid_paralysis.htm
When I learnt about it, polio was treated as a separate entity
although the presentation was similar. I personally enjoyed studying
Guillian Barre when I was a student, and have had treated only one
case in my practice. Information on GBS can also be found
http://www.uwo.ca/cns/resident/pocketbook/disorders/neuromuscular/gbs.htm
I hope this clears it up a little for you. Polio is a single entity,
diagnosed with still samples. AFP is a clinical presentation that may
be caused by polio, but can also be caused by a host of other
pathologies. Much like a headache can be caused by tension, tumours,
or infections, AFP can also have a number of different causes. A
simply mistake for someone without medical training.
John

[Meryl Dorey]

Hi JC,
Just have 15 minutes before leaving for the airport so of course, I need to check my emails, right? :-)

Not to put words into Greg's mouth and I'm not sure if his reasoning is the same as mine, but prior to the polio vaccine being introduced, polio was almost always diagnosed by clinical symptoms - not laboratory testing. Once the vaccine was in use, the clinical diagnosis was changed and laboratory testing became the 'gold standard'. What I am concerned about then is that -- say 10,000 cases of polio were reported in one year in the US prior to vaccination (I have no idea what the number of reports were - this is just to make the maths easier) - say in 1952. Then, in 1956, the diagnostic criteria changed and most cases were laboratory tested and there were only 1,000 cases of polio but 9,000 cases of asceptic meningitis and acute flaccid paralysis. Was there actually a decline in polio of 9,000 cases or were the cases which would have normally been diagnosed as polio in 1952 now diagnosed as something else?

We all know that acute flaccid paralysis is caused or found in concert with a host of different viruses and bacteria - but the question is - was there a decline in actual cases of polio (AFP prior to the introduction of the vaccine) or was there simply a redistribution of the reports into various 'categories' of polio, asceptic meningitis, GBS, etc?

I don't know if I made that clear - please let me know if you want anything explained further.

All the best,
Meryl

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[Greg Beattie]

John

Can I ask that you cut the condescending comments about me (or anyone
else) not being medically trained? After all, thinking that stool
samples are "still" samples shows medical training is no rock solid
guarantee you won't say something a bit silly. I'm quite aware of what
polio and AFP are.

You ask if I think Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) has something to do
with polio. Now that's a surprise, given that it's an umbrella term
for all acute paralytic cases that resemble polio, and WHO define
polio as AFP where poliovirus is isolated.
http://www.who.int/immunization_monitoring/diseases/poliomyelitis_surveillance/en/index.html

Fortunately, you looked a little further in you next post and saw the
connection. Why do I want to know about the trends in AFP? I told you.
Paralysis is what interests parents. We been told polio is being
eradicated. Do you have data on the trend for all paralytic cases
resembling polio, i.e. AFP? One would assume it has declined sharply
with the demise of polio. Can you confirm? If it doesn't concern you
either way that's fine. Just say, "Greg, that doesn't concern me
enough to answer you".

Getting back to my analogy, if I owned a business and you were my
manager, and I asked you how the bank balance had been going but you
told me that wasn't important enough to answer.... I'd get a new
manager.
Greg

On Sep 27, 9:46 pm, JC <jc_bige...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> How odd.

> Greg, a list of the causes of AFP can be found here.http://www.uwo.ca/cns/resident/pocketbook/approach/acute_flaccid_para...

> When I learnt about it, polio was treated as a separate entity
> although the presentation was similar. I personally enjoyed studying
> Guillian Barre when I was a student, and have had treated only one

> case in my practice. Information on GBS can also be foundhttp://www.uwo.ca/cns/resident/pocketbook/disorders/neuromuscular/gbs...

[Greg Beattie]

Meryl

The estimates of polio in developing countries prior to the Global
Polio Eradication Initiative were even simpler that that. They were
based on retrospective "lameness surveys".
Greg

On Sep 28, 3:02 am, Meryl Dorey <avn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi JC,
> Just have 15 minutes before leaving for the airport so of course, I need to check my emails, right? :-)
>
> Not to put words into Greg's mouth and I'm not sure if his reasoning is the same as mine, but prior to the polio vaccine being introduced, polio was almost always diagnosed by clinical symptoms - not laboratory testing. Once the vaccine was in use, the clinical diagnosis was changed and laboratory testing became the 'gold standard'. What I am concerned about then is that -- say 10,000 cases of polio were reported in one year in the US prior to vaccination (I have no idea what the number of  reports were - this is just to make the maths easier) - say in 1952. Then, in 1956, the diagnostic criteria changed and most cases were laboratory tested and there were only 1,000 cases of polio but 9,000 cases of asceptic meningitis and acute flaccid paralysis. Was there actually a decline in polio of 9,000 cases or were the cases which would have normally been diagnosed as polio in 1952 now diagnosed as something else?
>
> We all know that acute flaccid paralysis is caused or found in concert with a host of different viruses and bacteria - but the question is - was there a decline in actual cases of polio (AFP prior to the introduction of the vaccine) or was there simply a redistribution of the reports into various 'categories' of polio, asceptic meningitis, GBS, etc?
>
> I don't know if I made that clear - please let me know if you want anything explained further.
>
> All the best,
> Meryl
>
> Sent from my iPad
>

> On 27/09/2011, at 7:46 AM, JC <jc_bige...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> > How odd.
> > Greg, a list of the causes of AFP can be found here.

> >http://www.uwo.ca/cns/resident/pocketbook/approach/acute_flaccid_para...

> > When I learnt about it, polio was treated as a separate entity
> > although the presentation was similar. I personally enjoyed studying
> > Guillian Barre when I was a student, and have had treated only one
> > case in my practice. Information on GBS can also be found

> >http://www.uwo.ca/cns/resident/pocketbook/disorders/neuromuscular/gbs...

[onlyavailableinblack]

Hi there

I'm Jess. Personally I am neither pro nor anti vax.

Firstly I would like to thank those willing to give their time to talk
about this issue, it is very much appreciated. I hope this groups works
well because the current polorization of this issue is not good for anyone.

My question is with regards to auto-immune disease and the research done
on whether vaccinations can 'trigger' them.

Thanks

Jess

[Sandy Gottstein]

Hi everybody,

I haven't gotten a chance to read this entire article yet, but from the
little I have read I think it might be useful in this discussion:
http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/2/298.full.pdf

I'm also including a page from "Pediatric Infectious Diseases" by Hugh
Moffet on polio
(http://www.vaccinationnews.com/sites/default/files/Scandals/MoffetQuotePoli
o.pdf).

All the best,
Sandy

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JC
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 8:10 PM
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate
Subject: Re: Polio in China

Hi Greg,

I honestly didn't realise that you were so sensitive. In medicine, we
learn to take criticism in a constructive manner, which is how we
learn to improve. If you can't achieve that level of maturity, then
perhaps a place such as this - a place of mature, respectful and
polite debate - is not for you.

You made a fairly basic error in definitions, and I'm not surprised
that you are a little confused. AFP is not recorded by WHO as a
single entity, because it is not a single entity. It is has many
different causes, and polio is one of them, depending on your
definition. If, as Meryl suggests, you think that doctors have simply
swapped polio diagnoses for AFP is also fairly without basis, in my
opinion. If you have other evidence, please provide it. I asked
around at RMH today, and the neurology department can only recall two
cases of it this year, both of which were Guillian Barre, and it's
accepted rate is about 1-2 per 10,000. GBS is the most common cause
of AFP. Polio, in areas where it is still prevalent, is much more
common, and has deadly consequences. GBS patients recover
comparatively well, albeit after a while. Polio patients, if they
survive, are often left with severe musculoskeletal sequelae which we
still see in areas where polio is prevalent. GBS patients don't
display the same features, apart from paralysis. AFP is not polio,
but polio may cause AFP.

Paralysis has many causes. Polio causes paralysis. That doesn't mean
that all cases of paralysis are polio.

I hope I've made that as clear as I can in a polite, mature and
respectful fashion.

[Sandy Gottstein]

OOPs! That second link got messed up. Here it is truncated:
http://bit.ly/pHi3VH

[JC]

I hope I've made that as clear as I can in a polite, mature and
respectful fashion.

John

[JC]

Sandy, thanks for the great articles.
John

[Greg Beattie]

John
There seems to be a problem with communication between us, so I'll
address your post piece by piece.

First, you said --"In medicine, we learn to take criticism in a

constructive manner, which is how we learn to improve. If you can't
achieve that level of maturity, then perhaps a place such as this - a
place of mature, respectful and polite debate - is not for you."

I'm glad you're prepared to learn from mistakes because there are some
lessons to be had via the mistakes in your last post. For instance:

You said -- "You made a fairly basic error in definitions, and I'm not

surprised that you are a little confused."

There was no error with definitions. In fact, the only definition I
provided was from the WHO and I gave the link to it. If it's an error
you'll have to take it up with them. And I'm not in the slightest
confused.

Next you said -- "AFP is not recorded by WHO as a single entity,

because it is not a single entity."

Again, you're wrong. It is recorded as a single entity by WHO. Figures
for AFP going back 15 years can be viewed at their website.
http://apps.who.int/immunization_monitoring/en/diseases/poliomyelitis/case_count.cfm

Next -- "and it's accepted rate is about 1-2 per 10,000"

Wrong again. The accepted rate of AFP in developed countries is 1-2
per 100,000 children under 15 years.

There are other errors, but the really big thing is that none of what
you presented addressed my question. None whatsoever! The question is
what have been the trends in AFP? And I guess you can answer it now
that I've given you the link to the data. So, you may care to comment
on those trends, from the perspective of someone with significant
medical training.

[Greg Beattie]

I second that, Sandy. Thanks for the very interesting articles.
Greg

On Sep 28, 3:20 pm, "Sandy Gottstein" <sa...@rainingcatsndog.com>
wrote:

> OOPs!  That second link got messed up.  Here it is truncated:http://bit.ly/pHi3VH
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
>
> [mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sandy
> Gottstein
> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 9:18 PM
> To: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: RE: Polio in China
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> I haven't gotten a chance to read this entire article yet, but from the
> little I have read I think it might be useful in this discussion:http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/2/298.full.pdf
>
> I'm also including a page from "Pediatric Infectious Diseases" by Hugh
> Moffet on polio

> (http://www.vaccinationnews.com/sites/default/files/Scandals/MoffetQuo...

> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/vaccination-respectful-debate?hl=en-GB.

[JC]

Dear Greg,

Please don't get upset. I do most of my emails on my iPhone between
cases, so often little spelling mistakes creep in. Thanks for
pointing out that AFP is 10 times less common than the figure I
quoted. That certainly makes it very rare, doesn't it? Not at all
like polio in endemic areas without vaccination coverage. This
reflects why my hospital has seen only two cases of AFP this year. Of
course, i'll take this lesson on board and be more careful checking my
posts. Same goes for spelling. See - a lesson learnt, and not a hair
out of place.

Yes, we had a little misunderstanding with regards the definition of
AFP and polio too. When I studied it, we dealt with AFP as a clinical
syndrome, which included polio as one of the differentials. That's
all it was really - a list - because you quickly ran through the list
of differential diagnoses until you found the cause. Most of us are
comfortable discussing the more common causes of AFP, and polio gets a
mention, but discussing AFP as it's own disease entity is still odd,
as I said, given it's multitude of causes.

I guess I've just never met a person that thought that all cases of
AFP are caused by polio. I think it's a little bizarre, given the
plethora of causes for AFP. It's a little like saying that Holden
make cars, therefore all cars are Holdens. Like I said, I find it
quite unusual, so please forgive me for not picking up on your
misinterpretation.

