July 21, 2020 • 45 mins
For more than half of the 20th century parents in the industrialized world were freaked out by an unseen waster of youth, the poliovirus. It spread easily and could paralyze children for life or even kill them. Its effects were so horrible that humanity set about ridding if from the Earth.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(01:10):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryan over there, and this is Stuff you Should
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You won't regret pre ordering the book. How about that?
And why? Because you get a special gift. Not only
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we that's right, and we got great illustrations by Carl Minardo.
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super excited about it and we appreciate your support. Yep.
So you can go preorder that book everywhere. Okay, um wow, Chuck,
we're getting really good at that. Now let's talk polio.
(02:36):
So we're not good at it's transitioning. No, we're not.
We never have been. Um So polio I was when
I was researching this, I kept running across whenever I
typed in polio, you know that auto suggest in the
search bar um, it would say things like does polio
still exist? And it absolutely does. But it's one of
(02:56):
those diseases that we're really really lead close to eradicating
thanks to UH an extraordinarily robust vaccination campaign UM one
of the first really big vaccination campaigns UM in the
history of the world, and it was also one of
the most successful too, so much that we're down to
just three countries. I believe Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are
(03:20):
the only three countries where polio is still endemic, where
like you can just walk around and catch polio. Um.
And there are outbreaks in other countries. We'll talk about
exactly why. But it went from this global worldwide problem
at the beginning of the twentieth century down to three
countries and we're like that close to to getting rid
(03:41):
of it forever from the planet basically. Yeah. So um.
And it's interesting to to read about polio and it's
vaccine during the middle of our own pandemic with coronavirus
and COVID nineteen because there's there's a lot of similarities
and overlap. It's interesting there's a pandemic. Yeah, that's why
(04:01):
I haven't seen you in three months. I know. Are
you getting used to it yet? I mean sure, just
as anyone gets used to something that stinks. Oh thank you.
I don't mean not seeing you, I mean everything but short,
that's part of that, that's for sure, part of that.
But it is weird talking about it, for sure, because
there are some some real similarities. For sure. Yeah. So
(04:25):
polio is the disease. Uh, But polio virus is the
antio virus, which is a virus of the intestinal tract,
which is an RNA virus like COVID nineteen. Um. But
the disease itself, like covid is the sickness, polio is
the disease, as coronavirus is the poliovirus. I mixed that
(04:47):
all up, but I think it's right. So coronavirus is
to covid what poliovirus is to polio. Yeah, that's the
cleaner way to say it, right. And then apparently polio specifically,
if you say, um, oh this person, my grandfather had polio, um,
you're not talking about just a polio infection. There's a
(05:08):
specific kind of disease that you can get from the
polio virus where it attacks your central nervous system and
can cause all sorts of problems. And that specifically is
what somebody's saying when they say they had polio, which
is in that case called polio mielitis, Which is what
people are talking about when they say when they're talking
about polio, the disease. Yeah, because a lot of people
(05:31):
got the poliovirus UM didn't know it had no symptoms.
Your body kicks in the gear, that immune system just
fights it off. You got those antibodies for life, and
that's it. That happened a lot um. But yeah, like
you said, if you if you get polio, that means
that it hits your your central nervous system. And we'll
(05:52):
get more into detail about all this, but UM polio
virus is where it colonizes is in the throat and
the digest of system. And we're talking about uh, your
feces being contaminated or infectious and contaminated and your saliva
depending on how you get it. So there's basically two
(06:13):
ways to pass it along, either with your poop or
with your saliva. UM. And the fecal transmission is much
more prevalent, especially in the developing world because of poor sanitation,
and like if you look at just the natural history
of the virus, of the poliovirus, it's it's ideal is
to just replicate, right, That's the whole purpose of the viruses,
(06:36):
Just make as many copies of itself as possible and
so living in the water um, the drinking water supply
and then infecting people UM, infecting their gut, replicating being
passed as feces back into the water supply to infect
other people, but without you know, really developing symptoms and people.
That's ideal for for the virus itself. UM. Every once
(07:01):
in a while though, I thinking about one quarter of
people who become infected the the the poliovirus will enter
the blood stream, It'll leave the gut and enter the
blood stream and will produce what's called viremia, where um
it infects the blood, it starts to infect other organs
and those people will develop flu like symptoms for a
couple of days. That sees, that's still not that bad.
(07:24):
Probably nothing we would amount at a global eradication campaign against.
It's just that in a very small proportion of people
who become infected, the poliovirus not only infects the blood stream,
it actually travels to the central nervous system and attacks that.
And then that is the real problem that comes from polio.
What we were talking about earlier, poliomyelitis. Yeah, and no
(07:46):
one knows why that happens. Uh, no one knows. I
mean basically they just think it's it is completely random.
I mean, that's that seems to be the case of
whether or not you get the paralytic version or not. Uh,
it is not many people, but when you spread those
(08:06):
numbers out, it can be a lot of people. So
when you look at numbers like uh point five percent
of everyone infected UM have paralysis. If you look at
a human population, that's a lot of people, right, Um Yeah,
when when Yeah, just that very small percent of everybody
(08:27):
or a ton of people around the world, and for
centuries have you know, an infection. It does add up
big time for sure enough. So and so not just
the number also, chuck, but just the devastating effects that
UM polio can have, poliomyelitis can have on a person.
It's um, it's a really bad jam because not only
(08:49):
can it cause what's called a cute flaccid paralysis, where
your your motor neurons or your muscles are attacked so
that you can't you your muscle and your um, your
limb starts to wither, maybe you just become fully paralyzed.
It can also UM travel to your brain and affect
(09:09):
things like you're swallowing, reflex or breathing, and so it
can very very easily kill you when it starts to
to progress to the central nervous system phase of poliomyelitis. Yeah,
and there's no treatment for polio UM and we'll talk
about the vaccine here in a minute to a great extent.
But um, it's just like any other virus. You let it,
(09:32):
you let it run its course. Um, your body will
probably do the right thing and step up and fight
it back and not let it get to your blood stream.
But like you said, even if it gets to your
blood stream, you might just get sick. Um. But that
point five percent chance that you actually have the paralytic version. Um,
there is no cure for that. No, which was weird.
(09:53):
I was like, so what you're you know, you're just
a goner if you get pilot poliomyelitis or that's what
the case was. And apparently your body can still fight
it off. You can get polio myelitis and if you
receive the proper care um. One of the one of
the better um inventions to combat polio is called the
iron lung, which would breathe for you using a bellows
(10:14):
and negative and positive pressure to move your chest up
and down. Um, Like that could keep you alive long
enough to give you a chance for your body to
fight off the infection with your immune system. But like,
that's not a cure. That's just keeping you alive long
enough for your body to fight it off. It was
really surprising to me that there's still to this day
(10:35):
no treatment for polio. Yeah, I can't help but think
of the Big Lebowski when I think of iron lungs.
Who is in an iron lung in that Remember when
they go to visit the they think the kid um
stole the car or they found it that they found
the kids school work in the back of the car,
(10:56):
and they got to his house and it was this
this former TV writer huho, who's inside and he's in
an iron lung. I genuinely don't remember that part. I'm
sure I'm being shouted at by some of our listeners,
but sorry, it was played for laughs. The one I
think of is um Ralph Macchio and the Outsiders after
he gets burned from running in that house to save
(11:17):
those in iron lung. That's what I thought, and so
I looked it up to verify, and there's no mention
of it. So I guess when I was a kid,
I just made up that Ralph Maccio is in an
iron lung and the Outsiders. If I'm not mistaken, he
was just had a I guess what you would call
a respirator today, Okay, but wasn't then. Yeah, I think
(11:38):
he was. I think he was faced down and traction
and suspended and on a respirator. If I'm not mistaken, well,
my my tiny little impressionable brain translated that into an
iron lung. That's okay, stay gold, my brain hasn't gotten
much better, Chuck, Sure it has so. Um So you
can survive. You can fend off a polio infection, even
(12:01):
with polio myelitis. But the problem is that very frequently
would would not let you survive. Um, it would kill you.
