Polio

Despite the fact that poliomyelitis has not been observed in developed countries for decades, for some reason it continues to inspire terror.

Poliovirus is one of the many intestinal viruses (enteroviruses) and, like most of them, it spreads through the fecal-oral route. There are three different serotypes of poliovirus.
Polio vaccines are divided into 2 types: IPV – inactivated (Salk vaccine) and OPV – live oral (Sabin vaccine). According to the CDC, the virus for both vaccines is grown on the kidney cells of green monkeys, and the vaccines contain fetal bovine serum. OPV also contains polysorbate 80, and IPV contains aluminum. 96% of cases of poliovirus infections are asymptomatic, or are accompanied by mild symptoms that disappear in a few days. Only 1%-5% of cases are accompanied by aseptic meningitis, which disappears in 2-10 days. Flaccid paralysis occurs in less than 1% of infected children, and it disappears completely in most.

Albert Sabin, who subsequently developed the live vaccine, writes in his 1947 article that although sporadic cases of paralysis were also observed in ancient times, polio epidemics suddenly appeared only at the beginning of the 20th century. Some scientists believed that poliomyelitis simply began to be better diagnosed, but Sabin does not agree with that, and believes that such paralysis epidemics could not have gone unnoticed in the past. Moreover, he writes that polio is still unknown in many countries. Epidemics are mainly rampant in large cities, in countries with high sanitary and hygienic conditions, and are not observed in other countries with similar climatic conditions. In China, for example, only rare, sporadic cases are observed, even though Western doctors work in many cities there and could not have missed such epidemics among the local populations if they occurred. Paralytic poliomyelitis is usually completely inactive for most of the year, and then breaks into an epidemic in late summer and early fall, and it always begins in large cities.
Even though American, British and Australian soldiers in the Philippines, Japan, China and Middle East suffered from polio, cases of paralysis were virtually non-existent among the local population. Poliomyelitis was the leading cause of death among US soldiers in the Philippines, while there were no epidemics among the local population, and 90% of local population had antibodies to poliovirus. Soldiers in the USA suffered from poliomyelitis 10 times more often than soldiers abroad. Sabin personally observed a poliomyelitis outbreak among American soldiers in China, while there was no outbreak among the local population. A British doctor, who worked in China for 25 years, often saw paralytic poliomyelitis among foreigners, but rarely among the Chinese people. Other researchers have confirmed this observation.

Xavante is a Native American tribe in Brazil, which is virtually untouched by civilization. A 1964 study found that they were all infected with poliovirus, and almost all of them had antibodies to the three serotypes of the virus, but they had neither paralytic polio nor any symptoms of the disease. They also had antibodies to other diseases – measles, whooping cough, influenza, salmonella, but most of the infections were virtually asymptomatic for them.

A 1995 article, published by the Mayo Clinic, reports that polio diagnosis during the 1950s epidemics was based on the paralytic symptoms or cerebrospinal fluid testing. If the patient had flaccid paralysis, he was diagnosed with paralytic poliomyelitis. And if the lymphocyte count in the cerebrospinal fluid was elevated, then it was a non-paralytic poliomyelitis. It is known today, that this kind of laboratory diagnosis is typical of viral meningitis, but in no way indicates polio. Only when the epidemics began to subside, did they start checking for poliovirus. This caused an over-diagnosis of poliomyelitis during epidemics. Any type of paralysis - peripheral neuropathy, stroke, brain or spinal cord tumor, multiple sclerosis, hysterical paralysis and many other diseases could be diagnosed as polio. It was difficult to refuse the polio diagnosis, because of the generous financial assistance to polio patients, which was not available to patients with other types of paralysis. Many kinds of medicine were used for treatment of poliomyelitis, including strychnine, curare, cobra venom, and various antibiotics. The effectiveness of these drugs was based on anecdotal information, but was offered with confidence. One of the common types of treatment was muscle and spinal cord radiation. In the 20th century, casts and medical splints were used in cases of acute polio. Paralyzed patients lay in casts for months, which caused atrophy of muscles that were no longer paralyzed. For most patients, the worst part was not the disease itself, but rather the isolation from family and friends. They felt abandoned. Fear of poliomyelitis led to the fact that even medical personnel avoided the patients. Newspapers of those days documented fear and mass hysteria. Poliomyelitis was the sword of Damocles raised over each child and adult. One of the newspapers wrote in 1948 that due to the epidemics, the whole city should be closed off and children should not leave their homes. The whole city was sprayed with DDT, and each family was recommended to spray their house abundantly.