So what do I make of the data link you provided? What am I meant to
make of it? Much better surveillance is being carried out. Given
that the world population is about 7 billion, give or take, and we
expect 1-2 cases of AFP per 100,000, then we can expect there to be
about 70,000 to 140,000 cases of AFP reported a year. The data showed
that between 2008 - 2010, that the reported rates were in that
70-140,000 ballpark. So it shows that surveillance is picking up most
of the cases of AFP. As well, there are increasing rates of AFP cases
supplying "adequate specimens" as the years have gone on, which again
reflects a much better surveillance system. Isn't that great? You
can read more about the surveillance here
http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Surveillance.aspx
and here http://www.who.int/immunization_monitoring/diseases/poliomyelitis_surveillance/en/index.html

The data also shows that polio rates are coming down, slowly but
steadily. Maybe we'll be rid of it.

I hope I've been of some help. Was there anything else I've missed?

John

[Meryl Dorey]

Dear JC,

Once again, I think you are misunderstanding what Greg wrote. It seemed very clear to me so perhaps, go back and read his post again.

AFP is an umbrella term for paralysis. Polio is ONE of the diseases which are put under that umbrella. There are others such as GBS, aseptic meningitis, coxsackie virus, etc.

What Greg was saying was that prior to the introduction of the polio vaccine, ALL of these diseases would have been put under the polio umbrella. It was only AFTER the introduction of the vaccine that we started to differentiate amongst these different causes. In addition, the diagnostic criteria for polio was changed concurrently with the introduction of the vaccine.

These events led to an immediate decline in the diagnosis of polio but did they lead to a decline in paralysis labelled as AFP? That is the question that Greg was asking and that I ask as well.

Since you are obviously au fait with medical research, perhaps you can find the answer to this question.

If this isn't clear, please let me know and either myself or Greg will be happy to explain it again.

All the best,
Meryl

On 28/09/2011, at 10:36 PM, JC wrote:

> <snip>

[Sandy Gottstein]

You're welcome, too!

[Sandy Gottstein]

You're welcome!

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JC
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 10:33 PM
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate
Subject: Re: Polio in China

--

[Dave Colemansen]

Hi Meryl or Greg

Can you provide some evidence for the suggestion that "prior to the introduction of the polio vaccine, ALL of these diseases would have been put under the polio umbrella".

The diseases you list have clinical features that would usually distinguish them from polio. Also if they were ALL called polio prior to the vaccine, then how did they exist at all prior to vaccine? Were they newly invented with vaccine introduction?

Further, you suggest that "These events led to an immediate decline in the diagnosis of polio but did they lead to a decline in paralysis labelled as AFP?". Diagnostic specificity for polio probably did improve after moves towards elimination - this raises even more issues/questions about your hypothesis, .

Given we all accept diagnostic specificity for AFP improved, don't you think that might also result in improved reporting? For your hypothesis to be true, increased reporting of AFP must be due to migration of polio diagnoses into other categories, but it most likely represents improved reporting in response to an entirely new surveillance mechanism for AFP, set up to monitor polio disease control. We know that in Australia, when we improve active surveillance for AFP we meet WHO guidelines for AFP surveillance, but if we don't do this actively, we don't.

[Sandy Gottstein]

Hi everybody,

 

Here's my initial take after reading the article "Differential Diagnosis of Acute Flaccid Paralysis": diagnosing polio requires very specific testing which may or may not be occurring routinely, including of stool specimens.  In the absence of such testing, there are quite a few conditions that can be confused with polio.  Clinical presentation, which I believe has often been relied upon, both historically and currently, is inadequate for making a diagnosis.

 

Making the situation even more complex in my opinion is the fact that only between 0.1% and 1.0% of "infected individuals develop paralytic disease" (pg.303).  This begs at least a few questions: 1) Why does the very small minority of polio infected people develop serious disease? 2) Is vaccinating everyone for a disease that so few, even if infected, have a problem with good policy? 3)  How might those who are infected but have no, or mild, symptoms affect measurements of disease incidence, if at all? (e.g., might stool specimens, if being taken of “everyone” in a “polio-endemic area”, result in a higher assessment of polio incidence than is actually meaningful, if the concern is with paralytic polio, for instance?)

 

All the best,

Sandy

 

[Sandy Gottstein]

Hi everybody,

Here's my initial take after reading the article "Differential Diagnosis of
Acute Flaccid Paralysis"

(http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/2/298.full.pdf): diagnosing

All the best,
Sandy

PS I tried sending this directly to the group and not as a reply, so that I
could hyperlink the article, but it never arrived. How do we initiate
emails?

[Dave Colemansen]

Sorry, bumped the send button too early. But that is probably enough.

Hi Meryl or Greg

Can you provide some evidence for the suggestion that "prior to the introduction of the polio vaccine, ALL of these diseases would have been put under the polio umbrella".

The diseases you list have clinical features that would usually distinguish them from polio. Also if they were ALL called polio prior to the vaccine, then how did they exist at all prior to vaccine? Were they newly invented with vaccine introduction?

Further, you suggest that "These events led to an immediate decline in the diagnosis of polio but did they lead to a decline in paralysis labelled as AFP?". Diagnostic specificity for polio probably did improve after moves towards elimination - this raises even more issues/questions about your hypothesis, but the main one, as John has already outlined:

Given we all accept diagnostic specificity for AFP improved, don't you think that might also result in improved reporting overall? For your hypothesis to be true, increased reporting of AFP must be due to migration of polio diagnoses into other categories, but it most likely represents improved reporting in response to an entirely new surveillance mechanism for AFP, set up to monitor polio disease control. We know that in Australia, when we improve active surveillance for AFP we meet WHO guidelines for AFP surveillance, but if we don't do this actively, we don't.

Thanks

Dave

[Sandy Gottstein]

Sorry for sending this twice, one time with a hyperlink and the other
without. I had sent the hyperlinked one awhile back and thought I had not
done it correctly....

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sandy
Gottstein
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 2:34 PM
To: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Polio in China

Hi everybody,

All the best,
Sandy

[Greg Beattie]

Hi Dave

I'm glad you asked those questions. First of all, let me say I don't
agree with Meryl that ALL of these diseases would have come under the
AFP umbrella, and I think she may have not intended so be so absolute
(assuming there, Meryl). But it's interesting to ponder how many of
them may have.

If we look at what occurs today, we see that AFP cases are scrutinised
for evidence of polio virus. Those with a positive test are labeled
'polio'. The rest are labelled something else, often according to
which virus was detected. In others no virus is found. The labels they
receive vary from transverse myelitis to GBS, meningitis, diplegia etc
(see Sandy's first article for more names).

But what occurred 60 years ago? We didn't have the laboratory to
differentiate all these on the basis of which virus was found. How did
we differentiate them? Well, we didn't do so much differentiating. We
called just about all cases that resembled polio... 'polio'. So there
was a lot of 'polio' recorded.

But we went even further than that. We even had 'non-paralytic polio'.
If you read the first article that Sandy linked to you will see the
'non-paralytic' cases far outnumbered the paralytic. These further
added to the catch-all 'polio' diagnosis.

Why did we do this? Because during the summer we noticed a lot of kids
becoming ill with fever, fatigue, sometimes vomiting, diarrhoea,
headaches, neck-aches etc, and often they suffered paralysis. The
paralysis concerned us greatly and made us focus on the illness. We
called the condition 'polio', and each summer we would wait for large
numbers of kids to come down with it. We encouraged doctors to report
all cases they suspected. It is documented that most of those recorded
were not even paralytic.

And as for which virus they had, if any, we had no idea, because we
had no laboratory testing. So, we had large numbers of 'polio'
recorded, comprising the vast majority of AFP cases, which weren't
further differentiated like they are today.

Now if we hit fast forward and travel through the decades, we see that
immediately after the polio vaccine was introduced there were some big
changes... and I mean BIG. For a start, we told doctors to stop
reporting the non-paralytic cases. Obviously, this changed the figures
for 'polio'. Then we developed special laboratories to test for the
virus and told doctors they MUST use them. We discovered that the vast
majority of these cases never had the polio virus in them, so we
differentiated them, and the 'polio' figures plummeted further.
Finally, we took the final decision of whether or not a case could be
labeled 'polio' out of the hands of doctors, and into the hands of
special committees, who reviewed all the diagnostic evidence. No
longer could a doctor simply visit a child in bed, and after a few
minutes take the parents aside and say "He's got polio" (like we saw
in the SBS documentary recently).

All this happened abruptly in the developed countries, within a few
years of the vaccine being introduced, and is all documented in my
book, with references. In the remainder of the world the changes came
later, but had the same effect... again, documented in my book
complete with references.

So yeah.... polio numbers plumeted but what happened to acute-onset
paralysis? This is what the concern all started out as... paralysis.
Our only consistent measurement of it is AFP, and we can see this is
still rampant. In the China article that started this thread, the
report stated there were 7 cases of 'polio'. By contrast there are
around 6000 cases of AFP each year in China.

So again, for parents, it's the paralysis that is important. What
figures do we have to suggest there's been any improvement in that
area. Given that AFP figures are in fact rising (and I grant that this
is probably at least partly due to increased sensitivity) it doesn't
look like the vaccine is resulting in any tangible benefit, at least
statistically.

The only thing we can say with certainty is that changes in diagnosis
have led to a decrease in the share of AFP that gets labeled 'polio'.
Given that those who want us to take the vaccine are arguing that it
is valuable, they are arguing the positive, and the burden of proof is
therefore on them to provide evidence that there has been a tangible
benefit from it.

I welcome any such evidence you wish to throw in for scrutiny.
Greg (sorry for the long post everyone)

[Greg Beattie]

John

I didn't realise that the errors you made were spelling mistakes.
Significant errors of fact concern me when they come from someone who
presents as an heavily qualified spokesperson. If they were spelling
mistakes, I offer my apology. One more thing.... I am not upset at
all. I simply asked you to refrain from saying things like "a simple
mistake for someone without medical training" when you are referring
to things I said which were in fact not mistakes at all. You know that
I am capable of discussing this issue. Let's keep it constructive.
Greg

> and herehttp://www.who.int/immunization_monitoring/diseases/poliomyelitis_sur...

[Sandy Gottstein]

Not too long at all, Greg. Thank you.

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Greg
Beattie
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 4:39 PM
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate
Subject: Re: Polio in China

[JC]

Dearest Greg,
I am, in your terms, heavily qualified, and thanks for recognising
that. My specialty is not, however, immunisation, but epidemiology
and orthopaedic surgery, so often I'm finding out things as we go as
well. That's the advantage of having a group like this where errors
can be sorted out in a constructive manner. It's the way in which I
teach other doctors to improve themselves too. I certainly do hope
you're able to discuss this issue, but I do not "know" that yet, and
you suggest I do. When you came out with the comment "I'm glad you're

prepared to learn from mistakes because there are some lessons to be

had via the mistakes in your last post" it almost sounded aggressive
and demeaning. Is that how you intended it to sound? I certainly
hope not, because that's not how mature and intelligent people behave,
is it? I trust you'll keep your emotions in check the next time you
feel like being aggressive.
John

[JC]

Hi Sandy,

May I address your questions?

1) Why does the very small minority of polio infected people develop

serious disease? We probably don't know, but over the entire spectrum
of medicine, you'll find the same disease affect people with different
intensity. It could be a dose effect, genetic, pre-morbid status or a
combination of all and many more factors. Take influenza for example
- it kills some people, whilst others are left with just a few
myalgias. In my field, people can have very significant spinal
stenosis, but be asymptomatic whilst others are cripples.

2) Is vaccinating everyone for a disease that so few, even if
infected, have a problem with good policy?

This is, as I've pointed out before, a cost/benefit analysis. Let's
look at Australia in 1938, when polio was rife with 39 per 100,000
people. At the time, the population of Australia was about 7,000,000
give or take. That means that there were 2730 cases of polio per
year. That would mean that over 5 years, left untreated, there would
have been 10,000 people affected by polio. Even if only 0.1% of those
were paralytic, there were at least 100 people over 5 years left
paralysed, but may have in fact been close to 1,000. Fatality rates
for paralytic polio are 2 to 5% in children, 15 to 30% in adults and
up to 75% in bulbar polio. There's a lot of disease there - a lot of
money to look after people, a lot of suffering, and a lot of death.
Let's remember that there was also a lot of long-term consequences of
polio, of which I am acutely familiar. Then think about that was only
over a 5 year period - imagine the burden of looking after all these
people over many many years that they live for. it would have been a
tragedy. Now consider that this example was only Australia.
Extrapolate those figures over the world and you can see what a
disease burden only 0.1% may represent. In 1938 the world population
was a little over 2 billion.

