The West and Others

Nigeria and the Polio Vaccine Scare Tactics

The BBC on May 24, 2012 tells us the Global Polio Eradication Initiative "... has launched a plan to boost vaccination in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only countries where the disease is still endemic." To further embellish its scare tactics, it notes:

Experts fear the disease could "come back with a vengeance". The World Health Organization says polio is "at a tipping point". There have been large outbreaks of the virus in Africa, Tajikistan and China has had its first cases for more than a decade.

That vaccines are a gold mine for big pharmaceutical corporations is without doubt. To be sure, the BBC reports that Bruce Aylward, head of the WHO's polio eradication campaign, said:

"Over the last 24 months on three continents - in Europe, in Africa and in Asia - we have seen horrific explosive outbreaks of the disease that affected adults, and in some cases 50% of them died... What it reminded people is that, if eradication fails, we are going to see an huge and vicious upsurge of this disease with consequences that it is very difficult even to foresee right now."

He said the initiative was "now on an emergency footing" which would result in a "big shift" in the way the virus is tackled.
However, Dr Aylward also cautioned that there was a $950m shortfall in funding and admitted they had been forced into "cutting corners" with vaccination campaigns being stopped in some countries.

It should be clear that this vaccine scare tactic is aimed at extorting megabucks from donors. For $950m to be regarded as shortfall means the campaign must be targeting well in excess of a billion dollars or two, to stabilize. These funds are paid to pharmaceutical companies which may or may not produce efficacious vaccines. In fact, evidence tends to show that inefficacy has occurred in those countries where polio is said to be endemic or to be reoccurring "with a vengeance". In my native country, Nigeria, these vaccines have been known to mutate into a dangerous strain that has ignited new outbreaks.

It becomes curious also to note Bruce Aylward's choice of words and fear mongering. The UN News Center tells us "The Strategic Plan 2010-2012 aims to build on success in key endemic countries, such as Nigeria, where the number of polio cases have dropped by more than 99 per cent – from 312 cases last year to three in 2010. 10 of the 15 previously polio-free African countries that were re-infected in 2009 have successfully stopped their outbreaks. They are Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Kenya, Togo and Uganda." I cannot figure how a 99% drop in polio infections can lead up to Bruce Aylward's claim to "have seen horrific explosive outbreaks of the disease that affected adults, and in some cases 50% of them died..." in Europe, Africa and Asia.

USA Today says:

The vaccine used in the United States and other Western nations is given in shots, which use a killed virus that cannot cause polio. So when WHO officials discovered a polio outbreak in Nigeria was sparked by the polio vaccine itself, they assumed it would be easier to stop than a natural "wild" virus. They were wrong.

In 2007, health experts reported that amid Nigeria's ongoing outbreak of wild polio viruses, 69 children had also been paralyzed in a new outbreak caused by the mutation of a vaccine's virus. Back then, WHO said the vaccine-linked outbreak would be swiftly overcome — yet two years later, cases continue to mount. They have since identified polio cases linked to the vaccine dating back as far as 2005.

It is a worrying development for officials who hope to end polio epidemics in India and Africa by the end of this year, after missing several earlier deadlines. "It's very disturbing," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, who heads the polio department at the World Health Organization.

Well, look at here! It's the very same Bruce Aylward folks! Why are vaccines which use a dead virus administered in Western nations whereas vaccines with live viruses are applied in 'third' world countries? The answer is simple. Pharmaceutical companies in their bid to produce vaccines cheaply and maximize profits have chosen to use these 'third' world countries as guinea pigs and lab rats, irrespective of how many kids get paralyzed by it. To put it mildly, it would seem it is the WHO and its Global Polio Eradication Initiative that have been reinfecting countries with polio vaccines that are no longer considered safe by Western nations.

The question that has never been answered is why efficacious vaccines, already proven to eradicate polio in Western climes and with no prior record of reinfecting target countries, are not being applied in 'third' world countries? Polio reinfection is the direct result of WHO's Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) administration on unsuspecting populations. It is silly to hope to eradicate a problem one causes repeatedly, except if the aim is to keep the market for vaccines going.

We learn from Natural News that:

"There are two main types of polio vaccine, Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) and Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV). The first of these uses dead cells of poliomyelitis. IPV was developed by Jonas Salk before being disseminated throughout the US in the 1950s, to quell the outbreak that was then infecting roughly 22,000 American children each year. Within 20 years, polio was all but forgotten in America.

However, The Polio Global Eradication Initiative chooses to use the second type, Oral Polio Vaccine. OPV was developed by Albert Sabin and runs the virus through a number of animals in order to weaken the strain rather than kill it. The weakened strain is then injected into children, whose immune systems are strong enough to defeat the infection. It is easy to see how treatment could backfire, in cases when the strain has not been weakened enough for human contact.

Historically, there have been cases of outbreak when a weakened strain becomes strong enough to infect rather than immunize. In these cases, OPV is typically replaced by IPV because it is no longer considered safe. But OPV is still the vaccine of choice in Pakistan (and my native country, Nigeria), even as it continues to prove its potency to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative. Why?"

Now, that's a big why I would like Dr. Bruce Aylward to put an answer to.