And so, like we said, just mounting this campaign became
kind of paramount. But polio is tough because they think
it's such an old virus. They think it's been around
(12:21):
for a very very long time. And that's kind of
evidence by the fact that polio is um it's only
humans that that it lives in and tries to replicate,
and there's it's not like other viruses where there's like
reservoir animals that it can um, it can hang out
in and and and just basically stay alive until it
can infect a human. It's just humans basically, although there
(12:45):
was a case in nineteen sixty six of some chimps
becoming infected from humans with polio. In that sense, yeah, uh,
And you know, if we need to um. If you
need to go over viruses again, folks, look no further
than the recent stuff you should know Classic from March
(13:05):
twenty Virus Talk with Josh and Chuck. That was from
March twenty, the rerelease What do you what do we
call those classics? Select? Aren't you like one half of
this podcast? I am, but I call them classics in
my brain. I don't know what the official branding is. Selects. Yeah,
(13:26):
like we have hands selected this classic episode. Yeah, classics.
I think if you scramble the words selects, classics is
in there somewhere, but I think spelled. But yeah, that
one just came out recently. So that'll catch up on
what a virus is. But should we take a break
and talk a little bit about the ancient history? Perhaps
a folio? Yes, all right, we'll be right back everybody.
(13:48):
I want to learn about how to take the perfect
all about fractals, think it's un the Lizzie Border murders,
that kind of all runs on the plane everything we
should know. Ward up, Jerry, all right, so I mentioned
(14:21):
ancient history. Um, we don't know exactly where polio started
because old diseases have shoddy record keeping. Um, they just
didn't keep up with stuff like they do now, but
we do. You know, if you looked at some of
the mummies in ancient Egypt, you might see some limb
deformities that could have been polio. U. There are UM
(14:46):
paintings on walls and things that maybe could be polio.
But this is us extrapolating this from a modern lens. Um.
They you know, those limbs could have been smashed in
a you know, heavy object accidents as well a combine accident.
Well I was going to say that, but they didn't
have combines, so um, a barge accident, how about that?
(15:10):
So UM. Like, over the years, people were studying polio,
and I mean we kind of started to get a
pretty good handle on it. We didn't understand what viruses were,
so we didn't know it was a virus until the
twentieth century. No, the twentieth century, I think eight are old.
Frank Carl Landsteiner, who developed UM blood types, was also
(15:31):
the one of the two people who identified the polio
virus in nineteen o eight, but other people had contributed
up to that point. Like it was recognized as UM
being an epidemic disease, that there were outbreaks that kind
of stuff, and but everybody was kind of okay with
polio existing, like it was not something that we were
happy about, but nothing that like there was this great
(15:55):
urgency to cure until about the beginning of the twentieth century.
And they think that that people living together, close in
close quarters, urbanization and better sanitation lead to polio outbreaks
that hadn't been seen before because the better sanitation produced
(16:15):
a population that had not been exposed to polio virus. Yeah,
that seems counterintuitive, it does, but it makes sense because
if you've got a virgin population, that thing can just
hop from person to person to person, whereas if you
have an endemic population where any proportion of the population
is already immune from having been exposed to the virus before.
(16:36):
Because don't forget, remember we said a lot of people,
most people, I think people who are infected never even
show any signs or symptoms. So if you don't have
people like that anymore because of improved sanitation, but you
also don't have a vaccine program, you've got a virgin population,
that virus can just run rampant in and that's familiar
(16:57):
that it does. That's what started happening in the early
twentie century, and it started scaring the Bejesus out of
parents because it was largely affecting kids. Yeah, and it
happened in clusters, UM because it was so easily transmitted,
and like you said, with the virgin population, that would
be these big outbreaks and that causes panic, uh with
(17:17):
parents especially UM. In nineteen sixteen in the US, six
thousand people died from polio in about twenty seven thousand
paralytic cases, UM ninety two paralytic cases. And also we
said in our in our book, you remember in the Mr.
Potato Head chapter that polio outbreak is what made Mr
(17:40):
potato Head one of the big, the first big, because
so many kids were We're stuck at home that summer
because of a polio outbreak. That's right, and that that's
exactly what happened, because you know, kind of mirroring what
we're seeing now is they would shut down parks, in
swimming pools and schools in public events. UM and America
(18:03):
rallied behind it back then and said, yeah, that's what
we should do for the good of the public. UM.
It's not happening now, unfortunately, but back then everyone got
on board. UM. Between I think a quarter of a
million and six hundred and fifty thousand Americans. Um, we're
alive at any given time in the twentieth century that
(18:24):
had lifelong uh issues caused by polio. Right, that's a
lot of people. I mean, that's a real problem. You know.
That's not over the twentieth century, that's at any given
point in the twentieth century, right, Yeah, at any given point.
So you can kind of understand why around then, you know,
especially when when people were seeing entire classrooms of children
(18:48):
struck down, you know, with polio, some of whom you know,
went on to have lifelong mobility issues, some of whom died.
Um that that was that scared parents a lot, and
it's scared everybody so much so that it kind of
laid the groundwork for this big national and actually an
international push toward coming up with, if not a treatment,
(19:11):
which they tried at first and found that was not happening,
then a vaccine for polio. And and that's exactly what
we did. Yeah. Uh. And a big driver for this
vaccine was a little organization called the March of Dimes,
which was originally founded by Franklin Roosevelt, was called the
(19:31):
National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis And I never knew this,
but they had a march and people would send dimes
as donations to the organization, and that's why it's called
the March of Dimes. It's amazing. And because of that,
because of all those individuals sending in dimes to the
March of Dimes or to them, the Infantile Paralysis Foundation, UM,
(19:56):
the that laid the groundwork for the financial support for
all of this research that was going on, specifically for
the research of one of the guys who came up
with a vaccine for polio. Because we actually have more
than one UM. But the most famous of them all
was Jonas Salk, who came into the picture in about
(20:16):
and because of those dimes that were contributed by average,
everyday people, because those that money directly funded his research.
He very famously refused to patent the UM the vaccine
that he came up with for polio and just said,
this belongs to the world. Yeah, just like a farmer, bros.
(20:38):
Same exactly, same morals, right right, UM, so this is
a good chance. I'm glad when we get to do
shows like this because um, Jonas Salt gets so much
credit and deservedly so as a genuinely great human that
walked the planet. Um. But a lot of people had
chipped in over the years to get this vaccine where
(20:59):
it was. And we get a chance to talk about
those people now, which is always fun. UM. In the
nineteen forties, late nineteen forties, John Franklin Enders, Thomas huckle
Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins, all three serial killers. That's right,
they figured out how to grow the poliovirus culture in
(21:19):
a lab, which if you want a vaccine, that's the
first big step is to grow that culture in a lab.
And they won in nineteen fifty four for those efforts. Uh,
they won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, which is great. Yeah,
it was um so the first that was a huge
first step. Like you were saying, the people had tried
to create a vaccine even before that first step, though,
(21:43):
I guess the old fashioned way. UM. Brody and Colemer
John Colemer, I don't know Brody's first name, but they
when they were working together, UM, they created a vaccine
that actually killed uh, five of their ten thousand test subjects,
which was not um. It wasn't good. Uh, and it
actually kind of set the whole the whole vaccine UM
(22:06):
movement back a hint. But astoundingly, it didn't kill it.
