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DDT and the Rise and Fall of Polio

spraying ddt

I love watching old black and white newsreels from the first half of the 20th century. It’s a fascinating period of history, and it’s one of the few in which we can go back and revisit almost as if we were there. There was a span of years immediately after World War II, however, that is particularly interesting, because it doesn’t normally get a lot of attention, compared to the war years and the “the fabulous ’50s.” The second half of the 1940s often tends to get short-changed, perhaps because it was more of a transitional time of rebuilding and regearing after the war in preparation for getting back to normal life in the United States.

There is a series of five newsreels I recently found that sheds some light on the polio epidemic during the immediate post-war period and offers another perspective to that health crisis, which ultimately fueled the development of Jonas Salk’s inactivated injectable polio vaccine (IPV) in 1954 and its licensure in 1955. To view these films, just click on the following:

To put the polio story into context, it’s important to note the number of reported cases of poliomyelitis during the late-1930s and early-1940s. During 1933-1937, there were a total of 37,463 cases (4,930 deaths), followed by 31,993 cases (4,165 deaths) in 1938-1942, 12,449 cases (1,115 deaths) in 1943, 19,029 cases (1,433 deaths) in 1944, and 13,619 cases (1,189 deaths) in 1945.1 

The number of cases had clearly risen in 1943 but had begun to dramatically drop in 1945, not rise. However, there still existed a fear of the disease in the country due to upward spikes in 1943 and 1944 and the occasional serious epidemics that had been occurring since 1910. One of the worst ones had taken place in New York City in 1916, with more than 27,000 reported cases and some 6,000 deaths.2 Plus there was the tremendous public exposure that the disease had garnered due to the fact the President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself had polio. His legs had been paralyzed in 1921. In 1938, President Roosevelt sponsored the establishment of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP).3 

Despite the declining cases of polio in the U.S., in 1946, President Harry S. Truman declared war on polio. In a speech from the White House, President Truman said:

The fight against infantile paralysis cannot be a local war. It must be nationwide. It must be total war in every city, town and village throughout the land. For only with a united front can we ever hope to win any war.2 

Almost immediately, the US government stepped up its nationwide mass fumigation campaign using the extremely toxic chemical DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). The goal was to exterminate mosquitoes, which were believed to be spreading polio. In a Universal Newsreel (produced by Universal City Studios) from 1946 showing mass DDT spraying in San Antonio, TX,4 the narrator can be heard saying:

With a possibility of a grave infantile paralysis epidemic, San Antonio health authorities attack germ carriers on a citywide front. With war-discovered DDT and special sprayers, sections of the city are literally fogged with the insecticide in the fight to stop the spread of polio. Every suspected spot is sprayed. The drastic cleanup is ordered as polio and alive diseases show alarming increase. Even streams come in for disinfecting, and in the parks precautions are taken to prevent gatherings of youngsters. Literally tons of DDT are used on this dread disease that attacks our young. Again, war, destructive in parables, contributes one of its discoveries to save life.4 

The DDT fumigation effort in the U.S. had actually been going on since at least 1945. In another Universal Newsreel, narrated by Albert Grobe, you can see a North American B-25 Mitchell bomber aircraft loading up with DDT and then flying over Rockford, IL on August 27, 1945 releasing the toxic chemical.5  The narrator can be heard saying:

Today’s target for this B-25 is Rockford, Illinois—a peacetime mission to spread 500 gallons of DDT, the Army’s miracle insecticide over the city, stricken with an infantile paralysis epidemic. By spraying the city, authorities will test the theory that insects are carriers of the dread germ. Air Force pictures show the method devised by the Army’s branch of preventive medicine. Flying at an average altitude of 150 feet, the plane sprays a strip more than 150 yards wide at the rate of 215 gallons a minute. A bomber turns to the ways of peace, becomes an instrument of science, and may become the means of saving countless lives.5 

As the DDT campaign proceeded, the incidence of polio began to sharply rise in the U.S. The number of reported cases of polio in the country in 1946 hit 25,191—nearly twice the number as in the previous year.1 In 1947, the number of cases dropped to 10,737 (580 deaths), but then rose again to 27,680 (2,140 deaths) in 1948.6 

The number of cases remained high during 1949-1951, with a total of 103,719, or an annual average of 34,573.7 

In 1952, the number of polio cases peaked at 52,879, and then began to decline to 35,592 in 1953, 38,476 in 1954 and 28,985 in 1955.8 The rates of polio were already well on a downward trend by the time the Salk vaccine was licensed in 1955 and began to be used on a mass scale.