Fortunately, we don't see it in Australia anymore. No leg irons, no
long term ventilation. It's just not an issue anymore. The cases of
AFP that we see these days are simply not polio - they're other
diseases that are not always infectious, not always caused by a virus
or bacteria, and have very different clinical outcomes.

I therefore submit that it is VERY good policy.

3) How might those who are infected but have no, or mild, symptoms
affect measurements of disease incidence, if at all? (e.g., might
stool specimens, if being taken of "everyone" in a "polio-endemic
area", result in a higher assessment of polio incidence than is
actually meaningful, if the concern is with paralytic polio, for
instance?)

One of the things that WHO does is do environmental surveillance.
They actually take samples of sewerage (ewwww!) to monitor the
prevalence of polio amongst populations, and to act as an extra method
of capturing the spread of the virus. Take a look at
http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Surveillance.aspx
and
http://www.who.int/vaccines-documents/DocsPDF03/www737.pdf
for more information on the comprehensive nature of the WHO programme.

I hope this has addressed sufficiently some of your questions in a
respectful and mature fashion.

John

[Dave]

Hi Greg

Thanks for correcting Meryl, I was confused about the insistence, with
SUPER CAPS LOCK, about ALL cases.

I am now confused about further details in your post.

You make some fascinating points, and it reads like a great story. Can
you provide any evidence for your assertions? For example, on what
grounds do you suggest children with "fever, fatigue, sometimes
vomiting, diarrhoea,
headaches, neck-aches" but no paralysis were inappropriately labeled
polio? If these illnesses weren't polio, what were they?

"For a start, we told doctors to stop reporting the non-paralytic

cases." Who is we? Can you provide some evidence for this statement?

After the vaccine was introduced, "We discovered that the vast

majority of these cases never had the polio virus in them, so we

differentiated them, and the 'polio' figures plummeted further." When
you say "the vast majority of these cases NEVER had the polio virus in
them" - what you actually mean is "We discovered that the vast
majority of these cases DIDN'T have the polio virus in them". You
can't infer backwards like that. If vaccine is introduced with the
purpose of rapidly interrupting transmission of the virus, you can't
claim that findings after the vaccine is introduced reflect what the
reality was before the vaccine was introduce. I have probably
misunderstood what you meant, because that would not make sense,
particularly without evidence.

I believe you have references in your book to show polio numbers
plummeted when vaccine was introduced, but I don't believe you have
evidence to support any of the other things you claim. And sorry, I am
not buying your book to find out. If there are publicly available
references, I am happy to read them. But I am not interested in
references contained only in your book.

You suggest that AFP is "rampant" based on 6000 cases of it in China a
year. China has a population of 1,339,724,852. That equates to an
annual rate of 0.45 per 100,000 a year. In the US before vaccine they
had 13,000 to 20,000 cases of PARALYTIC polio a year
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#polio. Even using
today's population figure (larger) with the lowest of those 2 numbers
(13,000), I get a an annual population rate of 4.2 per 100,000. A
factor of 10 difference. Something's not adding up here. And where are
they hiding all of those cases. AFP in the whole of the Americas
region in 2009/2010 amount to 1,873/1,919 cases. This is with an
enhanced surveillance system. How does that make sense?

"The only thing we can say with certainty is that changes in
diagnosis have led to a decrease in the share of AFP that gets labeled

'polio'." No, we can't sat that with any certainty at all. I have seen
no evidence to support that. You have provided no evidence to support
that.

I'm happy to have the burden to prove what I claim, but you can't make
up funny stories with no evidence and then expect others to do all the
work Greg. You welcome my evidence? Nice deflection Greg, but it won't
work. My story is the status quo. You are the one telling an
astounding version of the history of polio surveillance. I mean
really, it's amazing. But you won't provide any evidence to support
it. I know a lot of the AVN types aren't in favour of the scientific
method. But if you are going to put forward an amazing hypothesis, at
least make some attempt to provide credible evidence to support it.

Dave

[JC]

Hi Meryl,

I hope you don't think I'm ignoring your question: "These events led

to an immediate decline in the diagnosis of polio but did they lead to

a decline in paralysis labelled as AFP?" but i think I've addressed
them in other responses to Greg and Sandy.

In short, reported AFP rates have risen to the same levels we would
expect to see if surveillance for the condition was adequate - about
1-2 per 100,000 per year, so there is nothing more to conclude there
that surveillance is becoming almost complete. The numbers match
almost perfectly. This is what you would expect given the resources
that are being pumped into the polio eradication programmes.

Secondly, polio presents with devastating and permanent consequences,
which we don't see anymore where it has been eradicated e.g.:
Australia.

Lastly, at it's peak, polio (39 per 100,000) was far more common than
AFP has ever been (1-2 per 100,000). With the introduction of a
vaccination programme, polio rates have plummeted, but AFP cases
(other than polio) haven't.

I think, with all due respect, that when the numbers are looked at
critically, there is little evidence to support your concept.
Epidemiology is a fascinating science that makes one analyse numbers
in their context, ensuring that people don't jump to conclusions that
aren't founded. If I haven't made myself clear, please don't hesitate
to ask and I'll explain it again.

John

[Sandy Gottstein]

Hi John,

Thank you - very respectful. I hope I have done the same. My
comments/questions are below.

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JC
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 11:45 PM
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate
Subject: Re: Polio in China

Hi Sandy,

May I address your questions?

1) Why does the very small minority of polio infected people develop
serious disease? We probably don't know, but over the entire spectrum
of medicine, you'll find the same disease affect people with different
intensity. It could be a dose effect, genetic, pre-morbid status or a
combination of all and many more factors. Take influenza for example
- it kills some people, whilst others are left with just a few
myalgias. In my field, people can have very significant spinal
stenosis, but be asymptomatic whilst others are cripples.

Sandy's reply: I believe we should be trying to better understand what those
reasons are. For instance, was it injections (including antibiotics),
administered when polio was circulating
(http://www.vaccinationnews.com/Scandals/April_5_02/april_5_02/polio_injecti
ons_tonsillectomies.htm? Is one of the reasons polio has declined due to a
decrease in antibiotic injections now that antibiotics are normally given
orally? What about the decline in routine tonsillectomies
(http://www.vaccinationnews.com/Scandals/feb_8_02/polio%2526tonsillectomies.
htm)?

Sandy's reply: That cost benefit analysis assumes there are no meaningful
short or long-term consequences of polio vaccination. I would submit that
we don't really know the cost/benefit analysis having never compared the
polio-vaccinated to those unvaccinated against polio or anything else.

3) How might those who are infected but have no, or mild, symptoms
affect measurements of disease incidence, if at all? (e.g., might
stool specimens, if being taken of "everyone" in a "polio-endemic
area", result in a higher assessment of polio incidence than is
actually meaningful, if the concern is with paralytic polio, for
instance?)
One of the things that WHO does is do environmental surveillance.
They actually take samples of sewerage (ewwww!) to monitor the
prevalence of polio amongst populations, and to act as an extra method
of capturing the spread of the virus. Take a look at
http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Surveillance.aspx
and
http://www.who.int/vaccines-documents/DocsPDF03/www737.pdf
for more information on the comprehensive nature of the WHO programme.

Sandy's reply: Do you know if these measurements ever result in estimates
of polio incidence within a population? (Sorry, but I haven't looked at
those links yet, so if the answer is there, please let me know.)

I hope this has addressed sufficiently some of your questions in a
respectful and mature fashion.

John

--

[Sandy Gottstein]

Hi again, John.

I would like to expand on the point I made about cost/benefit analysis.

Let's say 2% (just as an example - I'm not trying to suggest this is the
case) of those who are vaccinated against polio develop chronic asthma.
That means 2-20 times the number who got serious polio have a life-long,
chronic disease that may or may not kill them prematurely, may or may not
subject them to repeated hospitalizations, probably will required life-long
medication, etc. besides seriously affecting their quality of life.

In that case the polio vaccine may or may not be cost effective.

All the best,
Sandy

[JC]

Hi Sandy,

I agree with you that if the polio vaccine caused a 2% increase in
asthma it would not be a good thing. Do you have anything to suggest
it does? If not, then the argument is entirely hypothetical. As far
as i can see, by the current evidence I can find, there is no evidence
that vaccinated people have any better or worse outcomes that
unvaccinated. Of course I'm more than happy to review any more data
you can find.

John

[Sandy Gottstein]

The reason I said "just as an example - I'm not trying to suggest this is
the case" was that it was hypothetical. My ongoing point is that the
studies have never been done to determine if the vaccinated are worse off
than the never-vaccinated. Most reports of adverse events are dismissed out
of hand as being coincidental.

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JC
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 2:34 PM
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate
Subject: Re: Polio in China

Hi Sandy,

John

--

[Greg Beattie]

Dave

I'll answer your questions but first let me say that I didn't correct
Meryl. I simply presented my view which disagreed very slightly with
hers, and suggested she may have not meant to be so absolute. Having
said that, I should add that I suspect (can't prove of course) that
the vast majority of pre-vaccine AFP was in fact recorded as polio.

The first of your questions relates to whether I can point you to
evidence that so many of the earlier cases of polio were in fact 'non-
paralytic'. I can. There is abundant evidence of this but why don't
you just read the first article that Sandy linked to (John and I
thanked her for it) on this thread. You will find on page 303 an
almost word-for-word corroboration.

"...inapparent infection is the most frequent outcome (72 percent).
"Abortive poliomyelitis," also referred to as "minor illness," is the
most frequent form (24 percent) of the disease. Nonparalytic
poliomyelitis (including aseptic meningitis) occurs in 4 percent of
patients. Only 1/1,000 to 1/100 infected individuals develop paralytic
disease.
...Initial clinical symptoms may include fever, fatigue, headache,
vomiting, constipation (or less commonly diarrhea), stiffness in the
neck, and pain in
the limbs. A diphasic course featuring these relatively non-specific
symptoms with acute onset of paralysis during the second phase is seen
mostly in young children..."

If you read through med journal articles from the period on this topic
you will find that this has never been in question. It's not a
contentious issue but has been in the open all the time. Even
nowadays, although it's rarely talked about, it is never denied. See
the following staunch pro-vaccine site. The article I link to was
written by Albert Sabin's daughter. Read to paragraph 4. She says over
one third were paralytic in USA just prior to the vaccine.
http://www.theendofpolio.com/home/2011/08/finishing-my-fathers-work/

The following journal article suggests it was closer to half in the
USA.
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/110/6/672.full.pdf+html

Others suggest the paralytic form was much less common. Paralysis was
sometimes referred to as the "unusual complication" of polio, similar
to the occurrence of encephalitis in measles.
The pathogenesis of poliomyelitis; Med J of Aust: Mar 3, 1951 p343
(No link for that last one: it's an old article.)

I'll break this up for clarity, and continue in the next message.....
Greg

> had 13,000 to 20,000 cases of PARALYTIC polio a yearhttp://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#polio. Even using

> ...
>
> read more »

[Greg Beattie]

Dave
Next, you asked me to retrospectively re-label the illnesses that were
recorded as polio. That's a bit unreasonable. The article that Sandy
linked to earlier clearly suggests aseptic meningitis was one of the
conditions. I did mention others in an earlier post.

Then you ask --""For a start, we told doctors to stop reporting the

non-paralytic cases." Who is we? Can you provide some evidence for
this statement?"