And rather than saying like, no, we're not going to
try this, people looked at polio cases and said this
is so bad. We need to keep pushing forward despite
that and so UM. By the time Salt came along
and started working on his vaccine, you know, people were
(22:28):
already a little jumpy about the idea UM, and it
was made all the more so that he was trying
UH an unproven form of vaccine, whereas most vaccines used
UM attenuated virus, which is it's live, but it's a
weekend version of the virus, and it's in a UM.
(22:48):
It's it's in a much smaller dose. What what Salt
was suggesting, what he wanted to use was a an
inactivated virus, which is it's dead in the in the
sense that can't replicate no longer. It's been treated with formaldehyde.
But yeah, it's it's a huge dose of it. So
if it's not dead, you're in big trouble. Yeah, And
(23:10):
it was a big deal of the time because it
was a new science and a lot of scientists said
that I don't think you could administer this much even
uh killed virus safely. And so what you had was
a couple of different things going on, a couple of
potential pathways to take. Was give a little bit of
(23:31):
that weakened virus that's still alive to kids, which we
know is going to infect them with a virus. So
it's gonna generate those antibodies, but hopefully it's not gonna
be strong enough to get to that central nervous system
point of infection or super dose them with this inactive virus,
and that's going to cause antibodies in the blood, so
(23:53):
that will prevent polio from happening. That will keep it
from going to the central nervous system. They knew that, uh,
and that's great news. But boy, you better be sure
that that virus is perfect, because if it's not, then
you're in big trouble. Right And not only not only
that that's that's a big risk with it, but if
(24:15):
you do it right, if the risk goes very close
to zero. The other problem with it is because it
produces antibodies in the blood stream, that leaves out the gut,
which means that you could still be infected by polio
and colonize your gut and replicate and be passed in
your feces. But because you have those antibodies in your
in your blood stream, it's going to protect you from
(24:37):
ever developing poliomyelitis. Yeah, they were trying to stop the disease,
not stop the virus. Right. Well, it depends on the paradigm,
Like the one that actually infects you with polio is
going to prevent any poliovirus from ever colonizing your gut
ever again, Um, so it depends on which approach you
(24:59):
were coming from. And over the course of some you know,
a couple of decades, both came into use enough around
the world that we actually have come close to eradicating
polio thanks to this combination of both of them. Yeah,
so salk Um developed a two part test that he
used on himself and volunteers, and then in nineteen fifty
(25:23):
four you had to you know, this was you had
to get a massive pr campaign behind this, like, uh,
in a big way because they had to vaccinate a
million children. They were called the Polio Pioneers. And even
though it was even though it looked good, it's still
(25:43):
a big deal to vaccinate a million kids with this
new vaccine that you're not quite sure about yet, but
they figured just that was their only choice. They're like,
we can't just let polio continue to thrive and paralyze
and kill our chill during we have to take a
chance with these pioneers, right. So so during this polio
(26:06):
pioneer um experiment UM, it was actually, from what I saw,
the first double blind in a major public health study,
so no one knew whether they were getting the placebo
or not, or getting the vaccine. But one segment of UM,
this group of polio pioneers, two hundred thousand of them
were given a vaccine with UH that wasn't inactivated. So
(26:30):
it's a huge dose of still alive polio vaccine. And
forty thou of those two hundred thousand people came down
with polio. Two hundred of them were kids who developed
paralysis and ten died. And this was huge, huge, Like
can you imagine a setback like that were two hundred
thousand kids were given a vaccine that hadn't been done properly,
(26:56):
like that would just stop it in its tracks now.
But again, because as polio was so bad, America at
the time was feeling very utilitarian and said, you know,
two kids developing paralysis is horrible. But without this vaccine, UM,
you know, in ninety seven thousand had developed paralysis. So
(27:18):
again they still pushed forward. Even with the government temporarily
suspending vaccination programs or this this test, I believe um
American parents still move forward and vaccinated their kids anyway.
With this this salk Um what came to be known
the IPv or um inactive polio virus that that salk developed.
(27:39):
That's right, the inactivated poliovirus vaccine just still around today.
Uh and again doesn't prevent the the infection um, but
it does prevent the bloodstream from moving it on to
the central nervous system, which is so that's poliomyelitis. That's
again what people mean when they say polio. That's right.
(28:02):
Should we take another break and talk about the other vaccine?
All right, We'll be right back to talk about the
cheaper vaccine. Right after this. I want to learn about
a Terroristorto College act, how to take a perfect But
with all about fractal kiscon that's another hun the Lizzie
Border murders that they kind of all runs on the plane.
Everything this we should know word up Jerry. All right.
(28:43):
So there's another guy who is somewhat famous, but not
nearly as famous as Jonas salk Um. Salk he announced
his findings on CBS Radio UM and became like a
household name overnight. I think America was kind of smitten
with him because he had tested the vaccine on himself,
his wife, his three sons, sterilizing his his syringes in
(29:06):
his own kitchen. Um. And he was very much derided
by his main rival, a guy named Albert Sabin or Sabin,
I'm not sure which way you pronounced it. I don't
think it matters at this point. Oh that's a good one.
Let's go with Sabine. So Albert Sabine Um. He came
up with what we were talking about, the other kind
(29:28):
of vaccine and attenuated virus that had a lot of
advantages over um Salks virus or Salts vaccine um. But
because Salk had kind of beaten him to the punch
in America, Sabine was was forced to kind of go
outside of the United States to test his his vaccine,
and he ended up testing his in the USSR, I believe, yeah,
(29:52):
And like you said, his was attenuated, so it was
live and it was actually a really infectious strain. But
something about this strain, it just seemed to not go
to that central nervous system and infect the central nervous
system nearly as much. So Uh. He went to the
Soviet Union, tested more than ten million people there in
(30:13):
the nineteen fifties and they said whatever Russian is for,
thumbs up, way to go, great job, great ski uh.
And it was widely used and came into the US
in the nineteen sixties. So then all of a sudden,
we have two vaccines. We got the IPv that you
(30:34):
have to inject um. At first that they thought it
was had to be boosted every few years, but it
was in fact forever injection the best kind right Um
there were. It was very safe, there were no systemic reactions. Um.
The cost was high, which was kind of a problem
(30:56):
at the time as opposed to the lower costs of
the op which was oral. He gave it on sugar cubes. Um. Right.
So there's a lot of advantages with this O p
V over the I p V. And as a result
between the advantages, I mean, just lower cost alone would
make public health officials be like, well, we should go
(31:18):
with that. But that whole um, the Cutter incident where
two thousand kids were accidentally given active polio um, that
that really kind of shook people in Salts vaccine enough
that his vaccine got supplanted by sabines O p V
Laural polio virus vaccine UM, and that became the standard
(31:41):
in the United States from about the early sixties up
to I guess two thousand, basically, right, yeah, And I
think we failed to mention there were three types, three
stereo types type one, Type two, and type three and
the O p V. You could get all three of
those types onto that one sugar cube, which is great.