Interestingly, DDT fumigation in the US had reached its peak in 1951. In 1952, the fumigations were subsiding. In 1953, polio cases were also subsiding at about the same rate. By 1953, the number of polio cases had dropped by nearly 40%.9 After 1954, even though DDT was still produced in the U.S., the distribution of the chemical shifted to developing countries.9 Large quantities of DDT began to be bought by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations (UN) and exported.10  

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “DDT exports increased from 12 percent of the total production in 1950 to 67 percent in 1969.”10 

During the 30 years before DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972, a total of approximately 1.35 billion pounds of the chemical was sprayed throughout the country10 … based on a false theory that mosquitoes carried a germ that spread polio, and under the false assumption that DDT was completely harmless to humans—so much so that one of the popular advertising slogans of the 1940s and 1950s was, “DDT Is Good For Me-e-e!”

Really. No connection?


References:

1 Dauer CC. Incidence of Poliomyelitis in 1946. Association of Schools of Public Health, Public Health Reports (1896-1970) June 20, 1947; 62(25): 901-909.
2 Beaubien J. Wiping Out Polio: How The U.S. Snuffed Out A Killer. NPR Oct. 15, 2012.
3 Wilson DJ. Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors.University of Chicago Press 2005.
4 Universal News Volume 19, Release 506, Story #2, May 27, 1946. Youtube.com May 5, 2014 (published date).
5 DDT is sprayed over Rockford, Illinois to combat polio epidemic. August 27, 1945. Youtube.com Aug. 27, 2013 (published date).
6 Dauer CC. Incidence of Poliomyelitis in 1948. Association of Schools of Public Health, Public Health Reports (1896-1970) June 10, 1949; 64(23): 733-740.
7 Incidence Rates of Poliomyelitis in US. Post-Polio Health International.
8 U.S. Polio Cases 1952-1962. The History of Vaccines.
9 West J. Pesticides and Polio: A Critique of Scientific Literature. The Weston A. Price Foundation Feb. 8, 2003.
10 DDT Regulatory History: A Brief Survey (to 1975). United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

45 Responses

  1. It would be interesting to see the infection rate of those already vaccinated in comparison to the unvaccinated population.

  2. […] STOCK IMAGE QUETTA: Another case of poliovirus was detected in an 18-month-old boy in Chaman, a border town which shares borders with Afgahnistan, in Qila Abdullah district, raising the total number of cases in Balochistan to 17 this year. A health official confirmed that poliovirus was detected in 18-month-old boy Noor Ahmed, a resident of Union Council Daman Ashazai, village New Abadi Bypass, Chaman Tehsil. Proof that Big Pharma Doesn’t Care About Vaccine Harm – Vaccine Facts. DDT and the Rise and Fall of Polio. […]

  3. The neurological damage we call polio can very easily be induced by a combination of toxic chemicals and nuclear radiation. Both were abundantly present in the years after WW-II.
    I would not be surprised at all when at that time this was already known to those in the “top of the food chain” as a profitable opportunity to create an impressive pharmaceutical clientele among the babyboomers…

    1. I wouldn’t be surprised either. I remember growing up in the 50’s in Mpls MN with pick up trucks driving in the neighborhoods with that spray coming out of the gadget in the bed of the truck. It was OK to jump around in the fog behind the pick up truck, but don’t eat the snow full of fall out from testing in Siberia.
      Glad to see your still around. Thank you for your part of waking me up years ago.

    2. polio has been a threat to humans for millennia and is easily transmittable. it has affected hundreds of thousands of children severely, some fatally. but because it is a virus that has been identified it has been virtually eradicated globally thanks to vaccines.

      ddt; yeah, pure poison and we’ll never know the number of diseases and deaths caused by it. but i don’t equating ddt stats to polio is very scientific.

      that said, EVERY med and vaccine should be scrutinized extensively and frankly the fda and cdc are no match for big pharma….

