Lawrence Solomon: The untold

story of measles
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LAWRENCE SOLOMON | April 16, 2014 7:30 PM ET

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Contrary to the public perception, measles mortality plummeted before the measles vaccine was introduced.

Several decades following the vaccines introduction, the measles

death rate rose, largely because the vaccine made adults, expectant
mothers and infants more vulnerable
Early in the last century, measles killed millions of people a year. Then, bit by bit
in countries of the developed world, the death rate dropped, by the 1960s by 98%
or more. In the U.K., it dropped by an astounding 99.96%. And then, the measles
vaccine entered the market.
After the vaccines introduction, the measles death rate continued to drop into
the 1970s. Many scientists credit the continued decline entirely to the vaccine.

Other scientists believe the vaccine played a minor role, if that, noting that most
infectious diseases similarly petered out during the 20th century, including some,
like scarlet fever, for which vaccines were never developed.
The credit for the century-long decline, scientists generally agree, goes to
improved nutrition and improved health care, side effects of the Wests growing
affluence. In the U.S., the death rate dropped by about 98%, from about 10 per
100,000 population a century ago to one fifth of one person by 1963, the year
measles vaccines made their American debut. Both before and after vaccination
started, victims tended to be poor.
A study in the American Journal of Public Health, Measles mortality in the
United States 1971-1975, found the measles death rate to be almost 10 times
higher among families whose median income was less than $5,000 than among
families whose income exceeded a modest $10,000. Families outside
metropolitan areas, who tended to have poor healthcare, had three times the
death rate.
An earlier, landmark study in the American Journal of Epidemiology by the
Center for Disease Controls Roger Barkin found similar disturbing results of
measles toll on the disadvantaged. Here race entered the picture because black
children were disproportionately victimized, not by the measles virus per se but
by poverty. A poor black child and a poor white child had the same high chance of
dying from measles, but because white children rarely lived in abject poverty,
measles claimed the blacks.
Measles didnt only discriminate by income in another study, Barkin found
that children with underlying diseases were particularly vulnerable, and that the
majority of this group were physically or mentally retarded, or both. The
realization that measles was selective in whom it killed led Barkin to emphasize
that vulnerable populations, rather than the general population, should be
targeted for measles vaccination.
In the pre-vaccine era, when the natural measles virus infected the entire
population, measles typically a benign childhood illness, as Clinical
Pediatrics described it was welcomed for providing lifetime immunity, thus
avoiding dangerous adult infections. In todays vaccine era, adults have
accounted for one quarter to one half of measles cases; most of them involve

pneumonia, one-quarter of them hospitalization.

Also importantly, measles during pregnancies have risen dangerously because
expectant mothers no longer have lifetime immunity. Todays vaccinated
expectant mothers are at risk because the measles vaccine wanes with time and
because it often fails to protect against measles.
A study in Houston of 12 pregnant women and one who had just given birth, all of
whom had measles, found one died, seven suffered pneumonia and seven
hepatitis, four went through premature labour and one lost her child in a
spontaneous abortion. A study of eight measles pregnancies in Japan found three
ended in spontaneous abortions or stillbirths while four babies were born with
congenital measles; two mothers endured pneumonia and one hemorrhagic
shock. A Los Angeles study of 58 such pregnancies found 21 ended prematurely
(three induced abortions, five spontaneous abortions and 13 preterm deliveries);
35 of the 58 mothers were hospitalized, 15 contracted pneumonia, and two died.
The danger extends to babies, whose bodies are too immature to receive measles
vaccination before age one, making them entirely dependent on antibodies
inherited from their mothers. In their first year out of the womb, infants suffer
the highest rate of measles infections and the most lasting harm. Yet vaccinated
mothers have little antibody to pass on only about one-quarter as much as
mothers protected by natural measles leaving infants vulnerable three months
after birth, according to a study last year in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
HIV-infected children, who may account for most recent measles-related child
deaths, also suffer when their mothers have been vaccinated, since HIV further
reduces the antibodies they inherit.
Factors such as these increased the death rate for adults and the very young,
helping to reverse the decline in deaths seen in previous decades, according to a
2004 study in theJournal of Infectious Disease, authored by researchers at the
Centers for Disease Control and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health.
Vaccines for measles have had spotty safety records. Soon after their
introduction, the Vital Statistics of the United States began recording deaths from