And if you have uh, if you're infected by one
(32:02):
of those stereotypes, it doesn't give you anybodies against the
other two, and a vaccine for one doesn't protect against
the other two, so you have to get inoculated against
all three and and sabine Remember he found a strain
of poliovirus that was very infectious but didn't attack the
central nervous system very very much. And he actually identified
(32:25):
strains for each one of those types that kind of
fell into that category. But the thing is this, Remember
we said that with an UM with an activated or
an attenuated live virus, you are actually being given poliovirus
and you are being infected with polio virus. And so
that means that you can actually you're shedding poliovirus in
(32:48):
your feces. So let's say you want to start a
vaccination campaign in an area that has poor sanitation and
a lot of resistance to a vaccine campaign. Well, if
you can just get in there and vaccinate a few people,
they're going to go and shed that polio virus in
their feces. And because it's this weakened strain um, that
(33:08):
weekend strain will go on and infect other people in
the community who drink this taint of drinking water and
they will kind of become what's known as passively vaccinated
by this. So it was another advantage in developing areas
as well. But there were some major problems with this
this vaccine and still remain today, mainly because this is
(33:29):
a live virus that you're being um you're being infected
with on purpose. Yeah, and because it's live, even though
it's weak, very and you know, I don't know about
the word rare, but in very few cases, uh, and
they think him. You know, deficiency had a lot to
do with it. You could contract polio, you could get
(33:49):
the paralysis, and you could possibly die. That was known
as VAP vaccine associated paralytic polio myelitis. And that's no
good than that, there are very few cases. That's not
great for your pr campaign. But not only that, because
it was a live virus that could still replicate, they
also found that when it entered your gut and colonized there,
(34:14):
sometimes it could undergo a type of mutation, so that
what came out the other end in your feces was
actually a basically a new version of the strain that
you had been given. And sometimes it was way more infectious.
Sometimes it was way more deadly, and that would be
what you pooped out into the local water supply. And
(34:37):
at first, again compared to like the wild strains of
the three types of polio virus that were out there
in the world, UM, at first like it didn't matter,
Like that happened, and frequently enough that that just keep
going with this oral vaccine because it's really really working. Um.
But as it became more and more effective and fewer
(34:58):
and fewer people had Polly Oh, the idea that you
were giving them a vaccine that could actually produce a
virulent strain became a real problem and as a result,
people said, well, wait a minute, we need to figure
out what to do about this vaccine because we really
need to start figuring out how to phase this out.
That's right, um. And is this where the Dutch entered
(35:21):
the picture. I believe so. Yeah. And you might think,
what do they have to do with it? They were
studying salks IPv this whole time they were using it.
They were researching it. They were funded by their own
government to do so, and they made it more more
robust basically against all three types, which is great. And
the big thing they did though, is they they found
(35:43):
out how to reduce the cost, because the cost was
one of the big drawbacks of sALS version UM and
one of the big parts of the cost, very sadly
is is they had to import five thousand rhesus monkeys
every year uh in the Netherlands alone, five thousand monkeys
and just the Netherlands. So in the seventies, these two
(36:04):
people named Paul van Hemmert and Anton van vesel Uh
they figured out how to grow cultured monkey kidney cells,
which is a great record title. I think, Oh, I
think so too. I hadn't thought about that. I don't
know the band. The band is the Plastic Beads, okay,
and their new album Cultured Monkey Kidney Cell. So they
(36:26):
figured out how to grow these on plastic beads and
steel flasks and then grow that polio virus on the
kidney cells. So all of a sudden, you didn't need
five thousand esus monkeys. You just needed a few of them,
and you didn't have to spend eight didn't have to
kill all these monkeys, which is awesome, And b you
didn't have to import all those monkeys and that expense
(36:48):
and that was that saved a ton of money, and
they could all of a sudden pump out these I
p V uh I PV shots at a really reduced rate.
So now, all of a sudden, Salk's original or actually
new improved version of Salk's original vaccine is competitive to
the O p V price wise. I think it's still
(37:09):
way more expensive, but but much less, way more expensive
than it was before. But then also like it prevents
polio myelitis from happening, So what public health officials started
to realize, they By the way, the US started to
switch back to the Salk vaccine the IPv in two
thousand and what what public health officials realizes that this
(37:30):
combination of the two could actually wipe polio out of existence.
For one, you could prevent polio myhelitis from ever happening
in your population with the I p V. But then
also if you could knock out polio in the wild
with the O p V and and keep the population
(37:52):
that you're inoculating from developing these UM vaccine associated UM
virus is right, the mutated viruses that can come out
the other end, you can actually wipe polio out of
the wild. And as a matter of fact, one type
of polio I believe it was type two UM was eradicated.
(38:13):
They figured out sometime around and then I believe in
two thousand fifteen they officially declared type to poliovirus eradicated.
It's just gone that that. It's just not in the
wild anymore UM because it died out because it couldn't
find a host to transmit and replicate, and we killed it.
(38:34):
We got rid of it from poop though. That's right,
like that's literally in the last polio dump happened. Yeah,
it is kind of crazy because you do, at least
in the United States, you associate polio with like the
the early twentieth century, you know. Yeah, so the last
polio poop came out, didn't hook up with anyone that
(38:57):
didn't have immunity. And the good news about type two
going away was remember how we were talking about the
VAP the v APP situation with the o p v's confusing, uh,
Type two was the part most likely to cause that
vaccine infection, that vaccine derived infection. So with that out
(39:17):
of the way, you were just left with the o
p V for types one and three, which is way
more safe and effective. Right. And I saw that type
three had actually been declared eradicated as well. Um I
think that it's made some sort of weird comeback in Nigeria,
but that um, I believe it was declared eradicated in
(39:38):
two thousand nineteen. I'm not sure if they double back
on that or not, but either way, there does seem
to be this idea that we could and we're right
there um on the cusp of being able to eradicate polio.
And there's a difference between eradicate and eliminate, eradicate is
whether zero cases to where the only polio that exists
(39:58):
as like in a lab or invaccinated form um, eliminated
where it just doesn't exist on Earth anymore. And for
all we know, type two polio virus has been eliminated,
but type three, type one right has been are close
to being eradicated. For example, for all types of polio.
(40:19):
In not not very long ago, there were three hundred
and fifty thousand cases worldwide. Still, so there's still a
lot of polio. In two thousand and seventeen it was
down to twenty two twenty two worldwide. So we're making
like great headway, but unfortunately the CIA seems to have
really gotten in the way and set polio eradication back
(40:43):
by decades from what I've read. Oh yeah, yes, did
you see that Scientific American article I sent? I didn't
get to that tell us about it. So when when
the the US was hunting for Osama bin Laden, one
of the ways that they tried to find him was
through a fake vaccination campaign. And it wasn't for polio,
(41:05):
it was for hepatitis C. But they basically got a
public health official to mount a fake vaccination campaign to
gain entry to the bin laden compound or suspected bin
ladon compound and basically take DNA samples of the children
there while they were um vaccinating them, and they they
I guess that they didn't happen. It didn't um, it
(41:27):
wasn't successful. I don't remember how they found out he
was in there or not. But the UM, the fact
that the word got out that this fake vaccination campaign
had been used as a ruse by the c i
A completely undermined all other vaccination campaigns around the world
in places that were already wary of the CIA. Because remember,
(41:50):
polio is endemic in three places Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan,
and none of those three places really have a great
impression of the CIA. So legitimate UM public health vaccination
campaigns in those countries were totally delegitimized in the eyes
of local population and the local governments. And in fact,
(42:11):
some vaccination workers were murdered, um and kicked out of
countries directly because of that that ruse that the CIA
had undertaken. And from what I read, they say that
it's set this eradication campaign for polio back literally decades
because it is built around public trust that these scientists
(42:34):
who are injecting them with stuff, these American scientists are
are trustworthy. Um. And and that that trust has been
lost sadly in that nuts that that can have that
kind of ripple effects like that. And now we're gonna
have to live with polio at least another twenty years
probably It is said polio said you got anything else?