      1. CDC is no match for big pharma you say? Clearly you dont know what your talking about so maybe you shouldnt try to “educate” people on these very controlled political groups masquerading as scientific public health watchdog groups. Big pharma controls the CDC by funding it and the personel who shift from Board members to CDC and back and forth, they share patents on vaccines and other pharmaceutical both individuals in the CDC, the CDC itself, and the companies …..and the CDC puts out all the misinformation and public relations that sells and forces vaccines on young children. Just look into VAERS and you’ll see studies proving around %1 of vaccine deaths and injuries get reported. They lose the info and make people fill out injury reports over and over again often never getting counted in the system. I’ve listened to countless people’s testimonies with VAERS not counting their life altering disabilities yet they dont care. Everyone gets rich and the public stays in the dark.

  4. I grew up in the suburban Chicago from 1954 onward. They sprayed DDT liberally for mosquitos. In 1990, I found a lump in my breast Invasive carcinoma. Treatment was cut, burn and poison. After this treatment and the usual re-occurance, I had both breasts removed and was put on Tamoxifen. Now that I am off of Tamoxifen, I have fatty liver tissue. Too bad I was not more aware years ago, but thanks to the Internet information, I am more aware.
    I am certainly more aware of the increased load of vaccines that pHARMa wants to push is NOT good and I worry for my grandchildren.

    1. I worry for my grandchildren as well regarding all the mandatory vaccines that our government is forcing on them in order to get an education. I also am concerned that vaccines will soon be forced on me.

  5. Let us not forget that around 1948 doctors started telling women to use infant formula (for healthier babies)rather than breast feed,as my mother was told. That was before we learned that breast milk contains all the mother’s immunity and gets passed on to the baby with their developing immune system,leaving the newborn babies with little or no immunity to any diseases. This seems to have doubled the polio infection rate by 1950, according to statistics.

  6. Twice around 1949 I had gotten a rash from eating lettuce.
    If a 2nd grader could figure it out, somebody would have had to know.

  7. Correction: Too many mistakes in comment in my comment. Here’s a rewrite –

    Let us not forget that around 1948 food corporations started telling doctors to tell pregnant women, to use infant formula (in order to have healthier babies)rather than breast feed, as my mother was told before I was born, in 1948.

    That was before science discovered that breast milk contains all the mother’s immunity, which gets passed on to her baby, because the newborn’s own immune system is not yet developed. Infant formula (with no breast milk)leaves newborn babies with little or no immunity to any diseases (for several year until their own immune systems develop.)

    Consequently, between 1948 and 1950, there was a direct association between the massive use of infant formula and a spike in the polio infection rate.

    The polio infection rate doubled between 1948 and 1950 (according to CDC statistics) after the massive global introduction of baby formula around 1948, as a replacement for mother’s breast milk.

  8. Actually in our cozy USA we were “lucky.” Babies in developing countries were dying unnecessarily because of contaminated water mixed with the formula. The mothers had developed immunity to the dirty water, but the newborns didn’t have a chance.

    The corporate response is never to clean up the dirty water. It is always just “more vaccines.”

  9. polio was CURED in 1949. google polio was CURED in 1949.
    since polio was CURED in 1949 why was anyone allowed to suffer polio after 1949??? greed???

  10. Dissolving Illusions has a fascinating, lengthy chapter concerning polio. For example, the index case for the 1916 New York outbreak lived only a few blocks from the Rockefeller Institutes where “scientists” were working on a polio vaccine.

  11. It is VERY hard to break through dis-information when it is HUGE and widespread. Can you consider the possibility that DDT has been falsely maligned? I’m anti-vac and anti-pollutant. I mistrust many chemicals — vigorously! BUT, there is honest and thorough research that shows the DDT issue (an exceptional one) was falsified in order to get a public agenda going. The EPA was founded in 1972 and DDT was claimed (by works of non-scientist Rachel Carson) to be dangerous. Studies were done with improper information. Medical doctors rebelled and gave testimony that DDT was not dangerous. There is a young preventive medicine doctor (MD) who has broken through the lies. He has a documentary of the history of the fraud perpetrated in the Nixon administration. You can watch the documentary, for free. I know it takes guts to question a major hoax like this, but I honestly challenge you to watch the FULL EXPOSURE of what went down. The documentary is well done, not “flakey” — thoroughly showing EVIDENCE that exonerates DDT. You don’t want to miss this! http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/53748/3-Billion-and-Counting—