the measles vaccine, along with deaths from other vaccines. By 1970, one of the
two original measles vaccines was withdrawn in Canada and the U.S. after
causing atypical measles syndrome, a harsh disease triggering high rates of
pneumonia. In 1975, the second original vaccine was withdrawn due to 103degrees-plus fevers, among other severe side effects. Two variants of this vaccine
also proved unsatisfactory. A measles vaccine then became part of the
combination MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine in the 1980s, only to be
withdrawn in 1990 by Canada and in 1992 by the manufacturer after reports from
Canada, the U.S., Sweden and Japan blamed MMR for febrile convulsions,
meningitis, deafness and deaths. A second version of MMR, now in widespread
use, is believed safe by government officials.
Safety aside, vaccines repeatedly failed worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s. As
described in Measles Elimination in Canada, a 2004 report authored by
Canadian government officials and academics, despite virtually 100%
documented one-dose coverage in some regions, large outbreaks of measles
involving thousands of cases persisted Clearly, because of primary vaccine
failure, Canadas one-dose program was insufficient.
The solution finally arrived at adding a second dose for children initially
seemed to tame measles outbreaks. But in recent years, the new vaccination
regime, too, has been failing, with widespread outbreaks again occurring,
including among those who have received the recommended dose and especially
among infants too young to be vaccinated, and thus unprotected because their
mothers had been vaccinated. Now health experts, scrambling to find solutions,
are suggesting numerous reforms, including earlier child vaccinations and second
doses for adults.
Clearly, the science is not settled, making for parents a numbers game of the
decision to vaccinate their children. Some parents rely on the press or health
authorities to interpret the numbers. Others defy the authorities and weigh the
risks in the numbers differently, in deciding whats best for their own families.
Who are these others? According to a survey in Pediatrics, unvaccinated children
in the U.S. have a mother who is at least 30 years old, who has at least one college
degree and whose household has an annual income of at least $75,000. In the
absence of studies showing vaccinated children to be healthier than those
unvaccinated, the parents in these educated households have determined that the
numbers argue against vaccination.

Lawrence Solomon is research director of Consumer Policy

Institute.LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

The intellectual dishonesty of the vaccines didnt

save us gambit
Posted by Orac on March 29, 2010

If theres one thing about the anti-vaccine movement Ive learned over the last five or so
years, its that its virtually completely immune to evidence, science, and reason. No matter
how much evidence is arrayed against it, it always finds a way to spin, distort, or
misrepresent it to combat the evidence. Not that this is any news to readers of this blog or
other skeptical blogs that make combatting anti-vaccine propaganda one of its major
themes, but it bears repeating often. It also bears repeating and emphasizing examples of
just the sort of disingenuous and even outright deceptive techniques used by promoters of
anti-vaccine pseudoscience to sow fear and doubt about vaccines among parents. These
arguments may seem persuasive to those who have little knowledge about science or
epidemiology. Sometimes they even seemed somewhat persuasive to me; that is, at least
until I actually took the time to look into them.
One example of such a myth is the claim that vaccines didnt save us. The anti-vaccine
website Vaccine Liberation has archived a set of graphs purporting to show that the death
rates of several vaccine-preventable diseases, including whooping cough, diptheria,
measles, and polio were falling before the vaccines for each disease were introduced. The
website quotes Andrew Weil:
Scientific medicine has taken credit it does not deserve for some advances in health. Most
people believe that victory over the infectious diseases of the last century came with the invention
of immunisations. In fact, cholera, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough, etc, were in
decline before vaccines for them became available the result of better methods of sanitation,
sewage disposal, and distribution of food and water.
Bill Maher has said similar things about vaccines, and the vaccines didnt save us gambit is
a staple of anti-vaccine websites, being spread and parroted hither and yon throughout the
blogosphere by credulous anti-vaccinationists. One particularly idiotic blogger wrote:
The mythology surrounding vaccines is still pervasive, the majority of the population still believes,
in faith like fashion, that vaccines are the first line of defense against disease. The true story is
that nutrition and psychological/emotional health are the first line of defense against disease.