(42:56):
I got nothing else. Well, let's say for polio everybody
soon that's it for polio. Uh. And since I said that,
it's time for a listener mail, I think, right, yeah,
I gotta call this. Oh, just correcting us on some stuff,
how about that? Uh? Sorry, guys in a bit behind.
(43:18):
So this uh is somewhat old news, but since it
involves the Byzantine Empire, perhaps oldest relative and the stuff
you should know episode how flamethrowers work, Josh says, in
reference to the Greek fire, something like the Byzantines, who
we know as Turks, we're most notorious for using this stuff.
(43:39):
I didn't see that he said you said it at
five thirty one. That sounds made up. That's a made
up times. The Byzantines were not Turks in the sense
that white Afrikaners in South Africa are not Zulus. The
Byzantines were Greek speaking colonists from the Roman Empire. The
capital of the Roman Empire was moved to Byzantium and
(44:01):
three a d. By Constantine the Great Uh and the
strategic port was duly christened and Christianized for a while
at least as Constantinople, as the Byzantines were, much as
the Afrikaaners were with the Zulus, at odds with the
indigenous Turks for most of their history, until they were
(44:24):
overthrown by the latter in the mid fifteenth century. The
name Constantinople was changed officially to istanbul And nineteen thirty,
but had been in use by the non Greek speaking
natives there for centuries even before the city fell to
the Turks in fourteen fifty three. Why the heirs of
the Roman Empire spoke Greek rather than Latin is similar
(44:44):
to why modern South Africans speak English mostly rather than Afrikaan.
It's probably a couple of whole shows you could do
about the convoluted colonial histories touched on above, and that
is from Conrad be rub A. Thanks Conrad, I appreciate it.
I still dispute that I said anything as ridiculous as
what you say I said, but regardless, I'm glad it
(45:05):
resulted in that top not email. If you want to
be like Conrad and send us a top notch email,
you can do that. Send it off to Stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody. You may not know this yet, and if
you don't, prepare to be blown away. We are creating
right now the first ever Stuff you Should Know book.
It's called Stuff you Should Know Colon, an incomplete compendium
of mostly interesting things. And you can preorder it now,
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incentive because you get a free gift. And don't worry
(00:22):
if you've already pre ordered, because you can just head
on over to stuff you Should Read books dot com.
It's a very beautiful little web page and it's got
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you just like upload your receipt and get that pre
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(00:42):
And it's a poster that you will love and cherish
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That's right, everyone, We couldn't be more excited about this book.
It's really coming together. Well, it's us through and through
and you can go check out some excerpts at stuff
you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(01:10):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryan over there, and this is Stuff you Should
Know Poliocast. That's right. Before we get going, though, we
want to tell everyone that we have a book coming
out called Stuff You Should Know Colon, an incomplete compendium
of mostly interesting things that you can buy and pre
(01:31):
order online, and pre orders are very um it's a
very big deal to pre order the book. It's I
never knew what a big deal it was, but pre
orders are very important for the author, are they? I
didn't really hope. I'm kind of worried. Now they're a
big deal. Okay, well, uh yeah, I guess the very body.
(01:53):
You won't regret pre ordering the book. How about that?
And why? Because you get a special gift. Not only
that you get us I shall get for sure. You
just go upload your receipt at stuff you Should Read
books dot com. Um. But also the book itself is
really great too. I think you're gonna like it. Twenty
six full robust chapters that are going to just knock
your socks off. And it's a Stuff you Should Know
(02:14):
we that's right, and we got great illustrations by Carl Minardo.
We had a great writer working with us named Neils Parker,
and a great publisher and flat Iron, and we're just
super excited about it and we appreciate your support. Yep.
So you can go preorder that book everywhere. Okay, um wow, Chuck,
we're getting really good at that. Now let's talk polio.
(02:36):
So we're not good at it's transitioning. No, we're not.
We never have been. Um So polio I was when
I was researching this, I kept running across whenever I
typed in polio, you know that auto suggest in the
search bar um, it would say things like does polio
still exist? And it absolutely does. But it's one of
(02:56):
those diseases that we're really really lead close to eradicating
thanks to UH an extraordinarily robust vaccination campaign UM one
of the first really big vaccination campaigns UM in the
history of the world, and it was also one of
the most successful too, so much that we're down to
just three countries. I believe Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are
(03:20):
the only three countries where polio is still endemic, where
like you can just walk around and catch polio. Um.
And there are outbreaks in other countries. We'll talk about
exactly why. But it went from this global worldwide problem
at the beginning of the twentieth century down to three
countries and we're like that close to to getting rid
(03:41):
of it forever from the planet basically. Yeah. So um.
And it's interesting to to read about polio and it's
vaccine during the middle of our own pandemic with coronavirus
and COVID nineteen because there's there's a lot of similarities
and overlap. It's interesting there's a pandemic. Yeah, that's why
(04:01):
I haven't seen you in three months. I know. Are
you getting used to it yet? I mean sure, just
as anyone gets used to something that stinks. Oh thank you.
I don't mean not seeing you, I mean everything but short,
that's part of that, that's for sure, part of that.
But it is weird talking about it, for sure, because
there are some some real similarities. For sure. Yeah. So
(04:25):
polio is the disease. Uh, But polio virus is the
antio virus, which is a virus of the intestinal tract,
which is an RNA virus like COVID nineteen. Um. But
the disease itself, like covid is the sickness, polio is
the disease, as coronavirus is the poliovirus. I mixed that
(04:47):
all up, but I think it's right. So coronavirus is
to covid what poliovirus is to polio. Yeah, that's the
cleaner way to say it, right. And then apparently polio specifically,
if you say, um, oh this person, my grandfather had polio, um,
you're not talking about just a polio infection. There's a
(05:08):
specific kind of disease that you can get from the
polio virus where it attacks your central nervous system and
can cause all sorts of problems. And that specifically is
what somebody's saying when they say they had polio, which
is in that case called polio mielitis, Which is what
people are talking about when they say when they're talking
about polio, the disease. Yeah, because a lot of people
(05:31):
got the poliovirus UM didn't know it had no symptoms.
Your body kicks in the gear, that immune system just
fights it off. You got those antibodies for life, and
that's it. That happened a lot um. But yeah, like
you said, if you if you get polio, that means
that it hits your your central nervous system. And we'll
(05:52):
get more into detail about all this, but UM polio
virus is where it colonizes is in the throat and
the digest of system. And we're talking about uh, your
feces being contaminated or infectious and contaminated and your saliva
depending on how you get it. So there's basically two
(06:13):
ways to pass it along, either with your poop or
with your saliva. UM. And the fecal transmission is much
more prevalent, especially in the developing world because of poor sanitation,
and like if you look at just the natural history
of the virus, of the poliovirus, it's it's ideal is
to just replicate, right, That's the whole purpose of the viruses,
(06:36):
Just make as many copies of itself as possible and
so living in the water um, the drinking water supply
and then infecting people UM, infecting their gut, replicating being
passed as feces back into the water supply to infect
other people, but without you know, really developing symptoms and people.
That's ideal for for the virus itself. UM. Every once
(07:01):
in a while though, I thinking about one quarter of
people who become infected the the the poliovirus will enter
the blood stream, It'll leave the gut and enter the
blood stream and will produce what's called viremia, where um
it infects the blood, it starts to infect other organs
and those people will develop flu like symptoms for a
couple of days. That sees, that's still not that bad.
(07:24):
Probably nothing we would amount at a global eradication campaign against.
It's just that in a very small proportion of people
who become infected, the poliovirus not only infects the blood stream,
it actually travels to the central nervous system and attacks that.