The word ‘poliomyelitis’ means “inflammation of the gray bone marrow” in Greek. This term appeared in the 19th century, when nothing was yet known of the poliovirus. What is called poliomyelitis today is not at all what the term was used for until the late 1950s. The word ‘poliomyelitis’ meant some symptom then. Today it means a symptom caused by a specific virus.

During the polio epidemics in Michigan in 1958, only 25% of paralyzed patients had poliovirus in their blood. For most of them, paralysis was not caused by poliovirus. Coxsackie and echoviruses were the reason for more cases of nonparalytic poliomyelitis and aseptic meningitis, than poliovirus. 11 patients paralyzed due to poliovirus have been vaccinated with at least three doses.

The Cutter Incident, 50 Years Later (Offit, 2005, N Engl J Med)
During the clinical trials of IPV, Salk published an article in which he claimed that the entire virus in the vaccine was inactivated, but did not provide data on all the vaccine batches. Paul Meier, a well-known scientist, believed that there was something wrong with the data, so the National Fund for Childhood Paralysis (NFIP) formed an advisory committee to deal with it. When one of the members did not agree with the licensing of a vaccine, he was removed from the committee, and a new, more accommodating member was appointed. The committee was reformed several times this way, until all members agreed. After the clinical trials, NFIP gave the committee two hours to review the materials, after which six companies were licensed to produce the Salk vaccine.
Two weeks after the license was issued, some children, vaccinated with Cutter Laboratories vaccine, were paralyzed. The vaccine was withdrawn, but 380,000 children had already been vaccinated with it. Subsequently, it turned out that 40,000 of them got polio, 200 were paralyzed and 10 died, because the vaccine was not sufficiently inactivated and contained active virus. Wyeth vaccine also caused paralysis and death in some cases. Other companies had difficulties with virus inactivation as well. Too little amount of formaldehyde did not kill the virus, while too much of it made the vaccine useless. Residues of various substances in the vaccine protected the viral particles from formaldehyde. Since other vaccine manufacturers threatened the newspapers to reduce the amount of advertising, it was decided to put all the blame on Cutter. Even though Cutter’s negligence was not proved, the court ordered Cutter to pay compensation. Overtime, this led to an abundance of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, which resulted in a law being passed in 1986, according to which it became impossible to sue vaccine manufacturers in the United States. Since then, compensation can only be received by filing a lawsuit with a special federal court, which is financed by the vaccine tax. However, one loophole remained. If the special court dismissed the claim, then it was possible to file a lawsuit against the company with a regular court. The already familiar to us Paul Offit believes that the loophole needs to be closed, since these lawsuits cost the companies millions of dollars and distract them from the manufacturing of such important products.

