Counterintuitivity

For my source, I googled polio eradication and found a link to the website – http://www.polioeradication.org/Polioandprevention.aspx

“Polio is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease. There is no cure, but there are safe and effective vaccines. The strategy to eradicate polio is therefore based on preventing infection by immunizing every child until transmission stops and the world is polio-free.”

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s website shows strong evidence that polio can in fact be eradicated through prevention and initiating vaccinations to countries that are still plagued by the disease. By making vaccines available to children in these countries and around the world would prevent polio from being passed from person to person until the disease would no longer exist.

When researching polio vaccine rumors on google, I found an LA Times article (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/17/world/la-fg-pakistan-polio-20111017) about a more recent situation in pakistan in which muslim extremists and religious leaders denounce the polio vaccine as a western plot to sterilize their daughters and spread infection.

“Radical clerics seed rumors that vaccines are un-Islamic because they are made from substances derived from pigs, or that they cause infertility. Some clerics try to convince parents that polio vaccines are made from the urine of Satan.”

I would like to investigate the possible motives behind these statements. It seems highly counterproductive for religious leaders to subject their own people, possible even their very own children, to a lifetime of handicaps and suffering. Most articles I have read attribute these rumors to paranoia and weariness of any action rooted in the West, but such cultural distrust looks to me like an all too convenient mode of spreading propaganda.

I decided to do my research on the effectiveness of the vaccination for polio and thats exactly what i typed in google, which led me to http://www.immunizationinfo.org/vaccines/polio .

“The incidence of paralytic polio peaked in the U.S. in 1952 with 21,000 reported cases and numerous deaths. Following licensure of the Salk (inactivated) polio vaccine in 1955, the incidence of the disease fell dramatically. The disease was further reduced by the advent of the Sabin (oral) polio vaccine in 1961. The last cases of paralytic polio from natural poliovirus in the U.S. were in 1979, and the most recent case from outside the U.S. occurred in 1993.”

This claim helps us see how much the polio vaccine really can help out. Compared to 1952 there arent as many deaths now as there were then. The article says that polio has been eliminated from the US and the who western hemisphere because of the effective vaccine. The Sabin isnt expensive at all which is a good thing. This disease seems to be under control due to the vaccine, which proves that it is very effective!

I did a search on Google and found a article titled “Researcher Behind Debunked Autism-Vaccine Study Stood To Make Millions” By: Michelle Diament on a website called “disabilityscoop”. It talks about how the researcher the debunked the research that first suggested a link between autism and vaccines and how he stood to make over $43 million annually selling replacement vaccines and diagnostic products.

“The new information casts further doubt on the credibility of Wakefield who set off a worldwide vaccine scare with his 1998 study in the journal The Lancet which first suggested a link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine.”

“Amid numerous questions about the study, The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s paper last year just months before his British medical license was stripped.

Deer reports this week that Wakefield was asked by his superiors at the University College London in 1999 to replicate his study using a larger sampling of 150 children after they expressed concerns about a “serious conflict of interest” given his business plans.”

“In the report published Tuesday, journalist Brian Deer reveals that Andrew Wakefield held a patent for “a ‘safer’ single measles shot.””

Researcher Behind Debunked Autism-Vaccine Study Stood To Make Millions

The Claim I feel set up by this article is that the researcher has his own agenda. He made a big deal about how Wakefield”s research was completely wrong, but seeing the facts brought up by the article about the amount of money he was about to make from the “safer” vaccines he developed. I’m not at liberty to just accuse him of lying but the article makes it seem like it should at least be looked into.

After using Google to find more research, it led me to http://www.cdc.gov where i researched the effectiveness of vaccine.

“A 1916 polio epidemic in the United States killed 6,000 people and paralyzed 27,000 more. In the early 1950’s there were more than 25,000 cases of polio reported each year. Polio vaccination was begun in 1955. By 1960 the number of reported cases had dropped to about 3,000, and by 1979 there were only about 10. The success of polio vaccination in the U.S. and other countries has sparked a world-wide effort to eliminate polio.”

This claim describes the effectiveness of vaccine throughout many years of experience. over time in history the vaccine became more effective, reducing the number of cases of polio. It shows that people who might have polio should get the vaccine to keep the numbers of cases down still.

The topic I have chosen to look more in depth into was the oral “Sabin” vaccine. The search technique I used was going to the Academic Search Premier and searching “oral sabin vaccine”.

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=228d9423-c3e5-49da-a0d6-a8abdae3fa4e%40sessionmgr4&vid=4&hid=7

The first link takes you to an article I found on Albert Sabin, and his vaccination, this article gives background information about Sabin, and talks about his vaccine being around for a about twenty years before he started using it on Americans. This is an effective article to use because it gives information about the “Sabin” vaccine so that you can know something about the vaccine and understand why the WHO is campaigning so hard with it.

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=7&hid=7&sid=228d9423-c3e5-49da-a0d6-a8abdae3fa4e%40sessionmgr4&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=63305955

The second link is to an article talking about how patients in Hungary were treated for VAPP ( vaccine- associated paralytic poliomyelitis) after being given the “Sabin” vaccine. I found this by doing the Academic Search Premier and typing in Oral sabin vaccine also. This article is effective also because it gives another view point to the vaccine, I thought it would be good to show one article that was showing the good the vaccine did, and one article to show that it can cause VAPP.

I used academic search premier to find information on polio.

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=e1547f6f-a42c-4897-a07f-58965b612cc3%40sessionmgr11&vid=4&hid=11

“As of 24 August 2010, there have been 30 reported cases of wild poliovirus in India compared to 236 during the same period in 2009. [2]. Almost all wild polio cases in India are from high-risk districts in western Uttar Pradesh and central Bihar [3]. The most recent primary strategy to interrupt transmission of wild poliovirus in India is to improve supplemental immunization activities (SIAs or mass campaigns) and routine immunization coverage in 107 high-risk blocks of western Uttar Pradesh and central Bihar [4]”

The information I gathered from the source indicates a strong success rate in India toward the elimination of Polio. It supports the claim that polio is indeed “a perfect candidate for eradication”. There are high risk locations which need to be focused on to yield progress and eventually a successful eradication.

I went to google and searched “effectiveness of the polio vaccine.” I came upon this site http://www.kidrisk.org/mainFrame/poliopub3.html, which talked about how many lives the vaccine has saved and the cost efficiency of the vaccination. “The U.S. invested over $35 billion between 1955 and 2005 and will continue to invest billions into the future to pay for polio vaccination. These historical and future investments translate into over 1.7 billion vaccinations that prevent approximately 1.1 million cases of paralytic polio and over 160,000 deaths, thus saving Americans hundreds of billions of dollars in treatment costs.Due to treatment cost savings, the investment implies net benefits of approximately $180 billion (1955 net present value), even without incorporating the intangible costs of suffering and death and of averted fear.” This quote from the site explains to how effective and helpful the polio vaccine has been. It’s also has saved billions of dollars in treatment costs producing a cheaper way to prevent a disease from spreading. This claim is a consequential and proposal claim. It states the effects of the vaccines and how helpful it already has been and then proposes the continuation of these vaccines will save more moneys and lives in the future. This quote shows exactly how great an eradication of Polio would be with this vaccination because it has saved many live already and is very cost efficient. There should be no problem with eradicating this disease when the main benefits are saved lives at a very cheap easy price.