And then that is the real problem that comes from polio.
What we were talking about earlier, poliomyelitis. Yeah, and no
(07:46):
one knows why that happens. Uh, no one knows. I
mean basically they just think it's it is completely random.
I mean, that's that seems to be the case of
whether or not you get the paralytic version or not. Uh,
it is not many people, but when you spread those
(08:06):
numbers out, it can be a lot of people. So
when you look at numbers like uh point five percent
of everyone infected UM have paralysis. If you look at
a human population, that's a lot of people, right, Um Yeah,
when when Yeah, just that very small percent of everybody
(08:27):
or a ton of people around the world, and for
centuries have you know, an infection. It does add up
big time for sure enough. So and so not just
the number also, chuck, but just the devastating effects that
UM polio can have, poliomyelitis can have on a person.
It's um, it's a really bad jam because not only
(08:49):
can it cause what's called a cute flaccid paralysis, where
your your motor neurons or your muscles are attacked so
that you can't you your muscle and your um, your
limb starts to wither, maybe you just become fully paralyzed.
It can also UM travel to your brain and affect
(09:09):
things like you're swallowing, reflex or breathing, and so it
can very very easily kill you when it starts to
to progress to the central nervous system phase of poliomyelitis. Yeah,
and there's no treatment for polio UM and we'll talk
about the vaccine here in a minute to a great extent.
But um, it's just like any other virus. You let it,
(09:32):
you let it run its course. Um, your body will
probably do the right thing and step up and fight
it back and not let it get to your blood stream.
But like you said, even if it gets to your
blood stream, you might just get sick. Um. But that
point five percent chance that you actually have the paralytic version. Um,
there is no cure for that. No, which was weird.
(09:53):
I was like, so what you're you know, you're just
a goner if you get pilot poliomyelitis or that's what
the case was. And apparently your body can still fight
it off. You can get polio myelitis and if you
receive the proper care um. One of the one of
the better um inventions to combat polio is called the
iron lung, which would breathe for you using a bellows
(10:14):
and negative and positive pressure to move your chest up
and down. Um, Like that could keep you alive long
enough to give you a chance for your body to
fight off the infection with your immune system. But like,
that's not a cure. That's just keeping you alive long
enough for your body to fight it off. It was
really surprising to me that there's still to this day
(10:35):
no treatment for polio. Yeah, I can't help but think
of the Big Lebowski when I think of iron lungs.
Who is in an iron lung in that Remember when
they go to visit the they think the kid um
stole the car or they found it that they found
the kids school work in the back of the car,
(10:56):
and they got to his house and it was this
this former TV writer huho, who's inside and he's in
an iron lung. I genuinely don't remember that part. I'm
sure I'm being shouted at by some of our listeners,
but sorry, it was played for laughs. The one I
think of is um Ralph Macchio and the Outsiders after
he gets burned from running in that house to save
(11:17):
those in iron lung. That's what I thought, and so
I looked it up to verify, and there's no mention
of it. So I guess when I was a kid,
I just made up that Ralph Maccio is in an
iron lung and the Outsiders. If I'm not mistaken, he
was just had a I guess what you would call
a respirator today, Okay, but wasn't then. Yeah, I think
(11:38):
he was. I think he was faced down and traction
and suspended and on a respirator. If I'm not mistaken, well,
my my tiny little impressionable brain translated that into an
iron lung. That's okay, stay gold, my brain hasn't gotten
much better, Chuck, Sure it has so. Um So you
can survive. You can fend off a polio infection, even
(12:01):
with polio myelitis. But the problem is that very frequently
would would not let you survive. Um, it would kill you.
And so, like we said, just mounting this campaign became
kind of paramount. But polio is tough because they think
it's such an old virus. They think it's been around
(12:21):
for a very very long time. And that's kind of
evidence by the fact that polio is um it's only
humans that that it lives in and tries to replicate,
and there's it's not like other viruses where there's like
reservoir animals that it can um, it can hang out
in and and and just basically stay alive until it
can infect a human. It's just humans basically, although there
(12:45):
was a case in nineteen sixty six of some chimps
becoming infected from humans with polio. In that sense, yeah, uh,
And you know, if we need to um. If you
need to go over viruses again, folks, look no further
than the recent stuff you should know Classic from March
(13:05):
twenty Virus Talk with Josh and Chuck. That was from
March twenty, the rerelease What do you what do we
call those classics? Select? Aren't you like one half of
this podcast? I am, but I call them classics in
my brain. I don't know what the official branding is. Selects. Yeah,
(13:26):
like we have hands selected this classic episode. Yeah, classics.
I think if you scramble the words selects, classics is
in there somewhere, but I think spelled. But yeah, that
one just came out recently. So that'll catch up on
what a virus is. But should we take a break
and talk a little bit about the ancient history? Perhaps
a folio? Yes, all right, we'll be right back everybody.
(13:48):
I want to learn about how to take the perfect
all about fractals, think it's un the Lizzie Border murders,
that kind of all runs on the plane everything we
should know. Ward up, Jerry, all right, so I mentioned
(14:21):
ancient history. Um, we don't know exactly where polio started
because old diseases have shoddy record keeping. Um, they just
didn't keep up with stuff like they do now, but
we do. You know, if you looked at some of
the mummies in ancient Egypt, you might see some limb
deformities that could have been polio. U. There are UM
(14:46):
paintings on walls and things that maybe could be polio.
But this is us extrapolating this from a modern lens. Um.
They you know, those limbs could have been smashed in
a you know, heavy object accidents as well a combine accident.
Well I was going to say that, but they didn't
have combines, so um, a barge accident, how about that?
(15:10):
So UM. Like, over the years, people were studying polio,
and I mean we kind of started to get a
pretty good handle on it. We didn't understand what viruses were,
so we didn't know it was a virus until the
twentieth century. No, the twentieth century, I think eight are old.
Frank Carl Landsteiner, who developed UM blood types, was also
(15:31):
the one of the two people who identified the polio
virus in nineteen o eight, but other people had contributed
up to that point. Like it was recognized as UM
being an epidemic disease, that there were outbreaks that kind
of stuff, and but everybody was kind of okay with
polio existing, like it was not something that we were
happy about, but nothing that like there was this great
(15:55):
urgency to cure until about the beginning of the twentieth century.
And they think that that people living together, close in
close quarters, urbanization and better sanitation lead to polio outbreaks
that hadn't been seen before because the better sanitation produced
(16:15):
a population that had not been exposed to polio virus. Yeah,
that seems counterintuitive, it does, but it makes sense because
if you've got a virgin population, that thing can just
hop from person to person to person, whereas if you
have an endemic population where any proportion of the population
is already immune from having been exposed to the virus before.
(16:36):
Because don't forget, remember we said a lot of people,
most people, I think people who are infected never even
show any signs or symptoms. So if you don't have
people like that anymore because of improved sanitation, but you
also don't have a vaccine program, you've got a virgin population,
that virus can just run rampant in and that's familiar
(16:57):
that it does. That's what started happening in the early
twentie century, and it started scaring the Bejesus out of
parents because it was largely affecting kids. Yeah, and it
happened in clusters, UM because it was so easily transmitted,
and like you said, with the virgin population, that would
be these big outbreaks and that causes panic, uh with
(17:17):
parents especially UM. In nineteen sixteen in the US, six
thousand people died from polio in about twenty seven thousand
paralytic cases, UM ninety two paralytic cases. And also we
said in our in our book, you remember in the Mr.