    1. DDT in the documentary “3 Billion and Counting”? Wait a minute. I’m open to evidence that DDT is OK but a couple of things. First, insects develop resistance to pesticides– this was one of the problems with the widespread use of DDT. Second, I believe the WHO official in the documentary said that scientists are in agreement that DDT isn’t good for the environment. So do we save the people, these poor people, by harming their environment? Or is part of the subtext of the documentary that you need pesticides, as was mentioned in the opening scenes of the doctor growing up on a farm? If someone starts to tell you that you need pesticides that should be a red flag: we have plenty of organic farms in my area, and we most certainly could feed everyone with organic food if we wanted to. Third, it was mentioned that unless we get rid of the disease, we can’t get rid of the poverty. Let’s try it the other way around: when we get rid of the poverty, we can get rid of the pools of standing water in those slums, people can afford netting, they can selectively spray areas if necessary, they can afford screens on doors, etc., or they can just plain move away from the swamp areas with the most mosquitoes. Fourth, why can’t we find a nontoxic substance that targets mosquitoes or the causative agent, Plasmodium falciparum? We can do all kinds of wonderful biochemistry but we can’t do this? And we have to rely on a pesticide that disrupts biological processes in many organisms? The documentary makes the claim that people were asking for DDT, and not pyrethoids which are less toxic, because you can tell the DDT is there by the residue but not the pyrethoids. You really mean to tell me there is no workaround to that problem? Give me ten minutes and I think I might be able to come up with some sort of dye.
      No, whenever anyone wants to tell you that we need pesticides be a little skeptical, because environmentally the basic problem we humans have is that we seem to want to spread toxins around and pretend there’s no big problem.
      Lastly, who sponsored this documentary? Who funded it?
      I don’t see any evidence in the documentary that DDT is the answer to the problem of malaria that afflicts the poorest of the poor the hardest. I do see evidence that someone is promoting DDT use, despite reasonable alternatives. Yes, alternative may cost more but if pharmaceutical companies, for example, can pay out billions in fines and count it as just the cost of doing business, maybe someone should hit them up for a couple hundred million–or a spare billion– for a good cause?

    2. I wrote a rather lengthy reply to the DDT documentary (“3 Billion …”) raising a number of questions such as: do we really need DDT for the poor people depicted in the documentary or do we need to raise them out of poverty so they can afford mosquito netting, improve drainage to eliminate standing water, use safer alternatives to DDT, etc? I also questioned who funded the documentary– as did others in the documentary itself. But my comments weren’t published, which I find strange. I kept my discourse civil and was merely pointing out some questions we should ask ourselves when viewing the documentary. So what’s going on?

    3. I watched the whole documentary on DDT via cultureunplugged. It all seems to make sense. It’s unbelievable that one man at the EPA could wield so much influence over the lives of millions of people and not in a good way.

    4. Authoritatively there has never been a single case of disease caused by DDT in the entire world. That would be an impossibility and thus indicates the heavy-handed POLITCS of DDT. Mosquito-borne disease can be a dramatic game of disinfo that protects industrial polluters and opens the door for medical profiteering. Without toxicology little can be confirmed about disease causation, and there is rarely any toxicology.

      Bangladesh has been a world leader in terms of disease epidemics, cancer, malaria, polio, etc. More recently though it has been revealed that much of its water supply has been polluted by agricultural arsenic. Decades of severe epidemics passed by with no toxicological investigations, as Bangladeshis were diagnosed with microbial diseases.

      “Malaria” must be understood, in order to continue discussion. Captain Ross, who did the seminal work on the malaria parasite paradigm, wrote in his biography that he was shocked that during the 40 years since his work was announced, no one had challenged his thesis.

      Where is the malaria toxicology which would clarify the actual characteristics of the malaria parasite? Toxicology is not part of Ross’s work.

      There is a modern era PCR study meant to confirm malaria cases, had it found malaria to be 95% misdiagnosed.

      Rachel Carson was nice, minimally approaching the human plight associated with DDT, and she was published well, with a much higher public profile compared to the earlier writings by Biskind, Mobbs, and Scobey who directly addressed the human condition as affected by industrial conditions such as DDT. See http://harvoa.org/polio/overview.htm Carson was promoted by the Rockefellers, the petroleum magnates.