Yes. I am using "we" in an attempt to be conciliatory rather than
accusatory. "We" is meant to be inclusive meaning we as a community
went down this path. If I had said "they" you would have asked me who
"they" was. And if I had said " the govt" would that have made me a
conspiracy theorist? Evidence for it can be found here (Med J of Aust:
July 28, 1956 p158): 'the govt' issued a new set of diagnostic
guidelines published in July 1956, the very month the vaccine was
introduced. A real gem from that:

"The diagnosis of poliomyelitis in persons vaccinated against
poliomyelitis assumes considerable importance in assessing the
degree of protection afforded by the vaccine. Once immunisation
commences the public mind will be as in a poliomyelitis epidemic,
and such is the fear of the disease, that any illness is likely to be
 
considered to be poliomyelitis until someone in authority says it is not.
It is hoped that the following list of diagnostic criteria will not only help
 
practitioners in what is often a difficult diagnosis, but may prevent
 
unwarranted criticism of the vaccine by incorrect notification of
poliomyelitis in vaccinated persons; or, more important, incorrect  
provisional diagnosis."

Note "any illness is likely to be considered to be poliomyelitis until
someone in authority says it is not". On the eve of the new vaccine
the new guidelines instructed doctors around this foreseeable problem.
Again, if you read journal articles on polio from around that period
you will start to see what happened.

Continuing in the next post....

Greg

On Sep 29, 7:44 pm, Dave <davecoleman...@gmail.com> wrote:

> had 13,000 to 20,000 cases of PARALYTIC polio a yearhttp://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#polio. Even using

> ...
>
> read more »

[Greg Beattie]

Dave
Your next question, did they NEVER have the virus, or did they DIDN'T
have the virus? Got me there. :-) I was gramatically incorrect. The
virus was not isolated at the time of their illness. Instead, some
other virus or bacterium (or nothing at all) was isolated.

Regarding your last point, I used the example of 6000 cases in China
to hightlight that fact that the 7 cases of polio was an infinitely
small fraction of the story.

And as to why we had higher rates of paralysis prior to the vaccine
than today... Well, for a start I believe that's a guess. It may be
correct, but still a guess because we didn't collect the empirical
evidence to allow for that comparison. That has been the crux of my
point. We can now only make guesses, because we are comparing apples
with oranges. Yesterday, the apples were all ages who got sick during
the 'polio season' with the generic (usually non-paralytic) symptoms.
Today, the oranges are counted as kids under 15 who are stricken with
AFP. The question we will never know the answer to is how many of the
earlier lot (apples) would have been laballed AFP today? In other
words, how often were patients recorded as paralytic simply because
their symptoms included mild or transient muscle weakness?

As I said earlier this is your argument. Given that you are arguing
the positive you need to provide the evidence to satisfy us that the
apples can meaningfully be compared with the oranges. That's your job.
It's not up to me to prove a negative, even though I've been good
enough to answer these questions.

Do I personally think there was more paralysis around 60 years ago?
Yes, I do. I don't know for sure as I just pointed out but I expect
there was, and I can offer some feasible explanations that have been
put forward by others. For a start, polio figures soared in the decade
immediately following WW2. Prior to that they were lower with only the
occasional upswing. There was much discussion about what constituted
proper care of people suffering from the initial (non-paralytic)
symptoms. Some approaches were found to increase the risk of
paralysis. Then, intramuscular injections were found to provoke the
paralysis. Vaccine injections (seperate diphtheria and whooping cough
shots that were available prior to DPT) were estimated to have caused
13-15% of the paralytic cases. Surgical trauma was also found to
provoke it. Tonsillectomy in particular was implicated in lung
involvement (remember the iron lungs?) Antibiotic injections were
discovered to be a contributing cause, as well as all other
injections.

These associations became so prominent that journal articles called
for the banning of all unnecessary injections and surgery. In Romania
it was decided that the rate of paralytic polio could be reduced by a
factor of more than 7 if they stopped injecting antibiotics during
polio seasons.

Finally, DDT has been implicated also, which is why I commented
recently on the horrendous image of clouds of DDT being sprayed over
people during this period (shown in the recent SBS documentary on
polio). For an interesting read on this...
http://www.vaccinetruth.org/james_west_ddt.htm

One more thing Dave. You said "I believe you have references in your

book to show polio numbers plummeted when vaccine was introduced, but
I don't believe you have evidence to support any of the other things

you claim." That's a funny thing to say if you haven't read my book.
How would you know?

Greg

On Sep 29, 7:44 pm, Dave <davecoleman...@gmail.com> wrote:

> had 13,000 to 20,000 cases of PARALYTIC polio a yearhttp://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#polio. Even using

> ...
>
> read more »

[JC]

Hi Sandy,

Without labouring the point, if you look up the references I've quoted
in other topics I think you'll find them illuminating. Perhaps I may
have brought to your attention some studies that you weren't aware of
before, and they may make you re-evaluate your statement "My ongoing

point is that the studies have never been done to determine if the

vaccinated are worse off than the never-vaccinated". That is the
point of this discussion board after all, isn't it - free exchange of
useful and informed debate. Certainly, there is little evidence that
I am aware of that shows that unvaccinated people are healthier. Most
studies I've found that compare the two groups show either no
difference, or that vaccinated people are healthier. I'm more than
happy to review any papers that you might have that show the opposite
too.

All the best,

John

[JC]

Hi Greg,

I appreciate your thoughts on Dave's reply, and your own ideas about
what has happened in the past. However, I also wrote you a reply
which you haven't replied to yet. I also sent a shorter one to Meryl
who hasn't replied, so maybe you could take your time with this. This
is, after all, based on the figures that you presented to me, so I'm
sure you've thought through the implications of them. If not, then I
hope this presents to you an opportunity to consider the epidemiology
of these numbers.

In short, reported AFP rates have risen to the same levels we would

expect to see if surveillance for the condition was adequate. Given
an incidence of AFP of about 1-2 per 100,000 per year, and based on a
population of 7 billion, there'd be about 70-140,000 cases expected to
be reported a year, which is exactly what we have. So there is

nothing more to conclude there that surveillance is becoming almost

complete. The numbers match almost perfectly given the world's
population. This is what you would expect given the resources that
are being pumped into the polio eradication programmes. I can't see
any evidence that AFP rates have increased - rather the reporting is
becoming almost perfect. Did you know that if WHO receive a report of
an incidence of AFP of less that 1 per 100,000 from any region, they
investigate to see why the surveillance teams aren't doing their job?
Did you know they sample sewers looking for the virus? The programme
is pretty comprehensive.

Secondly, polio presents with devastating and permanent consequences,
which we don't see anymore where it has been eradicated e.g.:

Australia. We just don't. Clinically, you may be interested in
learning, is that polio would often affect just one limb, which is
very unusual. Most other cases of AFP cause a symmetrical weakness,
and this was one of the hallmarks of polio when it was diagnosed.
That's also why the musculoskeletal consequences of polio were so
troublesome - people don't like walking with uneven legs. When was
the last time you saw someone with callipers? GBS, the most common
non-traumatic cause of AFP, simply doesn't have these consequences.

Lastly, at it's peak, polio (39 per 100,000) was far more common than
AFP has ever been (1-2 per 100,000). With the introduction of a
vaccination programme, polio rates have plummeted, but AFP cases

(other than polio) haven't. It can't be that polio is being
"misdiagnosed" as AFP because the numbers don't add up.

Epidemiology is a fascinating science that makes one analyse numbers
in their context, ensuring that people don't jump to conclusions that

aren't founded. Perhaps you'd like to go over the numbers again, and
maybe you can draw a different conclusion. At the end of the day
though, we need to establish what has happened to the numbers and why,
and justify it in a reasonable manner. Maybe I'm being too
simplistic.

John

[Sandy Gottstein]

Hi John,

Thanks for the references and I will get back to you when I have had a
chance to read them.

All the best,
Sandy

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JC
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 5:44 PM
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate
Subject: Re: Polio in China

Hi Sandy,

All the best,

John

--

[Meryl Dorey]

Hi John,

My apologies for not responding to your question about the AFP 'umbrella' statement. There is a table out of Neil Miller's first book on vaccination where he took the reports of polio, aseptic meningitis and one other polio-like disease (can't remember which one) prior to the introduction of the vaccine and then - a year later. These figures are just made up as a demonstration - I don't have the information here:

Before vaccine:

Polio - 300
Aseptic Meningitis - 50
X Disease - 25
Total - 375

After vaccine:

Polio - 12
Aseptic meningitis - 240
X Disease - 120
Total 372

The correlation was just that obvious. I will have to ask if anyone else has this book or reference to this information because to me at least, it was very telling that there had been a shift in where the diagnoses were assigned more than an actual change in disease patterns.

Also, you have said that:

> Clinically, you may be interested in
> learning, is that polio would often affect just one limb, which is
> very unusual. Most other cases of AFP cause a symmetrical weakness,
> and this was one of the hallmarks of polio when it was diagnosed.

Prior to the mid-1950s however, that was not part of the definition of polio. I will see if I can find some of my journal articles in my online storage (getting on to my server is proving to be impossible from here!) and if I find them I will forward them to the list. If not, it will have to wait until I'm back in Oz unless someone else has that information, sorry..

Polio had a very broad and inclusive diagnostic criteria before the vaccine was introduced which is exactly the point I was making - that what we called polio in the days before the vaccine is now called something else. it's been redefined - not necessarily eradicated.

I am really enjoying this discussion and will try to get more information for you on this issue as quickly as I can.

All the best,
Meryl
Sent from my iPad

On 29/09/2011, at 9:25 PM, JC <jc_bi...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> Hi Greg,
>
> I appreciate your thoughts on Dave's reply, and your own ideas about
> what has happened in the past. However, I also wrote you a reply
> which you haven't replied to yet. I also sent a shorter one to Meryl
> who hasn't replied, so maybe you could take your time with this. This
> is, after all, based on the figures that you presented to me, so I'm
> sure you've thought through the implications of them. If not, then I
> hope this presents to you an opportunity to consider the epidemiology
> of these numbers.
>

> <snip>
>

[JC]

Hi Meryl,

In the interests of keeping this debate based on accurate information,
I think it would be beneficial to always reference original data
sources when possible, and exact numbers. I appreciate your
enthusiasm, as always, but it may lead to confusion if you can't be
exact with your figures. I also appreciate you're overseas, so maybe
you can follow up when you are home with the exact figures and
references you require.

That said, quoting two consecutive years is often referred to as
"cherry picking". Greg quoted figures which he based his conclusions
on, which is from the WHO. I refuted his conclusions by demonstrating
that, when put in context, they amount to nothing more than a more
complete surveillance of AFP. This was quite straight forward to do,
and it was the first time I'd looked at them. Greg still hasn't come
back with any alternative explanation for the numbers either, and,
with all due respect, neither have you. Either Greg's numbers show
what I have said, or please show me some other way of interpreting
them. Please don't change the data set now that they don't support
your argument - that's not debating.

Kind regards,

John

[Greg Beattie]

John

I apologise for not responding earlier but I've been away for a couple
of days.

You continue to contrast the polio rates of 60 years ago with the AFP
rates of today, by saying:

"Lastly, at it's peak, polio (39 per 100,000) was far more common than
AFP has ever been (1-2 per 100,000)"

I've already pointed out why these two figures are incomparable.
They're apples and oranges. Please read back over my responses to Dave
for the reasons. For a start the polio figure of 39 was grossly
inflated with mild non-paralytic cases. In addition to that, 39 per
100,000 was a very unusual year. Most years averaged at about 5 per
100,000. Even in the terrible decade following WW2 the average was
less than half that number. On the other hand, parts of India have
recently reported NON-polio AFP rates approaching your larger
figure.... and of course none were non-paralytic. Also, the population
was highly vaccinated. http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/88/3/09-072058/en/index.html

Regarding AFP rates: Yes, they are rising, and have increased about 5-
fold in the past 15 years. You point out that we can expect to see
such from a new system, and I already acknowledged this beforehand.
But I don't think we can assume we're not looking at a real increase
in illness as well, especially when confronted with the data in the
above article.