Vaccines are a concoction of chemical adjuvants and preservatives coupled with virus fragments
and have clearly been implicated in the astounding rise in neurological disorders around the
world, yet the popular media has embedded itself as a spokesperson for the pharmaceutical
cartel and simply does not report in any responsible way the real situation.

Ah, yes, the truly brain dead toxins gambit. Of course, it is true that better sanitation is a
good thing and has decreased the rate of transmission of some diseases for which sanitation
can do so, many infectious diseases are transmitted person-to-person through the air from
aerosolized drops of saliva from coughs and sneezes or from being deposited on objects
that people touch frequently, like doorknobs and other fomites.
The vaccines didnt save us strategy is a distortion, as I will show. The best way to
demonstrate this is to go on to the very first website that currently shows up on a Google
search for vaccines didnt save us. Although the post is from November, its the main post
thats been spreading this lie since then. Entitled Proof That Vaccines Didnt Save Us, its
one of the most breathtakingly spectacularly intellectually dishonest posts that Ive ever
seen. I say that not because it uses a common anti-vaccine distortion, but rather because it
ups the ante by adding a new one clearly designed to address the criticism of the old one. It
hides it in plain sight, too, which is why I have to give the blogger props for sheer chutzpah.
Actually, I have to give props to the person who devised the graphs used in this post,
Raymond Obomsawin, PhD. They represent the classic anti-vaccine lie, combined with some
very clever cherry picking. I wont take them all on in this post. Maybe Ill take some of them
on in a future post. What I will do, however, is to take on the first several, because they
represent a common anti-vaccine theme that is very similar to the onearchived by the
Vaccine Liberation website.
In fact, lets look at the Vaccine Liberation page first. Notice that there are six graphs, four of
which are for vaccine-preventable diseases for which widespread vaccination was
undertaken, two for which it was not. All of them show decreasing death rates from the
diseases. Wow! It seems like slam dunk evidence, doesnt it? Vaccines didnt save us! After
all, death rates were declining years before the vaccine, and they were declining for the
diseases that didnt even need a vaccine!
Death rates.
Heres the problem. Its not surprising that death rates were declining before introduction of
the vaccines. Medicine was improving. More importantly, supportive care was improving. For
example, take the case of polio. Before the introduction of the iron lung and its widespread
use, for example, if a polio patient developed paralysis of the respiratory muscles, he would
almost certainly die. The iron lung allowed such patients to live, some for decades. No doubt
improved nutrition also played a role as well. However, if you want to see the impact of
vaccines, take a look at this graph from the CDC of measles incidence, not death rates:

Similar results were seen most recently from several other vaccines, including the
Haemophilus influenza type B vaccine, as the CDC points out:
Hib vaccine is another good example, because Hib disease was prevalent until just a few years
ago, when conjugate vaccines that can be used for infants were finally developed. (The
polysaccharide vaccine previously available could not be used for infants, in whom most cases of
the disease were occurring.) Since sanitation is not better now than it was in 1990, it is hard to
attribute the virtual disappearance of Haemophilus influenzae disease in children in recent years
(from an estimated 20,000 cases a year to 1,419 cases in 1993, and dropping) to anything other
than the vaccine.
In the post to which I referred, the most intellectually dishonest graph is this one:

Note how this graph, unlike all the other graphs used to make the claim that vaccines didnt
save us actually uses incidence data, in this case from Canada from 1935 to 1983. I was
immediately suspicious of this graph, though. The reason should be obvious; the decline in
measles incidence is far too smooth. Measles incidence typically varies greatly from year to
year. Fortunately, in his chutzpah, Obomsawin included a link to the actual source of the
graph. Naturally, I couldnt resist checking it out, and I found that the link leads to
the Canadian Immunization Guide section on the measles vaccine. And this is
the actual graph from which Obomsawin allegedly extracted his data:

Note how Obomsawin left out a section of ten years (1959 to 1968) during which measles
was not nationally reportable. Also note how hes, to be charitable, cherry picked the years to
produce the impression of a smoothly declining measles incidence from 1935 to 1958. As I
said, it doesnt get much more intellectually dishonest than that, nor does it get much more
intellectually dishonest than this description of Obomsawin:
He has produced academically and/or professionally over eighty-five (85) articles, reports, policy
documents, presentations, and publications.