(full text)
In 1960, polio experts in the USA held a conference reporting the following facts, which allow to conclude on whether the vaccine had an effect on the decrease in polio incidence in the mid-1950s:
1) In 1955, when Salk vaccine was licensed, the definition of polio was changed. While a 24-hour paralysis was enough for diagnosis before, since 1955, the paralysis had to last at least 60 days. Since most cases of paralysis are short-term, polio incidence decreased with no connection to the vaccine. Coxsackie viruses and aseptic meningitis, which were previously considered polio, were assigned a separate category. The definition of epidemic also changed. While 20 cases were previously required to declare an epidemic, now it was 35 cases.
2) Of the thousand people infected with poliovirus, only one gets paralysis.
3) The number of paralytic poliomyelitis cases increased significantly in 1958-59, which was blamed on the unvaccinated. This is quite strange, as one of the participants observes, since the number of unvaccinated people has decreased drastically. So, if the vaccine was responsible for the 1955-57 decrease in incidence, how come the much higher number of unvaccinated people did not prevent it from decreasing in those years?
4) Clinical trials of Salk vaccine only tested for its efficacy, since it was assumed that the vaccine was safe. It was determined that the vaccine is 72% effective against paralytic poliomyelitis, and ineffective against non-paralytic. However, after licensing of the vaccine, its composition was changed and another degree of filtration was added. No one knows how this affected the vaccine efficacy. Filtration was added in hopes of removing the residual active virus, even though the effectiveness of this procedure has not been confirmed experimentally. Each filtration is known to significantly reduce the amount of antigen. An Israeli study found that an addition of filtration reduces the amount of antigen by 10-30 times, and there initially was little antigen in the vaccine.
5) In 1954, active virus was found in 10 out of 48 tested vaccine batches. Different laboratories found active virus in different batches. Nonetheless, since Salk reported that 7,500 children had been vaccinated without side effects, the clinical trials were continued. Theoretically, inactivation of virus with formalin is a first-order chemical reaction. That is, if X hours are needed to inactivate 50% of the virus, then the next X hours will inactivate 50% of the remaining virus. However, this has not been confirmed practically. Everyone believed Salk, and no one double-checked his data, which subsequently led to the Cutter incident. Vaccines for clinical trials passed a triple safety check. After the licensing, this check was cancelled for the subsequent batches. Therefore, it is not surprising that there were outbreaks of vaccine paralysis. What is surprising is that there were not more of them.
6) A virulent strain is required to produce antibodies. On the other hand, virulent strain causes epidemics of vaccine paralysis among those, who do not have antibodies.
7) 57% of vaccinated people do not develop serotype 1 antibodies, 20% do not develop serotype 2 antibodies, and 77% do not develop serotype 3 antibodies. There is no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated people with regard to serotypes 1 and 3.
8) In 1956, in turned out that the potency of vaccines of various manufacturers differed by 600 times. In 1957, the major vaccine manufacturers had products worth several millions of dollars, the potency of which was below the established minimum. FDA has reduced the required potency, so that the products could be sold.
9) In comparing the incidence among vaccinated and unvaccinated people, they forgot to count 100,000 unvaccinated, which led to overestimated efficacy. The decrease in the polio incidence is the result of manipulating the statistics.
10) It is very difficult to convince doctors to diagnose non-paralytic poliomyelitis in those vaccinated. In 1956-57, it turned out that most cases of non-paralytic poliomyelitis were actually the Coxsackie virus and echovirus.
11) During the 1958 epidemics in Israel, there was no difference in the incidence among those vaccinated and unvaccinated. During the epidemics in Massachusetts, paralysis was more common among those triple vaccinated than those unvaccinated.
12) Trials of inactivated vaccines against Rocky Mountain spotted fever, typhus and Japanese encephalitis, have shown that when the number of viral particles in a vaccine was less than 100 million, vaccinated guinea pigs and mice died faster than unvaccinated. The vaccine caused sensitization, so the susceptibility to the disease only increased due to vaccination. This immunological fact has been confirmed by public health service. That is, insufficient efficacy of the vaccine does more harm than good. This is probably what happened in Massachusetts, where 47% of paralysis cases were observed among those vaccinated. There were 10-30 millions of viral particles in the Salk vaccine, and that is before the additional degree of filtration was introduced.
13) Director in the FDA did not want to license the vaccine, since he could not get Salk to answer his questions, but the management reversed his decision.
14) The public is confident in the high effectiveness of the vaccine, although we know this is far from the case. The public is difficult to convince of the benefits of something, so it is better not to include it in the discussion of these issues.

In 1952, 3,145 people died of poliomyelitis during the largest epidemic in the USA. In that same year, 200,000 people died of cancer, and 20,000 died of tuberculosis. And since any kind of paralysis was considered as polio back then, the number of deaths of poliomyelitis caused by poliovirus was actually much lower.

It is believed that the iron lungs disappeared thanks to the polio vaccine. Since respiratory muscle paralysis, which is why these iron lungs were used, is caused not only by the poliovirus, then, of course, the iron lungs did not go anywhere. They simply do not look so terrible nowadays, thanks to the modern technology. Poliomyelitis, of course, did not go anywhere either. After all, only a small number of poliomyelitis cases were caused by poliovirus. Poliomyelitis simply has different names today. For example, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, acute flaccid paralysis, etc. 1,400 cases of transverse myelitis get diagnosed each year in the USA, the cause for which stays unknown.