When I initially asked you for your comments on the trends in AFP it
wasn't the rise that I was highlighting. It was the fact that this is
the only source of data we have on acute paralytic illness. We don't
have anything else that we can use to investigate the argument that
polio vaccine is saving our children from paralysis. The data you were
quoting (and everyone else does it too) simply measured the number of
paralysis cases in which poliovirus was detected.

Have a look at this graph: http://vaccinationdilemma.com/Fig43_PolioGlobal.gif

This is plotted from WHO data and we can be sure there are no non-
paralytic or abortive cases in it. It would be safe to say that all
polio recorded during the time-span of the graph has been 'paralytic'.
By WHO's definition there is no longer such a thing as polio that
isn't paralytic. WHO encouraged AFP surveillance in developing
countries simply to test all these cases for polio virus. Anything
resembling polio is now tested. Those that have the virus are labelled
'polio'. The others aren't.

The dotted line on the graph shows the reports of polio going down as
time goes on. The time-warn story is that this happened because of
polio vaccine. I say it likely would have gone down simply because we
started testing them, and weeding out all those in which we couldn't
find the virus. So... which one really did make the line go down? Was
it the vaccine, or the testing for virus, or a bit of both? If both,
how much did each contribute?

The solid line shows the rise of the new system of collecting figures,
and it's very interesting. It records all the cases resembling polio
BEFORE they are tested for the virus. Therefore the solid line gives
us the info parents are interested in -- i.e. the number of kids being
crippled. The dotted line gives us the info that standard medicine is
interested in -- i.e. how many of them have polio virus.

Now, one thing we can see from this graph is that we're probably back
where we started. I say... nobody has demonstrated that polio vaccine
has been of value in reducing paralysis.

[JC]

Greg,

Please try and follow the numbers - the numbers you supplied. Let's
look at 5 per 100,000 as you suggest, also with 1-0.1% paralytic rate
that you gave. With a population of 7 million in Australia, gives us
3.5 to 35 cases of paralytic polio per year. Remember the kids in
callipers and wheelchairs? That's them. It's STILL far more common
than 1-2 per 100,000 of AFP. Paralytic polio was still far more than
all the other causes of AFP put together. I can't see any other way
to interpret those numbers Greg.

Now Greg, I really need to take you to task on your graph - maybe not
so much on the graph but how you've interpreted it. "Therefore the

solid line gives us the info parents are interested in -- i.e. the

number of kids being crippled". This sort of emotive statement does
not contribute to any sort of debate. As I've shown you before, the
solid line is consistent with the WHO surveillance programme
documenting more cases. The percentage of people submitting adequate
stool specimens has also increased along a similar line. How do you
interpret that? Again, the reasonable answer is that the surveillance
programme has become more complete. Nothing more, nothing less.
Reporting has increased. There is nothing to suggest the actual rate
has changed, or increased beyond 1-2 per 100,000. This is not
something that you're inclined to acknowledge.

In 2010, for example, there were 98788 cases of AFP reported. World
population about 7 billion, gives us a rate of 1.4 per 100,000 - not
even above 2, which is your accepted "background" rate. Again,
nothing to suggest that AFP rates are increasing - they're just being
reported more. Theses are your numbers Greg, and it bodes you to
examine them in detail before jumping to conclusions.

So Greg, do you have any figures that AFP is more than 1-2 per
100,000? Until you do, then the graph you present does not support
your argument in any way shape or form.

I implore you to read this milestone paper, which does, in fact, show
quite conclusively and in much detail how the polio vaccination
programme affected polio in the USA:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1473032/?tool=pmcentrez
It contains a much more thorough and complete picture of polio in the
US from 1910 to 1971. "At its height, from 1950–1954, poliomyelitis
resulted in the paralysis of some 22,000 U.S. citizens each year,
equivalent to an average annual rate of 14.6 per 100,000. Many
thousands were left permanently disabled by the disease, while many
others suffocated as a consequence of respiratory paralysis." There's
those pesky statistics again Greg. Polio: 14.6 per 100,000 - many
many more than 1-2 per 100,000, with many many more crippled people.

The paper goes on to describe in quite some detail what happened when
they introduced the vaccination programme, how the incidence declined
and also how it's became spatially more volatile.

"Against this background, the article draws upon information included
in the U.S. Public Health Service’s Public Health Reports and the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report to examine the spatial dynamics of poliomyelitis during
the phases of epidemic emergence (1910–1955) and vaccine-induced
retreat (1955–1971) in the United States. It is shown that epidemic
emergence was accompanied by shifts in the spatial center of activity
from early diffusion poles in the northeastern states, to the western
seaboard, and then finally to cover all the states of the Union. This
was accompanied by accelerating epidemic propagation. The introduction
of mass vaccination from the mid-1950s realigned spatial transmission
of the disease, producing increased spatial volatility in the
geographical center of activity and heightened dependence of epidemic
outbreaks upon endemic reservoirs in the most populous states."

Simply put, not only did the disease rates decline, but they became
more sporadic. It's much more detailed and sophisticated that your
analysis, and it may help you understand the process of immunisation
better.

With all due respect Greg, your consideration of polio and AFP is
really far too simplistic, and your conclusions are not supported by
the data you quote. It's OK to admit you're wrong Greg. No one is
perfect.

I respectfully await your reply.

John

[Greg Beattie]

John Cunningham

You said -- "Greg, Please try and follow the numbers - the numbers you

supplied. Let's look at 5 per 100,000 as you suggest, also with
1-0.1% paralytic rate that you gave. With a population of 7 million
in Australia, gives us 3.5 to 35 cases of paralytic polio per year.
Remember the kids in callipers and wheelchairs? That's them. It's
STILL far more common than 1-2 per 100,000 of AFP. Paralytic polio
was still far more than all the other causes of AFP put together. I
can't see any other way to interpret those numbers Greg."

Mate, I'm sorry but I think you need some help with those
calculations:

1. with a polio rate of 5 per 100,000 and a population of 7 million we
would have 350 cases per year

2. working on a 1% paralytic rate we get 3.5 paralytic cases (the
higher estimate)

3. working on 0.1% paralytic we get 0.35 cases (yes... less than one)

So thats an estimated 0.35-3.5 cases of paralytic polio each year. You
say that's "STILL far more common than 1-2 per 100,000 of AFP". Let's
see if that's right:

4. an AFP rate of 1-2 per 100,000 would have produced 70-140 cases of
paralysis each year back when the population was 7 million, and
200-400 cases today (based on 20 million)

That's at least 100 times more common than your polio example... and
it corrects some very poor maths on your part. But there's more,
because the entire essence of your paragraph was itself an error. You
see, that calculation should never have been made by you in the first
place, because:

A. the paralytic rate of 0.1-1% is the estimated rate of a polio virus
infection turning paralytic -- it does NOT represent the proportion of
notified polio that was paralytic. We don't know what proportion of
notified polio was paralytic. That is something we can only guess.

B. the quoted rate of AFP is 1-2 cases per 100,00 children under 15.
You keep forgetting the "children under 15" part, even though I have
already corrected you on it. That age-group represents roughly 1/4 of
our population. It is NOT the AFP rate in the general population.

Mate, I think it's fair to say that you just can't make that many
significant errors and expect to be taken seriously. I mean, you
introduced yourself as a surgeon and epidemiologist, and you have
spoken often, on this thread and others, about how you teach other
doctors. Now, I've only dealt with your first paragraph. The remainder
of your post is just as troubling because you failed to comprehend any
part of the post to which you were responding.

For a start, I made it clear the rising AFP rates were not the point I
was making.... the point was that, according to the only data we have
on acute onset paralysis, we seem to have gotten nowhere (have another
look at the graph). Yet you focused your entire response on why the
rates of AFP were rising... something which I had already addressed.

You commented on my statement "Therefore the solid line gives us the

info parents are interested in -- i.e. the number of kids being

crippled", by saying "This sort of emotive statement does not
contribute to any sort of debate." What? Calling that an emotive
statement that contributes nothing is absurd.

Then you say "So Greg, do you have any figures that AFP is more than
1-2 per 100,000?". Yes... right there in the post you were responding
to, plus a link to an article documenting non-polio AFP rates of up to
29 per 100,000 in India.

You then provided a link to an article which had nothing to do with
the issues I raised. Then to top it all off you spoke condescendingly,
saying "It's OK to admit you're wrong Greg. No one is perfect" (all
after providing a perfect illustration of that yourself). I sincerely
welcome good discussion but please, if you wish to criticise on my
input, make sure you have comprehended it first, and be sure to check
any maths that your points rely on. Otherwise you are wasting
everone's time.

Greg

[JC]

Greg,

The article I gave you is a very good paper that describes the
epidemic of polio in the US, followed by it's sharp decline with the
onset of vaccination, and also goes into great detail about the
geographic distribution of polio during and after it's epidemic
stages, until it was eradicated. It provides very strong proof that
the polio vaccine eliminated polio from the continent. If you are too
lazy to read it, then it's hard to debate with someone, isn't it?

In one area of India there was a spike in the reported cases of AFP.
It did not say that there was an increase in the incidence of polio.
Have you thought that perhaps, gee - maybe there was a surge in some
other cause of AFP? The same article also points out that they're
looking at still specimens in over 80% of cases of AFP, so it's not
like they're not looking for it.

So Greg, let me ask you, what IS your point? Is it still that polio
is being misdiagnosed as AFP? Please try and give a succinct answer
this time. Last time I looked around we hadn't seen polio in many
many years in Australia - there's no iron lungs and there's no
children in callipers, yet you claim that polio is still present?
Really?

Take a breath, Greg, take your time, and read the paper I sent you,
and then PLEASE come back with a succinct theory. Plase back it up by
numbers and please think them through.

John

[JC]

Greg,
I think I have it. "the point was that, according to the only data we
have on acute onset paralysis, we seem to have gotten nowhere". Yep.
It's still sitting at 1-2 per 100,000. The point of this observation
I think is what baffles me, and what relevance it has to polio. It
is, after all, an umbrella term.
John

[punter]

I personally believe there probably higher rates of poliomyelitis
today than pre-polio vaccine (ie in the Western world).

In the US (where most cases of polio were thought to be) poliomyelitis
was around a few thousand a year until the epidemic of the late 40s
early 50s where it ranged from something like ten thousand cases to 40
thousand cases per year. That is a lot (however, as there were around
130 million people in the US though at the time 10,000 per year still
only equated to one in 13,000 people getting it per year). So if
10,000 people got it per year, every year, (assuming they didn’t die
but ended up with permanent disability) that would equate to (I am
guesstimating base around life expectancy) around 0.5 per cent of the
population having some sort of paralysis/crippling condition (and
around, again I am guesstimating here, maybe 2 per cent of the 5-14
year old population (assuming they were the ones predominantly
affected by poliomyelitis)? In reality, the rate would never have been
anywhere near that high because many poliomyelitis sufferers wouldn't
have stayed permanently crippled. We don't have good data for the
number of people in that age group crippled by poliomyelitis at any
one time but I reckon 1 per cent is a fair guess. We have been
propagandised over and over that polio was an incredible scourge so we
can only assume that most cripples at the time in that age group were
thought to be polio sufferers - otherwise why was the polio vaccine
lauded so?

Bear with me because we are actually getting somewhere here.

The WHO figures that tell me that there are virtually no cases of AFP
in Australia just don't marry up with the amount of paralysis/limpness
type conditions I see every time I go to a crowded place. But then
maybe my observations are nonsense and I should put more faith in
massive government bureaucracies. So here is some data from a massive
government bureaucracy: The ABS:
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4446.0main+features42009
with the quote: “For example, the rate of profound or severe core-
activity limitation for 5-14 year old males (6.6% ) was close to
double that of females of the same age (3.0%).” Interesting that there
is a big spike up for 5 - 14 year olds. The same age as those who were
struck down by polio in the 1950s perhaps? What’s more it is more
common in boys – again perhaps consistent with poliomyelitis in the
1950s?