A search of Pubmed reveals only one peer-reviewed publication from 1978, and its only a
commentary. In any case, apparently served as Director National Office of Health
Development of the National Indian Brotherhood (AFN); Founding Chairman of NIBs
National Commission Inquiry on Indian Health; Executive Director in the California Rural
Indian Health Board; Supervisor of Native Curriculum, Government of the Yukon Territory;
and Evaluation Manager Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. None of these
are scientific positions. More tellingly, he is currently engaged with government funding as
Senior Researcher relative to establishing a Public Sector Policy on Traditional Medicine in
Canada. My translation? Hes somehow managed to get a government grant to try to
promote traditional medicine in Canada. Apparently, the Canadian government has its own
problems with government money going to promote unscientific and pseudoscientific
nonsense of the type that NCCAM promotes. In any case, besides Obomsawins
disingenuous and intellectually bankrupt distortions of incidence data used to serve his
apparently anti-vaccine agenda, he has no qualifications to speak of with regard to science
or epidemiology that I can find.
It also turns out that Dr. Obomsawin has some othershall we say?unconventional beliefs
as well. For instance, he is approvingly featured on that aggregator of all things quackery

and woo, Whale.to, where he expresses anti-vaccine views, HIV/AIDS denialism, and
admiration for Royal Rife. So what we have here is a woo-meister using cherry picked points
on a graph to give a false impression that the measles vaccine was not responsible for the
dramatic decline in measles incidence in Canada in the 1960s. Quelle surprise!
Another rebuttal to the idea that vaccines didnt reduce the incidence of the diseases against
which they were designed comes from the simple observation that, as vaccine uptake falls,
the disease vaccinated against returns. Always. This is described by the CDC quite well:
Finally, we can look at the experiences of several developed countries after they let their
immunization levels drop. Three countries Great Britain, Sweden, and Japan cut back the use
of pertussis vaccine because of fear about the vaccine. The effect was dramatic and immediate.
In Great Britain, a drop in pertussis vaccination in 1974 was followed by an epidemic of more
than 100,000 cases of pertussis and 36 deaths by 1978. In Japan, around the same time, a drop
in vaccination rates from 70% to 20%-40% led to a jump in pertussis from 393 cases and no
deaths in 1974 to 13,000 cases and 41 deaths in 1979. In Sweden, the annual incidence rate of
pertussis per 100,000 children 0-6 years of age increased from 700 cases in 1981 to 3,200 in
1985. It seems clear from these experiences that not only would diseases not be disappearing
without vaccines, but if we were to stop vaccinating, they would come back.
The United Kingdom is an excellent illustration of this trend. Back in the mid-1990s, it
declared measles as under control, thanks to the vaccine. Then came Andrew Wakefield and
a credulous, sensationalistic British press to spread his message that the MMR vaccine
causes autism. The result was that measles came roaring back in the U.K. to the point that
two years ago measles was declared endemic again there.
The Vaccine Liberation graphs and the even more deceptive graphs produced by Dr.
Obomsawin are typical of anti-vaccine arguments. First, they contain enough of a grain of
truth to them to sound plausible. After all, better nutrition and better sanitation have
decreased the incidence of many infectious diseases. But they were not enough. Indeed,
part of the reason we vaccinated against some diseases is because sanitation wasnt
enough. Was sanitation so much worse in the late 1980s before the Hib vaccine was
introduced than it is now? No. Was it probably even that much worse in the 1960s, when the
measles vaccine was introduced? Probably not. Yet, such is the myth that the anti-vaccine
movement would have parents believe. Such is the intellectually dishonest nonsense they
promote.
Truly, they are the pro-disease movement, more than anything else.
ADDENDUM: Steve Novella has pointed out that there is a better version of the graph in this
reference, and he was kind enough to send it to me, given that, for whatever reason, my
university doesnt have a subscription to the relevant journal:

(Click for full-sized version.)

Note how this graph looks at raw case numbers and shows 40,000 cases the year before the
ten year interruption in the data. All in all, its a much clearer representation of the data than
the first graph, showing a clear drop that occurred during the ten year period, in the middle of
which the measles vaccine was introduced. It also shows another obvious drop in measles
incidence later on in the 1990s, when the two-dose measles vaccine program was started.
As for why it appears that there is a steep dip in the first graph before the ten year gap, that
appears to be an artifact. There is no data for 1959, but the line appears to go to a datapoint
at 1959 or 1960. My guess is that whoever made the graph simply set the value for 1959 to .
In other words, the graph is a rather poor representation of the data, and the Canadian
government would do well to replace that graph on its website with something more like the
second graph, which makes the point much more clearly.