Potato Head chapter that polio outbreak is what made Mr
(17:40):
potato Head one of the big, the first big, because
so many kids were We're stuck at home that summer
because of a polio outbreak. That's right, and that that's
exactly what happened, because you know, kind of mirroring what
we're seeing now is they would shut down parks, in
swimming pools and schools in public events. UM and America
(18:03):
rallied behind it back then and said, yeah, that's what
we should do for the good of the public. UM.
It's not happening now, unfortunately, but back then everyone got
on board. UM. Between I think a quarter of a
million and six hundred and fifty thousand Americans. Um, we're
alive at any given time in the twentieth century that
(18:24):
had lifelong uh issues caused by polio. Right, that's a
lot of people. I mean, that's a real problem. You know.
That's not over the twentieth century, that's at any given
point in the twentieth century, right, Yeah, at any given point.
So you can kind of understand why around then, you know,
especially when when people were seeing entire classrooms of children
(18:48):
struck down, you know, with polio, some of whom you know,
went on to have lifelong mobility issues, some of whom died.
Um that that was that scared parents a lot, and
it's scared everybody so much so that it kind of
laid the groundwork for this big national and actually an
international push toward coming up with, if not a treatment,
(19:11):
which they tried at first and found that was not happening,
then a vaccine for polio. And and that's exactly what
we did. Yeah. Uh. And a big driver for this
vaccine was a little organization called the March of Dimes,
which was originally founded by Franklin Roosevelt, was called the
(19:31):
National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis And I never knew this,
but they had a march and people would send dimes
as donations to the organization, and that's why it's called
the March of Dimes. It's amazing. And because of that,
because of all those individuals sending in dimes to the
March of Dimes or to them, the Infantile Paralysis Foundation, UM,
(19:56):
the that laid the groundwork for the financial support for
all of this research that was going on, specifically for
the research of one of the guys who came up
with a vaccine for polio. Because we actually have more
than one UM. But the most famous of them all
was Jonas Salk, who came into the picture in about
(20:16):
and because of those dimes that were contributed by average,
everyday people, because those that money directly funded his research.
He very famously refused to patent the UM the vaccine
that he came up with for polio and just said,
this belongs to the world. Yeah, just like a farmer, bros.
(20:38):
Same exactly, same morals, right right, UM, so this is
a good chance. I'm glad when we get to do
shows like this because um, Jonas Salt gets so much
credit and deservedly so as a genuinely great human that
walked the planet. Um. But a lot of people had
chipped in over the years to get this vaccine where
(20:59):
it was. And we get a chance to talk about
those people now, which is always fun. UM. In the
nineteen forties, late nineteen forties, John Franklin Enders, Thomas huckle
Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins, all three serial killers. That's right,
they figured out how to grow the poliovirus culture in
(21:19):
a lab, which if you want a vaccine, that's the
first big step is to grow that culture in a lab.
And they won in nineteen fifty four for those efforts. Uh,
they won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, which is great. Yeah,
it was um so the first that was a huge
first step. Like you were saying, the people had tried
to create a vaccine even before that first step, though,
(21:43):
I guess the old fashioned way. UM. Brody and Colemer
John Colemer, I don't know Brody's first name, but they
when they were working together, UM, they created a vaccine
that actually killed uh, five of their ten thousand test subjects,
which was not um. It wasn't good. Uh, and it
actually kind of set the whole the whole vaccine UM
(22:06):
movement back a hint. But astoundingly, it didn't kill it.
And rather than saying like, no, we're not going to
try this, people looked at polio cases and said this
is so bad. We need to keep pushing forward despite
that and so UM. By the time Salt came along
and started working on his vaccine, you know, people were
(22:28):
already a little jumpy about the idea UM, and it
was made all the more so that he was trying
UH an unproven form of vaccine, whereas most vaccines used
UM attenuated virus, which is it's live, but it's a
weekend version of the virus, and it's in a UM.
(22:48):
It's it's in a much smaller dose. What what Salt
was suggesting, what he wanted to use was a an
inactivated virus, which is it's dead in the in the
sense that can't replicate no longer. It's been treated with formaldehyde.
But yeah, it's it's a huge dose of it. So
if it's not dead, you're in big trouble. Yeah, And
(23:10):
it was a big deal of the time because it
was a new science and a lot of scientists said
that I don't think you could administer this much even
uh killed virus safely. And so what you had was
a couple of different things going on, a couple of
potential pathways to take. Was give a little bit of
(23:31):
that weakened virus that's still alive to kids, which we
know is going to infect them with a virus. So
it's gonna generate those antibodies, but hopefully it's not gonna
be strong enough to get to that central nervous system
point of infection or super dose them with this inactive virus,
and that's going to cause antibodies in the blood, so
(23:53):
that will prevent polio from happening. That will keep it
from going to the central nervous system. They knew that, uh,
and that's great news. But boy, you better be sure
that that virus is perfect, because if it's not, then
you're in big trouble. Right And not only not only
that that's that's a big risk with it, but if
(24:15):
you do it right, if the risk goes very close
to zero. The other problem with it is because it
produces antibodies in the blood stream, that leaves out the gut,
which means that you could still be infected by polio
and colonize your gut and replicate and be passed in
your feces. But because you have those antibodies in your
in your blood stream, it's going to protect you from
(24:37):
ever developing poliomyelitis. Yeah, they were trying to stop the disease,
not stop the virus. Right. Well, it depends on the paradigm,
Like the one that actually infects you with polio is
going to prevent any poliovirus from ever colonizing your gut
ever again, Um, so it depends on which approach you
(24:59):
were coming from. And over the course of some you know,
a couple of decades, both came into use enough around
the world that we actually have come close to eradicating
polio thanks to this combination of both of them. Yeah,
so salk Um developed a two part test that he
used on himself and volunteers, and then in nineteen fifty
(25:23):
four you had to you know, this was you had
to get a massive pr campaign behind this, like, uh,
in a big way because they had to vaccinate a
million children. They were called the Polio Pioneers. And even
though it was even though it looked good, it's still
(25:43):
a big deal to vaccinate a million kids with this
new vaccine that you're not quite sure about yet, but
they figured just that was their only choice. They're like,
we can't just let polio continue to thrive and paralyze
and kill our chill during we have to take a
chance with these pioneers, right. So so during this polio
(26:06):
pioneer um experiment UM, it was actually, from what I saw,
the first double blind in a major public health study,
so no one knew whether they were getting the placebo
or not, or getting the vaccine. But one segment of UM,
this group of polio pioneers, two hundred thousand of them
were given a vaccine with UH that wasn't inactivated. So
(26:30):
it's a huge dose of still alive polio vaccine. And
forty thou of those two hundred thousand people came down
with polio. Two hundred of them were kids who developed
paralysis and ten died. And this was huge, huge, Like
can you imagine a setback like that were two hundred
thousand kids were given a vaccine that hadn't been done properly,
(26:56):
like that would just stop it in its tracks now.
But again, because as polio was so bad, America at
the time was feeling very utilitarian and said, you know,
two kids developing paralysis is horrible. But without this vaccine, UM,
you know, in ninety seven thousand had developed paralysis. So
(27:18):
again they still pushed forward. Even with the government temporarily
suspending vaccination programs or this this test, I believe um
American parents still move forward and vaccinated their kids anyway.
With this this salk Um what came to be known
the IPv or um inactive polio virus that that salk developed.
(27:39):
That's right, the inactivated poliovirus vaccine just still around today.
Uh and again doesn't prevent the the infection um, but
it does prevent the bloodstream from moving it on to
the central nervous system, which is so that's poliomyelitis. That's
again what people mean when they say polio. That's right.
(28:02):
Should we take another break and talk about the other vaccine?