      Professor J. Gordon Edwards was made famous for drinking a glass of DDT stirred into water, but DDT is a waxy powder, and in such a scenario, not absorbed into the GI tract. Edwards apparently was playing a dangerous hoax, because studies have proven the DDT is dangerous when emulsified into oils or soapy watery suspensions, which a more hazard application of DDT in agriculture.

    5. It has been a long time since your comment was entered but i just found it and watched the documentary. THANK YOU so much for taking the time to enter this comment! I was one of the people who read ‘Silent Spring’ when it first came out. I remember the controversies. Now i finally know the truth! What amazing information! Everyone should see this.

  12. As a little kid in Norman, OK, circa late 50’s, I remember myself and numerous neighborhood kids CHASING a truck spraying DDT. It did not smell bad, and we thought it was fun. I guess I was lucky to have been breastfed and only had that one experience – they must have been exporting it out of the country by then. I cannot BELIEVE it was “believed” to be non-toxic to humans – “BELIEF” can be a religion, not science. I cannot believe they did not know mosquitoes were NOT a vector for the spread of polio, yet the government chose to spray this war-toxin on citizens. They knew all this and did it anyway, just as they put fluoride in clean water, and just as they inject more and more deadly chemicals, metals, fetal cells, etc. into human beings pretending that “vaccination” is a “healthy” thing to do. Sigh……….I am a holistic physician now, and TRY to teach people…….so many BELIEVE in this horrible, totally FALSE big business scam of vaccines, drugs, fluoride, GMOs, Round-Up. Thank-you for bringing people desperately needed truth. Cheers!

  13. The Environmental Protection Agency held hearings in 1972 on DDT. There were over 9000 pages of testimony. Thankfully, extracts from the Examiner’s findings are available here – http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/ddt_hearing.pdf. Of note are the Examiners’s Conclusions of law on page 93 which states, “9. DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. 10. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man.” So, if it wasn’t banned for scientific reasons….why was it banned? Worth investigating … A friend of mine thought so too and went so far as to make a documentary. It’s available to watch free of charge here: http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/53748/3-Billion-and-Counting—

    1. My husband has told me that DDT was not harmful but that it was banned on purpose BECAUSE it worked. Rachel Carson was a hired gun. I’m watching the documentary at culture unplugged (dot) com as I type this.

      To my mind, it appears Rachel Carson was a useful tool and a woman pretending to ‘do science’ in a field that was primarily a man’s field —which was perfect for the time in which she lived. According to the documentary, she had cancer when she wrote the book and likely had an axe to grind. Her ghost writer said the book was ’emotionally charged’ and ‘alarmist’. It also appears she was a feminist and an ‘earth mother’ aka pantheist. BUT, this all served to get another gov’t agency off the ground (EPA) and the ecology ‘movement’ in full swing. It all helped to serve the agenda that came FROM THE TOP DOWN. The Earth, oh-so-much more important than people. People are the cancer upon the Earth. Just read people like Mikhail Gorbachev …

      SO what a few hundred million of preventable deaths, right?

    2. I read the PDF.
      That is a hearing in 1972 by the EPA.
      By 1972, DDT was already largely phased out of the U.S., so the positive view combined with a ban, politically put DDT behind us, liability free for industry, and facilitated the influx of the new pesticide technology, which was organophosphates.

      Today, as of 2014, the EPA view of DDT is negative:

      Probable human carcinogen
      Damages the liver
      Temporarily damages the nervous system
      Reduces reproductive success
      Can cause liver cancer
      Damages reproductive system

      Potential Sources to our Environment:

      DDT in soil can be absorbed by some growing plants and by the animals or people who eat those plants
      DDT in water is absorbed by fish and shellfish in those waterways
      Atmospheric deposition
      Soil and sediment runoff
      Improper use and disposal

      Ref:
      http://www.epa.gov/pbt/pubs/ddt.htm

      My notes:

      DDT is “persistent”, i.e., it does not degrade easily. It accumulates in the environment as a waxy chlorine compound.

      Though negative, the EPA circumvents polio symptoms. Its phrase “temporarily” is obvious BS, because the studies by Daniel Dresden at http://www.harvoa.org/polio/overview.htm clearly find paralysis and death when DDT is ingested after being emulsified in milk. Other studies in 1951: Calves were found brain damaged and paralyzed when their mothers (cows) ate grass treated with DDT. Historically: DDT was mandated on dairy farms prior to the great polio epidemic apex, and banned from dairy farms after the apex.