Mark Blaxill and Dan Olmsted: Merrily confusing

correlation with causation for polio
Posted by Orac on September 23, 2011
(332)
More

Ive been following the anti-vaccine movement for nearly a decade now, first as a regular on
the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative and then, beginning almost seven years ago,
blogging away. Along the way, somehow I stumbled into the role of countering the

pseudoscience, misinformation, and nonsense promoted by the anti-vaccine movement. Its

dangerous misinformation, too. For instance, in the U.K., misinformation claiming that the
MMR vaccine somehow contributes to autism, a lie based on the work of Andrew Wakefield,
has led the MMR uptake rate there to plummet. As a result measles, once vanquished back
in the 1990s thanks to the MMR has come roaring back. Here in the U.S., there are areas
where there are pockets of low vaccine uptake, and as a result vaccine preventable diseases
are making a comeback in some areas. We can only hope that the relatively high vaccine
uptake rates elsewhere prevent those pockets from enlarging, spreading, and metastasizing.
Over the last decade or so, if theres one thing Ive learned over all that time covering the
anti-vaccine movement, its that its generates some masters of cherry picking and
obfuscation. Ive also learned that the favored topic of the anti-vaccine movement is to
conflate correlation with causation, thus trying to lure readers who might not have a scientific
background into confusing correlation with causation. The most infamous example of this
technique is, of course, thimerosal in vaccines. Apparent autism incidence has risen
considerably since the early 1990s, largely due to expanded diagnostic criteria, diagnostic
substitution, and more intensive screening. The vaccine schedule was also expanded during
the 1990s, with an increasing use of vaccines containing thimerosal as a preservative.
Because thimerosal contains mercury, it provided a convenient bogeyman ingredient that
anti-vaccine activists could blame for the apparent autism epidemic. In 2011 (actually, as
early as 2005), it is obvious that mercury in vaccines is not a cause of any sort of autism
epidemic, given that thimerosal was removed from vaccines by the end of 2001 and autism
incidence has not declined. If mercury in vaccines were a major cause of autism, one would
expect that removing the thimerosal from vaccine would lead to a rapid decline in autism
incidence. Wed even expect that this decrease would be evident within three to five years,
given that autism is commonly diagnosed at around age three or four. No matter how the
anti-vaccine movement tries to parse, this has not happened.
Whats more interesting (well, sometimes) is to watch anti-vaccine activists apply the same
sort of flaws in science and reasoning to other aspects of vaccine science. I just saw a
whopper of an example of this in what is now a four-part investigation on the anti-vaccine
crank blog Age of Autism. Its written by Mark Not A Scientist, Not A Doctor Blaxill and Dan
Where are the autistic Amish? Olmsted. Blaxill is rather amusing because, alone of
bloggers, he loves verbosity even more than Orac does. Where Orac might sometimes use
3,000 words where 1,500 might serve, Blaxill would use 6,000 words to say exactly nothing.
This might explain why the example of mistakenly confusing correlation with causation that
Im about to discuss was mercifully divided into four parts; that is, four parts so far. Ive been
watching from afar, waiting to see how many parts Blaxill would throw in, and this might
represent premature blogging, but, hey, its Friday, and I rarely post on the weekend
anymore; so its now or wait until next week, and I dont want to wait until next week.

So lets take a look at the not-so-Glimmer Twins expose on the polio vaccine:

The Age of Polio: How an Old Virus and New Toxins Triggered a Man-Made
Epidemic Part 1, The Wrong Narrative

The Age of Polio: How an Old Virus and New Toxins Triggered a Man-made
Epidemic Part 2, A Gypsy Moth Flaps Its Wings

The Age of Polio: How an Old Virus and New Toxins Triggered a Man-made
Epidemic Part 3, Making Sense of Campobello

The Age of Polio: How an Old Virus and New Toxins Created a Man-made Epidemic
Part 4, Post-War Epidemics and the Triumph of Vaccination