An outbreak of a new, strange disease among children began in the USA in 2014, a disease very similar to polio. They called in Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM), and supposed that it is caused by enteroviruses. There were 1,153 cases of serious infection, 14 deaths and 120 cases of paralysis, in 2014. The CDC has no idea what this disease is. Moreover, they refuse to discuss it and to report the number of cases that have been registered and in which states. AFM deaths get attributed to other diseases. In an internal correspondence, which the CDC reluctantly provided a year and a half after the request, this disease is being called the poliomyelitis of the 21st century. The situation is similar to what was happening in the early 20th century. Millions of people were infected with poliovirus, but only in a small number of them it caused paralysis. AFM causes more serious complications than measles, Ebola and Zika combined, but nonetheless, no statistics on this disease are being collected, and the doctors are not required to report it to the CDC. AMF outbreaks are reported not only in the USA, but also in Japan, Germany, Australia, Argentina, Sweden, Norway, UK, Netherlands, Chile, Brazil and other countries. AFM is actively discussed in medical literature, but few have heard of it. Simply because there is no vaccine for this disease, there is no point in causing panic.

Between 1970 and 1984, Romania participated in the safety trials of an oral vaccine sponsored by the WHO. It turned out, that, for unexplained reasons, the incidence of the vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) is 5-17 higher in Romania than in other countries. It was first believed that the vaccine in Romania was too virulent, but replacing it with a different vaccine did not change the VAPP incidence. It turned out that 87% of paralyzed children received intramuscular injections 30 days before the onset of paralysis (17 injections on average), as compared to 51% of non-paralyzed children (3 injections on average). Each injection increased the risk of paralysis by 13%. Paralysis was observed 8 times more often in those who received one injection, and 182 times more often in those who received over 10 injections. Overall, 86% of VAPP cases were caused by injections.

The fact that injections and vaccines provoke paralysis was known already back in 1950.
Some children of the polio epidemic in Melbourne in 1949 developed paralytic poliomyelitis soon after getting pertussis and diphtheria vaccine. Doctors denied any connection. It turned out, however, that such connection existed, since in most cases, paralysis developed precisely in the injected leg or hand. The authorities thought for a long time whether they should communicate this information to the doctors and general public, and decided to tell about pertussis, but not diphtheria. The press did not blow up the story, and the future of vaccination was not called into question.

The connection between poliomyelitis and injections was recognized in 1950 in Australia and the UK, and later in the USA. It was confirmed by testing on monkeys in 1954. They started to give injections in the winter, and it reduced the number of paralysis cases caused by injections, to a minimum. The authors of a 1985 article reviewed the literature and showed that the risk of paralysis due to injections can increase by 25 times, and that repeat injections, especially of arsenic and penicillin, significantly increase the risk of paralysis, as compared to a single injection.

An experiment on mice was conducted in 1998, and found that, indeed, muscle injury from injections increases the risk of paralysis from poliovirus, and the mechanism of how it enters the nervous system was described. Other enteroviruses can also cause poliomyelitis, although how exactly they enter the nervous system in unknown.

Nothing changed since the 1950s, however. There was a poliomyelitis outbreak in Oman in 1988-1989, despite the 87% vaccination coverage. No association between the number of vaccine doses and paralysis was found. However, a lot more children who received a DTP vaccine within past 30 days got sick. 25% of children got sick because of the DTP vaccine. In 1993, 89% of 152 children suffering from paralytic poliomyelitis received an unnecessary injection 48 hours prior to the onset of paralysis. Almost always the paralysis developed at the injection site. Other studies in Pakistan showed a similar pattern. The same was observed in India.

Removal of tonsils is associated with an increase in the risk of poliomyelitis by 2.6 times in the next 30 days. The risk of bulbar and bulbospinal forms of poliomyelitis (the most dangerous ones) increases by 16 times.

The authors of the article published in 1949, write that a new, strange syndrome has appeared in the USA in the recent years, which is most likely caused by some kind of infection, and got called ‘virus X’. The syndrome is accompanied by acute gastroenteritis, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, runny nose, cough, sore throat, joint pain, muscle weakness, fatigue and paralysis. It turned out later that all of these symptoms were caused by DDT. Paralysis from DDT is similar to poliomyelitis. Although DDT is a lethal poison, it is considered completely safe in all doses. It is used in every house in unlimited quantities. It is sprayed on skin, on bed and clothes, on food and utensils, on agricultural crops and livestock. DDT is a cumulative poison. Many small doses are equally as lethal as one large dose. DDT cannot be removed from food, as it accumulates in fat cells and is excreted in breast milk. Large-scale intoxication of American population is inevitable.