Of course "profound or severe core activity limitation" does not
necessarily equal what would have been called poliomyelitis (it would
cover a range of things) but it certainly puts paid to the argument
about the lack of iron lungs or callipers demonstrating that there are
virtually no crippled children anymore. Maybe we should bring them
back?

In addition, we have the disability pension statistics:
http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/about/publicationsarticles/research/statistical/Documents/stps8/2_payment.htm
Scroll down to the section on Disability pensions. The figure for 2009
is 757,000 (only people 16-65 can qualify for this pension so it is
only representative of, at most, around two thirds of the Australian
population (I believe the figure for 2011 is expected to be around
800,000)). Now this figure tells us that around 1 in 20 working age
people are suffering from a significantly debilitating condition as
recognised by the Government. Now these are the wrong age groups for
direct comparisons and they don't tell us the number of potentially
polio-type conditions, however, you have to wonder (or at least I do)
if vaccines (in general) have been such a raging success - how come we
are so goddamned sick or crippled?


So there you go. According to the Government, severe core-activity
limitation is around 5 per cent of the same demographic of people who
were most likely to suffer from polio 60 years ago (and who would
probably have done so in far lower numbers). In addition, the data for
Australians as a whole suggests a nation that suffers immensely from
debilitating illnesses despite (because of?) all the advances in
modern allopathic medicine. There is nothing conclusive in any of
these statistics here of course - that just isn't possible given the
limitations of the data, but I dare say this data supports our
argument far more than it does JC's.

> > John- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Greg Beattie]

John

Why did you say I was too lazy to read the paper you linked to? Of
course I read it... that's how I was able to conclude that it had
nothing to do with the rest of your post.

I don't understand how someone can make as many gross errors as you
have in this thread, and not provide some explanation or apology. And
after all this time you still want to know what my point is? My last
words prior to the deluge of errors you submitted were:

"I say... nobody has demonstrated that polio vaccine has been of value
in reducing paralysis."

That's my point, and I've explained all the reasons for it. Read the
thread again. I have been clear from the outset. I started by asking
you about the trends in paralysis. I am your consumer and this is
important to me: what has your vaccine done to stop kids being
crippled? And don't tell me that's emotive wording. I demand a
convincing argument from you: remember, you're arguing the positive.

So far all you have done is avoid the question, tell me it's
irrelevant and has nothing to do with polio, make an inexplicably
large number of errors, and feign inability to even comprehend the
simple question. All the while I have put the case for the negative
clearly, despite not having to as no-one has put the positive yet.
Given this, you're wasting my time.
Greg

[Greg Beattie]

Punter
That's a great analysis. Even more weight for the negative case.
Perhaps I am being too kind when I say there appears to be less
paralysis today than 60 years ago. When I think about it, my opinion
on that is predominantly based on polio vaccine propaganda, which
constantly reminds us of the calipers, iron lungs etc.

In this thread I focused on WHO stats because people are claiming they
illustrate the conquest of polio. But immediately under the surface of
the polio stats is the revelation that they are utterly meaningless.
And if we widen our net and look at AFP in developing countries (which
has only been collated for less than 20 years) we see that we're back
where we started. And why AFP? Because AFP today is basically what we
would have called polio before the vaccine was introduced to each
country.... before laboratories were set up to differentiate the 'old'
polio. That's why WHO use it as their case definition for suspected
polio. http://www.who.int/immunization_monitoring/diseases/poliomyelitis_surveillance/en/index.html

I still shake my head when I think about it. We developed a vaccine to
combat the scourge of 'infantile paralysis' (polio's former name) but
didn't measure paralysis before and after to see how it all went. And
this we call evidence-based medicine.

Your analysis is very interesting indeed. As you say, nothing concrete
can be drawn from it, but it is a great view from another angle.

Greg

> In addition, we have the disability pension statistics:http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/about/publicationsarticles/research/statist...

> ...
>
> read more »

[JC]

Hi all.

Just to summarise, Greg Beattie and Tristan Wells aka punter are of
the opinion that polio still exists in epidemic numbers, but is not
being recognised by the medical community. I think. It's hard to
follow them sometimes.

Their beliefs, I think, are based on a number of interesting concepts.

1. There is ample evidence that polio has been effectively eradicated
from large parts of the world largely due to vaccination campaigns.
The article below provides a wonderful description of it's history and
how vaccination affected it's transmission. It describes polio's
three big epidemics in the USA, and how vaccination affected it's
transmission patterns, incidence, and eradication from the area. Greg
thinks it has nothing to do with the argument. It's is absurd that a
paper such as this one can be dismissed so quickly, without even a
suggestion as to why. It provides strong proof that the vaccination
was responsible.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1473032/?tool=pmcentrez

2. There is ample evidence of polio in history, as punter suggests,
but it was sporadic in nature. Please see above article for full
story. In the late 1800's it became more epidemic like, and in the
1900's it really let loose. This perhaps has something to do with
population density. Who knows why, but it happened.

3. Punter aka tristan wells thinks that "there probably higher rates
of poliomyelitis today than pre-polio vaccine". The statement is
simply preposterous. Polio is a very distinctive disease, with clear
clinical and laboratory tests that diagnose it. I suggest you look at
http://apps.who.int/immunization_monitoring/en/diseases/poliomyelitis/case_count.cfm
and get the annual reports to see how many polio cases are found every
year. In 2010 there were a total of 1410 cases of polio world wide.
In the third big epidemic in the US (1941-55) there was an average of
25,069 per year, at a rate of 16.53 per 100,000. These numbers also
make it highly unlikely that polio cases now are being classified at
AFP - if they were, AFP rates would the that high as well. They are
not. They have not increased world wide about 2 per 100,000 a year.

4. Greg believes that the polio vaccine should have some effect on
the rates of AFP. He fails to appreciate that AFP is a milieu of many
diseases, and not just polio. The polio vaccine should not be
expected, of course, to have much of an affect on AFP rates, but Greg
thinks it should. I don't know why he thinks that, but he does. It
has no basis as an argument for or against the polio vaccine at all,
and probably has no place here.

5. Greg also gets very upset when talking about changes in
diagnosis. When polio was the predominant cause of AFP (17 per
100,000) during the great epidemics, a laboratory diagnosis was
neither possible or required. When you're dealing with a epidemic of
paralysis like they had, diagnosis was satisfactory on clinical
grounds. As polio rates have plummeted, and are now well below 1-2
per 100,000 it now much more important to have a clear diagnosis.
This is especially so when you're trying to determine if it has been
eradicated from a region or not.

6. Punter has just presented a wandering examination of pension and
disability stats. Only someone with a complete lack of insight would
make such an observation as this "it certainly puts paid to the

argument about the lack of iron lungs or callipers demonstrating that

there are virtually no crippled children anymore." in a discussion
about polio. Punter does not acknowledge that people can be crippled
for many reasons, and can receive government allowances as well for
many different reasons. It's quite simple, really. No one's saying
there's no crippled children in case anyone missed the point. People
are saying, however, that there are no iron lungs and callipers - the
hallmarks of polio.

Have a look around you.

John

[punter]

Oh of course! The hallmarks of polio are iron lungs and callipers. I
could have sworn it was kids who had been crippled by something other
than trauma. But apparently the amount of kids who have been crippled
by disease has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the number of
people who suffer from a disease that causes crippling. Why didn't I
realise?

Thanks JC, but your beef isn't with us. Your beef is with other
doctors. They can now eliminate every single disease that anybody
suffers from in one fell swoop. All you have to do is tell these
doctors to stop using any treatments on those who are experiencing any
type of suffering and that will, according to your logic, immediately
result in those conditions disappearing.

We can eliminate cancers straight away! By your logic you obviously
don't have cancer unless you are being given chemo so stop the chemo
and stop the cancer right? (Hey, I'm kind of with you. I believe we
should stop chemo – I’m just not deluded enough to think it would
automatically eliminate cancer).

So you can go away and tell doctors to stop treating people for
anything and immediately all medical problems will instantaneously
disappear!

Oh. And just to be a little more annoying. Here is some data from 2004
that actually tells us what percentage of children suffer from
specific disabilities – go to page 20 and you will see that the
percentage of children suffering from a severe physical disability
(the previous figure I gave was for all severe disabilities) is 1.8
per cent. That is an awful lot of kids with severe physical
disabilities. www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=6442455787

But apparently none of this matters according to JC. The only thing
that matters, apparently, is that a lot of these kids are in
wheelchairs rather than leg-braces. Hooray!!!! I don’t know about you
Greg, but knowing this fact makes me weep with joy!

On Oct 7, 3:32 am, JC <jc_bige...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> Just to summarise, Greg Beattie and Tristan Wells aka punter are of
> the opinion that polio still exists in epidemic numbers, but is not
> being recognised by the medical community.  I think.  It's hard to
> follow them sometimes.
>
> Their beliefs, I think, are based on a number of interesting concepts.
>
> 1.  There is ample evidence that polio has been effectively eradicated
> from large parts of the world largely due to vaccination campaigns.
> The article below provides a wonderful description of it's history and
> how vaccination affected it's transmission.  It describes polio's
> three big epidemics in the USA, and how vaccination affected it's
> transmission patterns, incidence, and eradication from the area.  Greg
> thinks it has nothing to do with the argument.  It's is absurd that a
> paper such as this one can be dismissed so quickly, without even a
> suggestion as to why.  It provides strong proof that the vaccination

> was responsible.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1473032/?tool=pmcentrez

>
> 2.  There is ample evidence of polio in history, as punter suggests,
> but it was sporadic in nature.  Please see above article for full
> story.  In the late 1800's it became more epidemic like, and in the
> 1900's it really let loose.  This perhaps has something to do with
> population density.  Who knows why, but it happened.
>
> 3.  Punter aka tristan wells thinks that "there probably higher rates
> of poliomyelitis today than pre-polio vaccine".  The statement is
> simply preposterous.  Polio is a very distinctive disease, with clear

> clinical and laboratory tests that diagnose it.  I suggest you look athttp://apps.who.int/immunization_monitoring/en/diseases/poliomyelitis...

[Greg Beattie]

John

You've gone back to the start again. It's a debating technique I have
seen you use often in another discussion forum. When you are backed
into a corner, you simply go back to the start and repeat the same
poor info you started with.

1. I asked you at the outset what had happened to paralysis rates as a
result of the polio vaccine. Your response was to tell me that the
question was irrelevant: that AFP had nothing to do with polio. When I
linked to a page showing that AFP was in fact the current WHO clinical
case definition of polio you still, inexplicably, claimed it was
irrelevant, and continue to do so.

2. I pointed out very clearly why polio numbers of 60 years ago cannot
be meaningfully compared with those of today. They are totally
different disease definitions. Apart from the fact that the old
figures were inflated with 'non-paralytic' and 'abortive' cases, today
the laboratory test discards almost all remaining clinically diagnosed
cases. Everyone reading this thread will have understood this. Your
response: simply go back to the start and repeat the same old
meaningless comparison. Why?... because it sounds good.

For the last time: go back and read the thread. The explanations are
all there. If you disagree with some part of it by all means bring
that up, and explain why. But don't simply start all over again as if
this hasn't been addressed.

3. You say --"Greg believes that the polio vaccine should have some

effect on the rates of AFP."

Let me ask the obvious: What motivates parents to give polio vaccine
to their child?

4. You say --"The polio vaccine should not be expected, of course, to

have much of an affect on AFP rates, but Greg thinks it should. I
don't know why he thinks that, but he does. It has no basis as an
argument for or against the polio vaccine at all, and probably has no
place here."

John, if you "don't know why he thinks that" then you either haven't
read the thread, or you haven't comprehended it. Given that you have
been participating, I suspect the latter. One more time.... polio....
paralysis... polio.. paralysis. Do you see the connection?