The Age of Polio: How an Old Virus and New Toxins Triggered a Man-made
Epidemic Part 5, Before
The five parts thus far can best be viewed as a massive confusion of correlation with
causation, which is, as far as Im concerned, the sine qua non of anti-vaccine arguments,
such as they are. First, B&O (Blaxill and Olmsted) begin with an ominous prediction:
Polio is the iconic epidemic, its conquest one of medicines heroic dramas. The narrative is by
now familiar: Random, inexplicable outbreaks paralyzed and killed thousands of infants and
children and struck raw terror into 20th century parents, triggering a worldwide race to identify the
virus and develop a vaccine. Success ushered in the triumphant era of mass vaccination. Now
polios last hideouts amid the poorest of the poor in Asia and Africa are under relentless siege by,
among others, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Eradication is just a matter of time, and
many more illnesses will soon meet the same fate.
But based on our research over the past two years, we believe this narrative is wrong and
wrong for reasons that go beyond mere historical interest. The misunderstanding of polio has
warped the public health response to modern illnesses in ways that actually make them harder to
prevent, control, and treat.

Polio has always bothered anti-vaccinationists. The reason, of course, is because it is

unequivocally a success story for vaccines that demonstrates the power of vaccination to
alleviate suffering. Anti-vaccine activists think they are the master of narrative, whereby they
tell anecdotes and stories about children seemingly regressing right after vaccines, but
opposing that narrative is an even more powerful narrative about the elimination of iron lungs
that were so common in the 1940s and 1950s. In an amazingly short period of time, after the
introduction of a vaccine for polio, gone were the iron lungs. Gone were the terrifying
outbreaks of polio. Gone were the yearly summer warning signs about swimming pools.
Most people viewed this as a good thing.
B&O apparently do not.

No, its not that they want children to be paralyzed due to polio. What they dont like is that
the success of vaccination campaigns against polio gave scientists confidence that, yes,
vaccines can make a difference in the health of children. Of course, we already had the
example of smallpox, where vaccination ultimately led to the only complete eradication of a
disease in history that Im aware of. B&O are not pleased about this:
But based on our research over the past two years, we believe this narrative is wrong and
wrong for reasons that go beyond mere historical interest. The misunderstanding of polio has
warped the public health response to modern illnesses in ways that actually make them harder to
prevent, control, and treat.
The reality, we believe, is that the virus itself was just half the epidemic equation necessary but
not sufficient to create The Age of Polio. Outbreaks were not caused solely by poliovirus the
microbe was an ancient and heretofore harmless intestinal bug but by its interaction with a
new toxin, most often innovative pesticides used to treat fruits and vegetables.

And thus the groundwork for a beautiful case of confusing correlation with causation is laid.
This confusion begins with a description of the invasion of gypsy moths in the mid-19th
century. At the time, gypsy moths were a real problem, and a frantic effort to find ways to
control them was undertaken. What worked in killing these moths, it turned out, was adding
lead to arsenic compounds commonly used to kill other insect pests. This new mixture was
effective in eliminating gypsy moth larvae and was apparently deployed on a large scale in
New England in 1893 and 1894. Confusing correlation with causation like the masters they
are at doing that, B&O opine:
Fortunately or so it seemed a scientist working for the commission quickly found a solution.
Adding lead to arsenic proved lethal to the larvae, and the new compound was sprayed on trees
in and around Boston starting in 1893. It quickly proved its value against not just gypsy moths but
all manner of agricultural pests. In fact, it worked better against codling moths, the source of the
proverbial worm in the apple.
In the case of insects which do not readily yield to Paris Green, a different substance, used with
great success by the Gypsy Moth Commission, with which it originated, may be applied, wrote
George H. Perkins, state entomologist of Vermont in his annual report for 1893, published in early
1894. This is arsenate of lead; sodic arsenate 29.93%, lead acetate 70.07%, are mixed in water,
from which arsenate of lead is soon formed.[ii]
Something else of note happened in 1893 in the Boston area. Two doctors used to seeing
sporadic cases of paralysis in infants became concerned when the small caseload suddenly
increased, to 23. There had only been six in the same September-November time span the year
before.