High toxicity of DDT, and even its ability to cause paralysis, was already known in 1945, which did not prevent it from being widely used in the 50s and 60s. DDT was only banned in 1972 in the USA, after causing an almost complete extinction of eagles, pelicans and other birds. Poliovirus replicates much faster in human cells treated with DDT. Other insecticides have a similar effect. Another insecticide, which was widely used before DDT, was arsenic, the poisoning by which also causes paralysis.

Other causes of paralysis indistinguishable from polio paralysis include snake, spider, tick and scorpion bites, organophosphorus insecticides, as well as enteroviruses and other infections. There was an outbreak of a polio-like disease in Bulgaria in 1975, which turned out to be enterovirus 71. Outbreaks have also been reported in California and Hungary. In the 1930s, epidemics of “polio” caused by bacteria in milk were observed. [1], [2], [3], [4].

A 1952 article analyzes dozens of cases and outbreaks of poliomyelitis, in which paralysis was caused by poisoning with lead, arsenic, mercury, cyanide, pesticides, carbon monoxide, etc. It is also reported that vitamin C, which effectively treats poliomyelitis, has been used to treat poisoning. The author writes that epidemics of pellagra and beriberi were observed earlier, and thus it was believed that these were infectious diseases. Since poliomyelitis was legally recognized as a contagious and infectious disease in 1911, only virologists dealt with it, and ordinary doctors could not participate in the research. It is also the reason why studies to determine whether poisoning could cause poliomyelitis are not being funded.

An article, published in the Science magazine in 2006, reports that children in Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh receive 15 doses of polio vaccine on average before the age of five, and 10 doses in other states. Only 4% of children received less than three doses of the vaccine, almost all of them are younger than 6 months. A level of vaccination this high should have led to the elimination of the virus by now. So the authors checked the effectiveness of the vaccine and calculated that the effectiveness of each dose in these states is only 9%. A 1991 study reported that 54% of children with paralytic poliomyelitis have been vaccinated with at least three doses.

The authors of a 2012 article write that earlier there was hope that vaccination could be cancelled after eradication of polio. However, in 2012, poliovirus was synthesized, making its eradication impossible. Therefore, worldwide vaccination will have to continue forever. Forcing poor countries to spend their meager resources on an impossible to achieve dream for the past 10 years was unethical. Moreover, despite the fact that there has not been a single case of poliomyelitis in India for a year now, there has been a huge increase in cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). 47,500 new cases have been registered in 2011, which is 12 times more than was expected. 25-35 times more cases of NPAFP are recorded in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh than in other countries, even though polio vaccination is given almost each month there. Clinically, NPAFP is no different from poliomyelitis, but it is twice as deadly. The number of NPAFP cases is directly proportional to the number of vaccine doses received. Although this data was collected officially, it was never examined. From the India’s point of view, $2.5 billions spent on eradication, might have better been spent on water, sanitation and routine vaccination. Then it would have been possible to control or eliminate poliovirus, as it happened in developed countries. The authors conclude that a huge bill of $8 billion spent of this program is a small price to pay if the world learns to beware of such vertical programs in the future.

A 2018 article reports that the incidence of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis in India is significantly higher than expected (13.3 instead of 1-2 per 100,000). In 2004, it was 3.11 per 100,000 but in 2005 it was already more than twice as high. This was exactly the year when they started using a new, live vaccine, which contained 5 times more virus. After 2011, when the number of vaccination campaigns began to decrease, the NPAFP incidence also began to decrease. The authors analyzed the data from years 2000 to 2017, and concluded that out of 640,000 cases of paralysis in children, 491,000 were associated with polio vaccine.

It was discovered back in the 1930s that vitamin C could help prevent paralysis from poliovirus. Macaques injected with poliovirus that avoided paralysis, had higher levels of vitamin C than the ones that were paralyzed. A 1955 article describes several cases of successful treatment of acute poliomyelitis with large doses of vitamin C (10g every 3 hours). The treatment worked in a couple of days.