We developed the vaccine to combat the paralysis. Can you show us what
has been achieved in that area? My graph gives an indication of what
we've achieved in developing countries -- nothing! In the wealthier
countries we have no valid data at all, which is quite amazing in
itself. Anyway, that's why Punter has taken a look from another angle.

5. And what about the errors? How many significant errors of
comprehension, method and fact can you make in one thread before
feeling a touch embarrassed, and obliged to explain? What about
"Whoops... what was I thinking. I got nearly EVERYTHING wrong." People
appreciate integrity.

You might feel that your perceived authority as an epidemiologist will
suffer if you were to acknowledge mistakes of such depth, but I think
it would be fair to say nobody has any authority here. We're all here
for information, enlightenment and discussion. That's why I asked you
the question to start with.
Greg

On Oct 7, 2:32 am, JC <jc_bige...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> Just to summarise, Greg Beattie and Tristan Wells aka punter are of
> the opinion that polio still exists in epidemic numbers, but is not
> being recognised by the medical community.  I think.  It's hard to
> follow them sometimes.
>
> Their beliefs, I think, are based on a number of interesting concepts.
>
> 1.  There is ample evidence that polio has been effectively eradicated
> from large parts of the world largely due to vaccination campaigns.
> The article below provides a wonderful description of it's history and
> how vaccination affected it's transmission.  It describes polio's
> three big epidemics in the USA, and how vaccination affected it's
> transmission patterns, incidence, and eradication from the area.  Greg
> thinks it has nothing to do with the argument.  It's is absurd that a
> paper such as this one can be dismissed so quickly, without even a
> suggestion as to why.  It provides strong proof that the vaccination

> was responsible.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1473032/?tool=pmcentrez

>
> 2.  There is ample evidence of polio in history, as punter suggests,
> but it was sporadic in nature.  Please see above article for full
> story.  In the late 1800's it became more epidemic like, and in the
> 1900's it really let loose.  This perhaps has something to do with
> population density.  Who knows why, but it happened.
>
> 3.  Punter aka tristan wells thinks that "there probably higher rates
> of poliomyelitis today than pre-polio vaccine".  The statement is
> simply preposterous.  Polio is a very distinctive disease, with clear

> clinical and laboratory tests that diagnose it.  I suggest you look athttp://apps.who.int/immunization_monitoring/en/diseases/poliomyelitis...

[JC]

When Meryl started this forum, I had high hopes. The phrase "like
nailing jelly to a wall" comes to mind.

Greg, you and Tristan deserve each other.

Goodbye. I earnestly hope that people who want vaccine information go
somewhere else.

[QldKiwi]

So you are leaving the building. Are you feeling cornered?

[Andrew MacDonald]

Hi John C,

I am so sorry you have taken offence.

You have been one of few people willing to stand-up and support the notion of injecting toxic substances and I have learnt much from you, as I am sure many other people have too.

Your understanding of Polio, is  deep.

 

As for your phrase "like nailing jelly to a wall", perhaps you thought of this because you were unable to effectively put your point across. Personally, I was confused by much of what you wrote. You have not been concise and clear. Your reference to jelly may be apt afterall.

 

As for your phrase "I earnestly hope that people who want vaccine information go somewhere else", well, where John, where?  Where do we go? My wife and I have been to many doctors and read much government literature, but it all points towards vaccines being accepted without question. Our doctor even laughed at our concerns. There is no place where we can go to find out detailed information on vaccines, and your phrase, above, is much like the attitude of our local doctor.

 

With you being a Doctor, I thought you would care to remain on this forum. It is the only forum I know of that can respectively discuss vaccination. Do you know of another?

 

If you feel more comfortable reverting to one of your other names, either Noddy, or Big Ears, then I am sure none of this forum's members will mind, just disclose that you have reverted.

Your expert advice is always welcome.

Thanks, Andrew.

 

 

 

From: JC <jc_bi...@yahoo.com.au>
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate <vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, 8 October 2011 6:24 AM
Subject: Re: Polio in China

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[Greg Beattie]

Peter Bowditch

Hi. I thought we might have heard from you here after what you said on
the "Introduction" thread. You used the term 'nonsense' to describe
the argument that I have subsequently put here. I asked you to read
this thread and consider participating. Is there anything here that
you disagree with?

Thanks in advance
Greg

On Oct 8, 6:24 am, JC <jc_bige...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

[punter]

I can help you out Andrew,

The pro-vax camp are convinced that all the evidence and logic is on
their side and we are ignorant fools. However, the problem for them in
terms of persuading some lost souls has been that the evil, dastardly
Meryl doesn't allow proper fair debate to happen either on the AVN
webpage or its Facebook site so when they try to debate over there
they are never allowed to truly shine. They were convinced that armed
with a level playing field they would show the anti-vax arguments for
the craziness that they think they are.

So here they are on this board, again having their arguments refuted
comprehensively, so what do they do? They complain that the board
isn't sufficiently rigged in their favour.

And by the way JC thanks for the compliment! And let me say - in the
spirit of reciprocity - you truly deserve the people over at the SAVN.

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to vaccination-respectf...@googlegroups.com.

[Andrew MacDonald]

Not sure if I should start a new thread or not.

I just wanted to mention some lawsuits pertaining to Polio and see if there are others that are known by this forum's members;

 

1. Two infants contracted polio and suffered permanent damage as a result of taking the Salk vaccine. The courts awarded the families $139,000

Gottsdanker V. Cutter Laboratories, 182 Cal App. 2d 602 (Dist Crt.App. 1960)

2. A total of $140,000 was awarded to two plaintifss who contracted polio from the Polio vaccine.

Grinnel v Charles Pfizer Company,Inc.274 Cal App. 2d 424 (Dist.Crt.App. 1969)

3. A woman was awarded $1,759.946 for damages resulting in her becoming a quadriplegic. She had been given a bad batch of Sabin polio vaccine.

4. A 48 year old man was awarded $3.2 million as a result of contracting polio from his granddaughter who had been given the oral polio vaccine.

.

Thanks, Andrew.

 

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to vaccination-respectf...@googlegroups.com.

[Peter Bowditch]

Greg said:

> Peter Bowditch
>
> Hi. I thought we might have heard from you here after what you said on
> the "Introduction" thread. You used the term 'nonsense' to describe
> the argument that I have subsequently put here. I asked you to read
> this thread and consider participating. Is there anything here that
> you disagree with?

I don't know what more I can say. I listed five lies that are regularly
told by people opposing vaccines. You repeated four of them as if
repetition somehow made them less false.

--
Peter Bowditch
The Millenium Project - http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
I'm @RatbagsDotCom on Twitter

[JC]

Christine,

I've met more worthy opponents in secondary school than I have here.
Being cornered is not something I'm feeling. More like bored.

Same arguments, same misinformation, same stupid assumptions. All
very boring.

Do you have anything intelligent to add, Christine, since your clearly
so smart?

[JC]

Hi Andrew,
I can help you out too, but first you can withdraw the accusations in
your other post. "You have - and you know you have. What other known
and unknown untruths do you have?". Is that respect? Is that some
sort of mature debate?
The only reason my arguments have seemed vague is that I was debating
someone who was making several assumptions that were not based in
reason. Greg and punter both display a significant lack of medical
knowledge, and use their ignorance, either willingly or unwillingly,
in order to interpret data that they don't understand. Greg nominated
some numbers, which I then disputed, and then came back with some
circular argument that makes little sense. Any argument with nonsense
is going to appear just as nonsensical. Punter is completely ignorant
of the intricacies of medicine, and I think is of a debating standard
that New Idea would be proud of - dumbed down to an almost
breathtaking extent. I actually pity him. Punter is wondering why
there are so many crippled children, and then makes the leap that they
must have polio, yet he is talking to someone who every day of the
week treats these same crippled children.

Does anyone honestly think that if I or another doctor ever found a
case of polio in Australia we wouldn't report it? Medicine,
physiology, pathology, and immunology are complex subjects which
people spend years studying. If anyone thinks they can make up their
own theories without basing them in reason is sadly mistaken. Does
that sounds like I'm a bully? Only if you lack insight.

Do you lack insight, Andrew?

[punter]

I thought you had finished here JC?

Thanks for the personal insights. Along those lines I would like to
say that the skeptics think that vaccine reactions are vanishingly
rare but they hurl abuse at Meryl (and others) who every day of the
week have to deal with the parents of vaccine injured children.

Still, I hope everybody listens to you. They should all trust you
completely. There is no way you would ever act with anything other
than complete integrity.

And besides, if they disagree with you you will call them all ignorant
morons.

By the way, how many of your patients do you test for polio virus? I
assume it is all of them right - every single one of them negative of
course?

[JC]

Punter,
It depends if you think I'm dealing with new polio cases or old ones,
doesn't it. The answer should be obvious, shouldn't it?
John

[Greg Beattie]

Peter Bowditch
I was thinking you might be a little more specific. So you have no
disagreement with any of my points?
Greg

> The Millenium Project -http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles

[Greg Beattie]

John C
Glad you're back. I'll try not to upset you again. Obviously I'll be
careful not to ask the same question. In fact, if I even suggest that
we might look at paralysis rates before and after the vaccine, to see
what we achieved, please remind me how absurd that is. And I'll be
extra careful to ensure I don't present figures from the WHO on
clinical polio and suggest they may have something to do with the
discussion. I will also endeavour to avoid correcting you with links
to WHO definitions (they're obviously wrong) and, as well, overlook
other major errors - simple maths, logic, comprehension - the lot.
Why? Because I don't have sufficient medical knowledge.

There, now let's debate. How was your day, Dr Cunningham?
Greg

P.S. Are there any vaccine supporters who are not frightened of
examining their faith publicly? Any who don't need to use their
medical degree as a shield? I want to discuss this with someone who
can maintain integrity. Someone who can recognise that if a vaccine
has been useful, there must be some way of communicating that to
consumers... one that doesn't fall apart under scrutiny. Someone who
can, after acknowledging their own major errors, review their argument
and go on.

I've been respectful in this discussion. I've answered questions
honestly and thoughtfully, even though my initial question has NEVER
been answered. Not even attempted. Dave Colmansen disappeared after my
lengthy 3-post response to him (thanks for the warning). Peter
Bowditch kept his mouth shut. John, you spat the dummy when your own
argument fell apart. But I have to admire you because you're about the
only vaccine supporter who's here and prepared to have a go. WHERE ARE
THEY ALL?

And please get this: we don't want advice. We're here for information
and discussion. And yes, we can discuss this on the same level. Don't
trot out your degrees as an excuse for not needing a coherent
argument. Most of this is simple figures and history. If I ask how
much paralysis we stopped by introducing polio vaccine, it's because
that's what I want to know. That's my motivator. If you want me to
give it to my kids try saying "we've stopped lots". But be prepared to
back it up.... because we can all count. A medical degree is not
necessary. Stop leaning on it. The respect you get from me will be no
different with or without it.

Now, if you want to discuss this, those are my expectations.... and
you know what my question is.

[JC]

Punter,
Instead of emailing me "off line", can you please keep your
communication with me limited to this forum? I don't appreciate it,
and many would call it cyberbullying.
John

[Katie Brockie]

I understand that Punter, Greg and Meryl all think that the polio
vaccine had/has nothing to do with the decrease in polio infection
around the world. What I don't understand is this:
Do you think that polio is actually much rarer than was claimed back
in the earlier 20th century when thousands of children and adults
around the world became paralyzed? Do you think they may have had
other illnesses which were all lumped together as polio. Can you
please show me some evidence of this?

When do you think the improvements in hygiene etc were good enough to
stop the spread of polio in the Western world? (I mean without
vaccination)

thanks,

Katie

[Greg Beattie]

Hi Katie

You asked: "Do you think that polio is actually much rarer than was

claimed back in the earlier 20th century when thousands of children
and adults around the world became paralyzed? Do you think they may
have had other illnesses which were all lumped together as polio. Can
you please show me some evidence of this?"