  14. I grew up where DDT was sprayed for pesticide on crops all the time. Workers were in the fields while this was being done and no one ever got sick. Before DDT was banned it was also sold for killing bed bugs, and they are back with a vengeance. For those who are interested in knowing the TRUTH about DDT watch the documentary “3 BILLION AND COUNTING.” That is how many people in Africa have died since the banning of DDT from malaria. Before they used to spray their homes to kill the mosquitoes. Now we force mosquito nets on them that don’t work. It is time to lift the ban and save innocent lives.

    1. Pleas read the reference I supplied. DDT is just one of several persistent pesticides whose prevalence correlates with polio epidemics. The symptoms of pesticide disease correlate with “polio”. I have graphed statistics to make it clear.

      Near the end of WWII, with such an unprecedented application of neurotoxins into the national food supply, and the rise of a corresponding neurological disease epidemic, where are the obviously required toxicological studies??? They don’t exist.

      Read Drs, Biskind, Mobbs, and Scobey, who wrote much on the topic in the early 1950s.

  15. How can you say there is a connection between polio and DDT when you factor in polio vaccine and there are studies showing polio rose AFTER vaccine.
    My family used DDT, it was common at that time to fill in women’s stockings with the magic white powder and spray around your home to protect from lice, flees, mosquitoes and other tiny insects. My grandparents died of old age at 90 and 93. A lot of people in my country used DDT and were sprayed they are still around, some in their 90-ies

    1. DDT is “safe” in the instance you describe. The digestive tract does not easily absorb DDT in powder form because DDT is a waxy compound. However, when DDT is emulsified, into milk for example, DDT is absorbed and can cause neurological disease and death in mammals. Cows thoroughly masticate grass with DDT and emulsify DDT into their GI tract, and DDT is excreted in their milk.
      DDT was mandated onto dairy farms during the post-WWII era when polio incidence increased severely. At the peak of DDT prevalence, in the U.S., circa 1951, calves were found neurologically damaged on farms that used DDT.
      Soon thereafter, DDT prevalence decreased as did polio incidence, eventually DDT was banned, making room for a new generation of pesticides, the organophosphates.

  16. When national immunization campaigns were initiated in the 1950s, the number of reported cases of polio following mass inoculations with the killed-virus vaccine was significantly greater than before mass inoculations, and may have more than doubled in the U.S. as a whole. For example, Vermont reported 15 cases of polio during the one-year report period ending August 30, 1954 (before mass inoculations), compared to 55 cases of polio during the one-year period ending August 30, 1955 (after mass inoculations)– 266% increase. Rhode Island reported 22 cases during the before inoculations period as compared to 122 cases during the after inoculations period — 454% increase.
    http://vaxtruth.org/2012/03/the-polio-vaccine-part-2-2/

    1. There are statistical irregularities per timelines and localities, but generally polio incidence decreased after 1952. This is in terms of paralytic polio.

      You may be referring to non-paralytic polio, which is much more difficult to categorize, because polio can be indistinguishable from encephalitis and other neurological diseases. It is the specific “virus” that distinguishes the type of neurological disease. Without toxicology at the clinical level, polio is a mass of confusion, and there is no toxicology.

      Please read http://harvoa.org/polio/overview.htm

  17. Clearly pressure from below is capable of
    doing something, even a good deal, but real change might
    be achieved only in the political arena Karla Cherico you might meet the criteria to obtain state money based around the information within your fafsa.

  18. Sandler (http://whale.to/a/sandler_b.html) showed that low-blood-glucose (hypoglycemia) dramatically increases the risk of paralysis from polio infection.

    (1) Low blood glucose can be caused by intense exercise, and it is well-accepted that this increases the risk of paralysis when there is active infection. “Dr. Levinson found that monkeys forced to swim to the point of exhaustion in cold water developed more severe paralysis than did either those that remained in cages or those that were immersed in water at body temperature and protected from exercise and chilling.” Shades of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

    (2) Hypoglycemia following a bolus of starch or sugar would also increase the risk. Sandler did experiments with rabbits, infecting them with polio and then giving them insulin to cause low blood glucose, and this increased the risk of paralysis: “The next step was to lower the blood sugar of the rabbit to subnormal values with insulin injections, and then inoculate the rabbit with polio virus. This was done and it was found that the rabbits became infected and developed the disease.”

