The Story You Never Heard about polio begins in Vermont in the 1890s with the first outbreak. More epidemics followed with a major one in 1916 in New York City killing 2,448 people and debilitating nearly 9,000 for life.
With the introduction of DDT, the cases of polio increased culminating in over 57,000 cases in 1952. Do pesticides activate the poliovirus? The role that pesticides have played in paralytic polio is documented throughout the narrative.
Salk's vaccine was widely used in the United States by 1956. The myth that it caused polio to decrease is debunked by the CDC's own data.
The Salk and Sabin vaccines contained a virus, the Simian Virus #40, that has been recognized in many of the cancers whose rates have grown exponentially throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the pressured rush to bring a polio vaccine to market, many of the people who approved the polio vaccine, knowing a carcinogen was in it, are featured in this story.
The name of paralytic polio has changed. The original polio is now "wild" polio, and today paralysis with polio-like symptoms is known as Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM), Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), and Transverse Myelitis (TM). Are these just new names for the original "wild" polio?
This book raises provoking questions. Do we know the answers?