With all due respect, this has been a long thread. Can I ask that you
read back through it carefully? You'll find all your questions
answered thoroughly, some of them several times. The only unanswered
question is mine: "Has polio vaccine reduced the rates of paralysis?"
After reading the thread you may like to join in the discussion with a
NEW question, or even better, some answers.
Thanks
Greg

[QldKiwi]

Hi Katie, In looking up the book in my other response I came across
this. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199303043280923. Even
though I don't agree with the said outcome because of vaccines, it
does show how the scientists probably got the idea wrong (what the
socio economic circumstances of those who contracted it, how it was
spread etc.) about polio. Even though we might have come a long way
scientifically (since 1916) can we really guarantee that scientists
will have the right solution, that they won't "ignore correlations
that do not seem to make sense"? It would be like saying that
scientists are infallible. None of us are.

On Oct 10, 9:58 am, Katie Brockie <katiebroc...@gmail.com> wrote:

[JC]

Greg,
Please don't think you have upset me. Frustration is a better term.
I supplied you with a paper that shows exactly the effects of the
polio vaccine, and shows how it affected transmission of polio, yet
you dismissed it almost without a comment. So Greg, what IS your
question? Simply, succinctly, what are you asking? I for one have
gone around the circle with you so many times I've almost given up.
Your graph is explained away, polio is now a rare occurrence where
vaccination programmes exist, whilst rates of AFP are left untouched.
So what ARE you left with?
John

[JC]

Greg,

Please don't think you have upset me. Frustration is a better term.

I met better adversaries in secondary school. And no i'm not hiding
behind my medical degree - I have two other degrees as well to hide
behind if I wanted to. The course of my day is also none of your
business, nor is it the business of Tristan Wells who you so admire.
Needless to say, it involved looking after people with musculoskeletal
complaints, providing medical advice that I'm qualified to give,
taking responsibility for my decisions and backing them up with
evidenced based medicine.

[punter]

Ummm, I was responding to an email from you. And let's not mention the
emails you sent me through Facebook calling me a moron even though I
had never once attempted to contact you. On second thoughts, let's
mention them.

But congratulations. You are now offically the world champion of
chutzpah. And given that this is the most unbelievably brazen lie in
all of human history I think it safe to say you have lost any possible
shred of credibility that you may have otherwise had.

Moderators - I know you are trying to be astonishingly fair to the pro-
vax cause here but this is vicious slander from this guy so I really
hope you allow me to respond. The email trail is below.

I can also show the emails on Facebook if you want.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: trista...@hotmail.com
To: jo...@cunningham.com.au
Subject: RE: Polio in China
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:42:33 +1100


I am sure you are an excellent surgeon. And more power to you for your
work - I really mean that. But there is something I am vastly better
at than you. So can I give you a piece of advice from someone who
understands people to someone who clearly doesn't?

When you send people emails like that your desperation is transparent.
When I (and any other objective observer) read emails like that I
think, why would a guy who most people view to be some sort of demi-
God (including obviously you) be so incredibly afraid of what I have
to say?

My conclusion: We're winning.

> Subject: Re: Polio in China

> From: jo...@cunningham.com.au
> Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 21:48:05 +0100
> To: trista...@hotmail.com
>
> Tristan,
>
> Please go get some help. Your ramblings concern me.
>
> By the way, who do you think is one of the people that look after the disabled? The answer is not you, so it must be me.
>
> John

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Vaccination-Respectful Debate" group.
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> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vaccination-respectful-debate?hl=en-GB.
>
>
>

> > > Do you lack insight, Andrew?- Hide quoted text -

[Sandy Gottstein]

John,

Is it necessary to say things like "I met better adversaries in secondary
school"? BTW, I think both sides are guilty of using subtle and not so
subtle put-downs to make their points.

Thanks,
Sandy

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JC
Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2011 8:21 PM
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate
Subject: Re: Polio in China

Greg,

John

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[Katie Brockie]

Thanks for that Christine, it looks like a really interesting book.

On Oct 10, 2:29 pm, QldKiwi <christine.pheth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Katie, In looking up the book in my other response I came across

> this.http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199303043280923.  Even

[Katie Brockie]

Greg -
Thanks for your reply. I have read through the thread, but I would
have liked some references, sources or support for the theory that
many illnesses were lumped together as "polio".
However, as to your question Has polio vaccine reduced the rates of
paralysis?. Do you mean the rates of paralysis from poliomyelitis? or
the rates of paralysis generally? if the latter - that doesn't make
sense, as the polio vaccine is for polio and nothing else.

cheers
K

[JC]

Punter,
I'm glad you're winning. Charlie Sheen is winning, he claims. A lot
coming from Tristan "I have no time for scientific information"
Wells. If you have such little time for it, Tristan, then why do you
try and interpret data and sound so scientific? Why don't you leave
it to the scientists, and you can keep yourself to your self-
proclaimed people skills?
John

[JC]

Greg,

"The only unanswered question is mine: "Has polio vaccine reduced the
rates of paralysis?" "

It has been answered. The paper I gave you provides the most detailed
account for how the vaccine rid the USA of polio, without any change
of hygiene, etc, required. It shows how the vaccine actually changed
not only the incidence but the geographic nature of the disease as
well, matching almost exactly the rolling out of the vaccine and
moving it away from it's historic epidemic geographic distribution.
And yes, the paper even showed how common paralysis was, and how
comparatively paralysis from all causes is soooo much less today.
Your friend mentions that I have "chutzpah". What do you have for
ignoring the answer to your question?
John

[Katie Brockie]

JC, I've been reading through the article you linked to earlier, and
it's filled with great information. One thing which is very
interesting is that improvements in hygiene actually gradually led to
more and more sizeable epidemics of poliomyelitis.

cheers
K

[JC]

Hi Sandy,

It's just that Greg and Tristan think they can upset me. They have
little concept of what that would require. They are merely examples
of the Kruger Dunning effect, and really have little role to play in
an informed debate.

You have yet to upset me either.

John

[Sandy Gottstein]

I'm not trying to.

-----Original Message-----
From: vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:vaccination-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JC
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 5:45 PM
To: Vaccination-Respectful Debate
Subject: Re: Polio in China

Hi Sandy,

John

--

[JC]

Thanks Katie,
The article is very interesting from many points of view. It provides
a very detailed history. I personally like the way they demonstrated
how the centroid of the infections moved - a difficult concept to get
your head around if you're not used to it though.
All the best,
John

[punter]

So let me get this straight. You send me an email telling me how
disturbed you are by my opinions. I respond back by laughing at you.
Indeed this is actually the second time that this has happened. You
then make a brazen lie about how I am initiating email correspondence
with you and 'stalking' you. Now you are telling everybody that
nothing I have done has upset you.

Hahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Serious question: Have you ever said anything in your entire life that
even remotely resembles the truth? Another serious question: Are you
able to remember anything that happened more than 48 hours ago?

And I love the bit about Dunning Kruger by the way. Very witty and
original. This term is the skeptic equivalent of Godwin's Law. You
know they have lost the argument when they evoke it.

But why are you here? If you don't think the opinions of anybody other
than yourself are relevant (and you clearly don't) why bother going on
a site to debate vaccinations? I think it is pretty obvious you are
used to dictating to people and don't like anybody questioning you.
But that is the entire point of this thread.

I am sorry, I know you are the master of chutzpah - I really have
never seen anything like it - but I didn't expect even you would be
able to face the shame of ever posting on this board ever again.

[punter]

And by the way could you please provide me where I made that quote? I
highly doubt I said anything of the sort and if I did I am pretty sure
it would have been in the context of saying that medical propaganda
wasn't actually scientific.

But thanks for saying that I sound scientific though. Unfortunately on
this occasion I can't reciprocate.

On Oct 11, 6:38 am, JC <jc_bige...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

[punter]

Sorry, when I said "stalking" I meant "bullying" (as in "cyber
bullying").

> > John- Hide quoted text -

[Greg Beattie]

John C
All this talk (mainly on the 'First post' thread) of whether or not
you use fictional names doesn't bother me. I don't care if you do, and
I thought it was off-topic so I didn't comment. But your suggestion of
cyber-bullying over Tristan contacting you, in the light of what he
has just shown us, is truly bizarre. If you did in fact initiate the
contact then you made a disturbing accusation. Then again, maybe
someone else is using your email address?? After reading the following
you might like to take some precautionary action.

There was a guy by the name of Michael who was a frequent commenter on
the AVN blog discussions at http://avn.org.au/nocompulsoryvaccination/

Like you, Michael introduced himself as an epidemiologist. However,
unlike you, he was well-known as an abusive character. In the interest
of open discussion Meryl allowed a lot of his comments that she
probably shouldn't have. Michael often became frustrated at how long
Meryl took to moderate posts. On a couple of occasions he contacted me
directly through my website because he couldn't wait to show me what
he'd written. I still have the emails.

The reason I raise this is because Michael was using your email
address... jc_bigears at yahoo.com.au. I don't know whether it's
common for people to steal another's email address but I suggest you
change the password on that account just in case.
Greg

[Greg Beattie]

John C
I don't want to get into a slinging match with you so I'll refrain
from responding to the highschool adversary bit. I will say however
that, medical degrees or not, your argument fell apart in a major way.
At the very least, if you could just acknowledge the major errors you
made, you would preserve some integrity. Without doing so, how can we
move on?

Regarding the paper you linked to, you said "And yes, the paper even

showed how common paralysis was, and how comparatively paralysis from
all causes is soooo much less today."

I'm sorry but I can't find anything of the sort in the paper. If you
think I'm wrong perhaps you could do a copy/paste from it. Just the
bit that shows what you said above.

And you've asked me to repeat my question... again. I'll do a copy/
paste from my last message:

"Has polio vaccine reduced the rates of paralysis?"

As you can see, it's not a big one.
Thanks
Greg

[Greg Beattie]

Hi Katie
Thanks. You said "I have read through the thread, but I would have

liked some references, sources or support for the theory that many
illnesses were lumped together as "polio". However, as to your
question Has polio vaccine reduced the rates of paralysis?. Do you
mean the rates of paralysis from poliomyelitis? or the rates of
paralysis generally? if the latter - that doesn't make sense, as the
polio vaccine is for polio and nothing else."

I'll answer you second part first: "rates of paralysis". It makes
perfect sense to me. This was the motivator. There is one and only one
aspect of polio that concerns us - paralysis - and that's what led to
development of a vaccine. Call it the KPI if you like. "Paralysis" -
what's happened to it? Anybody? If there has been no observable
improvement that can be attributed to the vaccine, then someone
stuffed up in a big way :-) This must surely be the primary outcome to
be measured.

Now to your first question. The day that I can point you to a peer-
reviewed reference confirming all that I've said here will be the day
vaccinesare nothing but history. I've pieced an explanation together
in this thread from verifiable data and info. But you don't have to
take it from me. Here is a much better way: a question for you...

How many cases of 'non-polio AFP' were there 60 years ago? The search
for an answer will be enlightening to say the least. Again, anyone?

I'll expand on it a little to get you started. Globally, in 2010 there
were almost 100,000 reports of clinical polio (according to the WHO)
in under 15 yr olds. After laboratory testing only 1400 (or 1.4%) were
'confirmed' polio. The rest were called something else. This
'something else' group (98.5%).... what were they called? Give them a
name that you're happy with.

Once you have a name for them, ask yourself: how many of these
occurred 60 years ago in developed countries? Remember, we didn't have
the laboratories back then. Also, how many occurred 20 years ago in
developing countries (again, prior to them having laboratories)? Try
to put a figure on it. Hard to work out, hey? But once you've done
that - and here's the big one - what did we call them?

I think if you attempt to answer these questions you will find that
yours have become redundant. I look forward to your thoughts.
Thanks
Greg