Does this sound familiar? It should. Fast forward 100 years, and B&O did exactly the same
thing with mercury in vaccines and autism, and they did the same sloppy job. This time
around, they are trying to claim that polio epidemics and outbreaks were not due solely to
the polio virus itself, but to an unholy combination of the polio virus and arsenic-based
pesticides. They make the case explicit by listing a whole bunch of agricultural areas where
outbreaks occurred 1893 and 1910 and speculate that some combination of the polio virus
and lead arsenate-based pesticides was responsible for the paralysis that polio caused.
They even go so far as to spin an elaborate tale about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his
battle with polio. Because FDR was 39 at the time he contracted polio, his was an unusual
case. In particular B&O blather on and on about how Roosevelt happened to be in the
worlds commercial blueberry capital at harvest time and ominously intone that it must have
been more than just the polio virus. It must also have been the lead arsenate used as a
pesticide, implying hilariously:
None of this shows FDR eating a mound of fresh blueberries treated with lead arsenate in August
1921, but it seems more probable than not.
Yep, it was the blueberries plus polio that paralyzed Roosevelt, not just polio alone! Why?
Because lead and arsenic can cause neurological damage. Seriously. Thats B&Os
argument. Never mind that lead and arsenic poisoning dont produce a syndrome like polio.
Never mind that polio has probably been known for hundreds of years, possibly as far back
as ancient Egypt. At the very least, polio was known back in the 18th century. Moreover,
polio wasnt confined to areas where agriculture might bring people into contact with
pesticides, lead-arsenate-based or otherwise. It swept through cities as well, including New
York City, where 2,500 cases were reported in 1907. In 1916, there were over 2,000 deaths
from polio in New York City alone. (Yep, I can read Wikipedia, too.)
In fact, some of the worst epidemics of polio occurred in the 1940s and 1950s, when lead
arsenate pesticide use was on the wane. So how do B&O explain that inconvenient
observation? Easy. they pivot and switch to a different pesticide. Yes, were talking DDT,
baby! DDT was introduced in the late 1940s and soon supplanted lead arsenate-containing
pesticides. Just as B&O borrowed from the mercury playbook, in which they try to claim that
mercury poisoning produces symptoms just like autism and now tried to claim that, because
lead arsenate can cause neurological damage, it must have been a combination of lead
arsenate pesticides plus polio that really caused those epidemics of infantile paralysis (and
hence vaccines didnt save us). Now B&O pivot seamlessly to DDT, amazing the world at
how two such different chemicals can somehow interact with the polio virus in the same way
in order to produce paralysis. Its magic:
In 1949, the same year as the Life article, Drs. Morton S. Biskind and Irving Bieber published
DDT Poisoning A New Symptom With Neuropsychiatric Manifestations in the American
Journal of Psychotherapy. By far the most disturbing of all the manifestations are the subjective
reactions and the extreme muscular weakness, they reported.[ii]

In subsequent papers and testimony, Biskind linked DDT directly to cases of poliomyelitis
including a Dec. 12, 1950, statement to the Select Committee to Investigate the Use of
Chemicals in Food Products, United States House of Representatives.[iii] He quoted another
doctor that wherever DDT had been used intensively against polio, not only was there an
epidemic of the syndrome I have described but the incidence of polio continued to rise and in fact
appeared where it had not been before.

Amazing how two different chemicals with entirely different mechanisms of action apparently
cause the same thing. The problem, of course, is that, just as mercury poisoning doesnt
cause a syndrome that looks like autism, neither DDT nor lead arsenate produce syndromes
that look like polio. DDT, for instance, does not cause paralysis. In fact, its mechanism
of neurotoxicity at high doses is fairly well known. The symptoms it causes tend to be mild at
anything other than very high doses. In the case of acute exposures to DDT, the weakness
and paralysis can occasionally (but unreliably) be observed, tend to be of only distal
extremities (hands and feet), and require very high exposures to DDT, exposures far above
residues that could possibly be left on fruits and vegetables, even at the height of DDT use.
At intermediate exposures, the effects tend to me more along the lines of parasthesias and
nausea. Remember, too, that by low, I still mean pretty hefty doses relative to residues on
foods. Finally, in a very superficial way, if you really, really want it to and squint hard enough
at the comparisons, you can make some of the symptoms of DDT poisoning sound a little bit
like symptoms of polio, but you have to be asshall we say?creative as Age of Autism
flacks were when they mapped the symptoms of autism to those of mercury poisoning as a
means of proving that autism is due to mercury poisoning from vaccines.
In fact, in part 5 (and you knew it was coming), B&O try to pull mercury into the mix of lead
arsenates and DDT as well. More importantly, they seem implicitly to recognize that
their graph of U.S.-only outbreaks with time in part 2 was incomplete; so they fill it in with
outbreaks from elsewhere in the world in a graph here:

Note that they put the line at 1893 representing the introduction of lead arsenate insecticides
in Boston, but this makes no sense from a scientific or epidemiological standpoint. If they
really wanted to make the case, they would have to try to correlate the introduction of lead
arsenate insecticides with polio outbreaks for each and every location that they examine.
Lumping them together on a graph like this might look persuasive to people with no scientific
background, but epidemiologists and scientists would laugh uproariously or shake their
heads in disbelief (or both) at such amazing ignorance. After all, what is the rationale for
placing a line at 1893? Certainly there is no obvious break point or change in slope of the
line that began at 1893; one could just as plausibly, if not more so, place such a line back
around 1880 based on the curve alone. However, the line at 1893 draws the eye to it and
produces an illusion of a definite break point where the line isand B&O put that line there
based on a historical event, not on any detection of a true break point in the curve. Its bad
math of a sort that Mark and David Geier used five years ago, as was so well explained by
Mark Chu-Carroll.
B&O might as well try to correlate the number of pirates with global warming or
the introduction of compact discs in the U.S. with the rise in autism. Or the introduction of
thimerosal in vaccines with the autism epidemic. Oh, wait. They just did.
Truly, B&O are a one trick pony.

So why on earth did B&O engage in such napalm-grade burning stupid, trying to claim that
somehow pesticides mixed with the polio virus to produce epidemics of infantile paralysis.
The reason, it seems to me, is simple. Their claims otherwise notwithstanding, B&O are
profoundly anti-vaccine. Unfortunately for them, the elimination of polio is a major success
story for vaccines and vaccine science. Vaccination against polio eliminated polio in the
United States in short order, as it does wherever high levels of vaccine uptake can be
achieved. Its an iconic example of how effective a public health measure vaccines are and
how many lives can be saved, not to mention cases of paralysis prevented. They have to
tear it down if they are to convince people that vaccines are harmful and cause autism. After
all, to anti-vaccine loons like B&O, no matter how much they deny it or try to claim otherwise,
its all about the vaccines. Its always been about the vaccines. It always will always be about
the vaccines. Also, if they can prove that some environmental influence like pesticides
somehow interacted with a virus to cause epidemics, then, in their mind apparently, they can
claim plausibility that vaccines somehow cause autism.
I think. B&Os reasoning is quite unclear on this other than their desire to try to discredit the
polio vaccine.
And if it takes some conflation of correlation with causation, either intentional or not, so be it.
Whether B&O know what they are doing or not, I really dont know. If they do know what
theyre doing as far as statistical and mathematical analysis go, the only possible conclusion
is that they are intentionally trying to deceive. If they dont know what theyre doing, then the
conclusion must be that theyre hopelessly scientifically and mathematically illiterate. I
suppose they could be a little of both, but personally I favor the conclusion that theyre
hopelessly scientifically and mathematically illiterate. Even better, B&O promise more to
come:
But none of these reached the scale, or occurred with the frequency, of poliomyelitis outbreaks
after 1893 and the invention of lead arsenate. This leads to the second test of our theory once
lead arsenate and DDT disappeared from the scene, why did poliomyelitis outbreaks continue,
albeit in diminished fashion?
Stay tuned.
Unfortunately, calling B&Os crackpot idea about pesticides and polio a theory or even a
hypothesis is stretching the term beyond recognition. More importantly: Does anyone want
to speculate how theyll explain this one? My guess: Theyll try to correlate the introduction of
mercury-containing vaccines to areas of the world where polio outbreaks still occur.
ADDENDUM: I cant believe I didnt find this in all my Googling, but its been pointed out in
the comments below that B&O cribbed their entire hypothesis fromWhale.to! In fact, the
Whale.to article is an even more exquisite example of confusing correlation with causation

and cherry picking three insecticides to add together to give a curve that looks like the
incidence curve of polio in the middle part of the 20th century. It almost might be worth a post
itself!
Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted, you do remember Scopies Law, dont you?