    What Sandler didn’t know at the time is that cane sugar can be contaminated with deoxysugars, and that deoxysugars cause effective hypoglycemia. With the deoxysugar deoxyglucose, for example, cells preferentially take up deoxyglucose, but can’t use it for energy — so cane sugar contaminated with enough deoxyglucose would increase the risk of paralysis from polio infections. (This idea comes from van Meer’s paper, http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/diet-and-polio-Van-Meer-science.pdf.) The paper “THE EFFECT OF 2-DEOXY-D-GLUCOSE INFUSIONS ON LIPID AND CARBOHYDRATE METABOLISM IN MAN” says “In the presenceof 2-DG [the deoxysugar deoxyglucose], although the measured plasma level of glucose is high, if cellular utilization of glucose cannot occur the organism can be considered to be functionally hypoglycemic.”

    van Meer also notes that DDT affects blood sugar, and that this effect could cause increased risk of polio with concurrent DDT exposure. I haven’t been able to find definitive evidence that DDT triggers hypoglycemia or effective hypoglycemia, but this paper in mice is suggestive: http://thirdworld.nl/the-inhibitoty-effect-of-ddt-on-insulin-secretion-in-mice It says “In fact, a slight hypoglycemia was observed at both the 5- and ?-hr intervals. Interestingly, at these time periods the DDT-treated mice were exhibiting marked tremors.” So they found some hypoglycemia, and tremors can be a symptom of hypoglycemia (although they can have other causes). So it is certainly plausible that DDT causes increased polio paralysis due to hypoglycemic effects.

    The funny thing is that Sandler didn’t know about deoxysugar causing effective hypoglycemia, and van Meer didn’t know about Sandler’s work showing that hypoglycemia increases polio paralysis risk, but they both could see a relationship between paralysis risk and blood sugar. Sandler thought the risk was from hypoglycemia in response to a bolus does (which does happen in some people), but actually deoxyglucose contamination is a more likely trigger. van Meer thought increased risk was due to high blood glucose, because that’s what deoxysugars trigger — when cells have effective hypoglycemia, there is a counter-regulatory response to raise blood glucose to try to resolve the apparent low blood-glucose state.

  19. none of the source links work and sources for this data isn’t listed on the page. can you please point me in the right direction?

  20. My father was born in 1932 and as a baby developed “polio”. The story goes, my grandmother was changing his diaper and a big black fly flew out. Over the next few days, they noticed his leg went limp. Diagnosis: polio. My uncle, his older brother, got polio from swimming in a public pool, so they say, despite it was chlorinated.

    About ten years ago, I found a book (sorry, I cannot recall the name or author) that stated that polio wasn’t caused by a virus but was a result of DDT or other pesticide/chemical. One of the old ads printed in the book showed a big fly and a can of bug spray. People’s stories all seemed to corroborate the DDT or chemical theory since several stated things like the child had just eaten an apple and days later, had polio, and so on.

    I’m not saying that all cases are DDT or a pesticide/chemical of some kind, but why the sudden epidemic right around the same time they started messing with chemicals? What the book also said was that “polio” didn’t go away. Doctors were just ordered never to call it polio again, and only call it infantile paralysis. I really don’t believe they found a virus at all.

  21. How DDT Affects People’s Health
    Human health effects from DDT at low environmental doses are unknown. Following
    exposure to high doses, human symptoms can include vomiting, tremors or shakiness,
    and seizures. Laboratory animal studies showed effects on the liver and reproduction.
    DDT is considered a human carcinogen.

    Unfortunately, we’re not going to win this one, folks. We’re not going to kill all the pests and weeds and bacteria and viruses without also killing and maiming ourselves in the process.

  22. While in the Coast Guard in 1964 I was directly sprayed heavily with DDT one evening. The next morning I had severe sinus congestion. The next day it was gone but I was left with the sniffles to this day. I have not had a COLD or FLU in 55 years.

  23. Remember the “baby boom” started in 1946 so your numbers should be viewed in the context od a larger and fast expanding juvenile population.

  24. This article is an absolute lie, a propaganda ruse. DDT was used to eradicate mosquitos and malaria outbreaks. It had nothing to do with eliminating polio. The neurotoxin was the direct cause of skyrocketing numbers of polio.

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