(full text)
A 1949 article reports on 60 patients with poliomyelitis. All of them received 1-2 g of vitamin C intravenously every few hours. They were all healthy in 72 hours. Three patients had a relapse, and their treatment continued for 2 more days. The level of vitamin C in the urine of poliomyelitis patients was lower than in healthy people.

In 1960, it turned out that kidney cells of macaques, which were used to grow the vaccine viruses, were infected with SV40 monkey virus, which caused cancer in hamsters. Later, dozens of studies have been published, which found this virus in human tumors. SV40 is found in mesotheliomas, brain tumors, breast tumors, large intestine tumors, lymphomas and osteosarcomas, etc. Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer of the lung pleura that cannot be treated by conventional methods, and causes death in 90% of the patients within 2 years. Each year 3,000 people get diagnosed with it in the USA, whereas until 1950 it was virtually non-existent. Asbestos is considered to be its main cause, but SV40 plays a role of carcinogen, and significantly exacerbates the effect. The virus is usually found in tumors, but not in the healthy tissue surrounding them.
Since 1963, the manufacturers have switched from the macaque kidneys to kidneys of other monkeys, and began to test vaccines for SV40. However, they tested poorly, and in some countries, including USSR and Eastern European countries, vaccines were contaminated until 1978, and possibly later. In Italy, contaminated vaccines were used until 1999, and in China and some other countries they may still be contaminated.
Since at least 98 million of Americans, and hundreds of millions more worldwide, have been vaccinated with contaminated vaccines, despite the abundance of studies proving the carcinogenicity of SV40, no one is in a hurry to recognize the connection. The topic is considered controversial, it is not funded, reviewers do not support it, which is why scientists switch to other topics, and the entire SV40 research area has been paralyzed for many years. However, even studies, that allegedly do not confirm the connection between SV40 and tumors, in fact, find SV40 (just a little of it), or find DNA of the virus instead of a virus protein, and wonder whether the presence of DNA is a sufficient carcinogenic factor. After SV40 was removed from the vaccines, it did not go anywhere, as it multiplies in human cells, is contained in semen and is transmitted sexually, as well as from mother to child.
In 1963, manufacturers switched from macaque kidney cells to monkey kidney cells. The authors of an American study found DNA of monkey cytomegalovirus in several batches of the vaccine manufactured before 1992. In addition to the monkey kidney cell, green monkey kidney cells also began to be used. Half of the vaccines based on these cells had monkey cytomegalovirus. In 1996, Japanese researchers tested 43 batched of live vaccines (MMR and OPV) from different manufacturers, and found RNA of pestivirus in 28% of them.

After 18 months of meetings, the Committee of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States has come to a conclusion that OPV increases the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome in adults by 3.5 times.

An article published in the NEJM magazine in 1988 reported that children born to mothers, who received IPV in 1959-1965, had a 13-times higher risk of neurological tumors. This was not due to SV40, but probably due to some other, still undetected infection in vaccines.

In a 2018 Mexican study, some children in three villages were given a live polio vaccine. The authors investigated how the vaccine virus spreads. On the fist day after vaccination, vaccinated children already started to infect the unvaccinated. Some vaccinated children continued to secrete the virus 70 days after vaccination. No connection between the distance to the home of vaccinated child and infection was found. That is, the risk of infection for unvaccinated child was the same regardless of the distance to the house of the vaccinated child. The authors conclude that the only way to avoid infection is to avoid using a live vaccine, or to ensure strict control measures for the vaccinated children, such as quarantine or strict hygiene protocols.

Side effect studies of IPOL inactivated vaccine lasted 48 hours only. Additionally, the vaccine was administered together with DTP vaccine.

In 2018, 33 cases of wild poliomyelitis were registered worldwide (in Afghanistan and in Pakistan), and another 104 cases of circulating vaccine virus. The probability of contracting poliovirus is virtually zero nowadays. It is only possible to get infected from a live vaccine.

According to VAERS, about 1,000 people died, and more than 500 people became disabled after the OPV vaccine in the USA since 1980, that is, since the time when the last case of poliomyelitis from the wild virus has been recorded. During the same time, more than 750 people died and more than 600 became disabled after the IPV vaccine. That is not counting the combined vaccines. These are about 1-10% of all cases.