All right, We'll be right back to talk about the
cheaper vaccine. Right after this. I want to learn about
a Terroristorto College act, how to take a perfect But
with all about fractal kiscon that's another hun the Lizzie
Border murders that they kind of all runs on the plane.
Everything this we should know word up Jerry. All right.
(28:43):
So there's another guy who is somewhat famous, but not
nearly as famous as Jonas salk Um. Salk he announced
his findings on CBS Radio UM and became like a
household name overnight. I think America was kind of smitten
with him because he had tested the vaccine on himself,
his wife, his three sons, sterilizing his his syringes in
(29:06):
his own kitchen. Um. And he was very much derided
by his main rival, a guy named Albert Sabin or Sabin,
I'm not sure which way you pronounced it. I don't
think it matters at this point. Oh that's a good one.
Let's go with Sabine. So Albert Sabine Um. He came
up with what we were talking about, the other kind
(29:28):
of vaccine and attenuated virus that had a lot of
advantages over um Salks virus or Salts vaccine um. But
because Salk had kind of beaten him to the punch
in America, Sabine was was forced to kind of go
outside of the United States to test his his vaccine,
and he ended up testing his in the USSR, I believe, yeah,
(29:52):
And like you said, his was attenuated, so it was
live and it was actually a really infectious strain. But
something about this strain, it just seemed to not go
to that central nervous system and infect the central nervous
system nearly as much. So Uh. He went to the
Soviet Union, tested more than ten million people there in
(30:13):
the nineteen fifties and they said whatever Russian is for,
thumbs up, way to go, great job, great ski uh.
And it was widely used and came into the US
in the nineteen sixties. So then all of a sudden,
we have two vaccines. We got the IPv that you
(30:34):
have to inject um. At first that they thought it
was had to be boosted every few years, but it
was in fact forever injection the best kind right Um
there were. It was very safe, there were no systemic reactions. Um.
The cost was high, which was kind of a problem
(30:56):
at the time as opposed to the lower costs of
the op which was oral. He gave it on sugar cubes. Um. Right.
So there's a lot of advantages with this O p
V over the I p V. And as a result
between the advantages, I mean, just lower cost alone would
make public health officials be like, well, we should go
(31:18):
with that. But that whole um, the Cutter incident where
two thousand kids were accidentally given active polio um, that
that really kind of shook people in Salts vaccine enough
that his vaccine got supplanted by sabines O p V
Laural polio virus vaccine UM, and that became the standard
(31:41):
in the United States from about the early sixties up
to I guess two thousand, basically, right, yeah, And I
think we failed to mention there were three types, three
stereo types type one, Type two, and type three and
the O p V. You could get all three of
those types onto that one sugar cube, which is great.
And if you have uh, if you're infected by one
(32:02):
of those stereotypes, it doesn't give you anybodies against the
other two, and a vaccine for one doesn't protect against
the other two, so you have to get inoculated against
all three and and sabine Remember he found a strain
of poliovirus that was very infectious but didn't attack the
central nervous system very very much. And he actually identified
(32:25):
strains for each one of those types that kind of
fell into that category. But the thing is this, Remember
we said that with an UM with an activated or
an attenuated live virus, you are actually being given poliovirus
and you are being infected with polio virus. And so
that means that you can actually you're shedding poliovirus in
(32:48):
your feces. So let's say you want to start a
vaccination campaign in an area that has poor sanitation and
a lot of resistance to a vaccine campaign. Well, if
you can just get in there and vaccinate a few people,
they're going to go and shed that polio virus in
their feces. And because it's this weakened strain um, that
(33:08):
weekend strain will go on and infect other people in
the community who drink this taint of drinking water and
they will kind of become what's known as passively vaccinated
by this. So it was another advantage in developing areas
as well. But there were some major problems with this
this vaccine and still remain today, mainly because this is
(33:29):
a live virus that you're being um you're being infected
with on purpose. Yeah, and because it's live, even though
it's weak, very and you know, I don't know about
the word rare, but in very few cases, uh, and
they think him. You know, deficiency had a lot to
do with it. You could contract polio, you could get
(33:49):
the paralysis, and you could possibly die. That was known
as VAP vaccine associated paralytic polio myelitis. And that's no
good than that, there are very few cases. That's not
great for your pr campaign. But not only that, because
it was a live virus that could still replicate, they
also found that when it entered your gut and colonized there,
(34:14):
sometimes it could undergo a type of mutation, so that
what came out the other end in your feces was
actually a basically a new version of the strain that
you had been given. And sometimes it was way more infectious.
Sometimes it was way more deadly, and that would be
what you pooped out into the local water supply. And
(34:37):
at first, again compared to like the wild strains of
the three types of polio virus that were out there
in the world, UM, at first like it didn't matter,
Like that happened, and frequently enough that that just keep
going with this oral vaccine because it's really really working. Um.
But as it became more and more effective and fewer
(34:58):
and fewer people had Polly Oh, the idea that you
were giving them a vaccine that could actually produce a
virulent strain became a real problem and as a result,
people said, well, wait a minute, we need to figure
out what to do about this vaccine because we really
need to start figuring out how to phase this out.
That's right, um. And is this where the Dutch entered
(35:21):
the picture. I believe so. Yeah. And you might think,
what do they have to do with it? They were
studying salks IPv this whole time they were using it.
They were researching it. They were funded by their own
government to do so, and they made it more more
robust basically against all three types, which is great. And
the big thing they did though, is they they found
(35:43):
out how to reduce the cost, because the cost was
one of the big drawbacks of sALS version UM and
one of the big parts of the cost, very sadly
is is they had to import five thousand rhesus monkeys
every year uh in the Netherlands alone, five thousand monkeys
and just the Netherlands. So in the seventies, these two
(36:04):
people named Paul van Hemmert and Anton van vesel Uh
they figured out how to grow cultured monkey kidney cells,
which is a great record title. I think, Oh, I
think so too. I hadn't thought about that. I don't
know the band. The band is the Plastic Beads, okay,
and their new album Cultured Monkey Kidney Cell. So they
(36:26):
figured out how to grow these on plastic beads and
steel flasks and then grow that polio virus on the
kidney cells. So all of a sudden, you didn't need
five thousand esus monkeys. You just needed a few of them,
and you didn't have to spend eight didn't have to
kill all these monkeys, which is awesome, And b you
didn't have to import all those monkeys and that expense
(36:48):
and that was that saved a ton of money, and
they could all of a sudden pump out these I
p V uh I PV shots at a really reduced rate.
So now, all of a sudden, Salk's original or actually
new improved version of Salk's original vaccine is competitive to
the O p V price wise. I think it's still
(37:09):
way more expensive, but but much less, way more expensive
than it was before. But then also like it prevents
polio myelitis from happening, So what public health officials started
to realize, they By the way, the US started to
switch back to the Salk vaccine the IPv in two
thousand and what what public health officials realizes that this
(37:30):
combination of the two could actually wipe polio out of existence.
For one, you could prevent polio myhelitis from ever happening
in your population with the I p V. But then
also if you could knock out polio in the wild
with the O p V and and keep the population
(37:52):
that you're inoculating from developing these UM vaccine associated UM
virus is right, the mutated viruses that can come out
the other end, you can actually wipe polio out of
the wild. And as a matter of fact, one type
of polio I believe it was type two UM was eradicated.
(38:13):
They figured out sometime around and then I believe in
two thousand fifteen they officially declared type to poliovirus eradicated.
It's just gone that that. It's just not in the
wild anymore UM because it died out because it couldn't
find a host to transmit and replicate, and we killed it.
(38:34):
We got rid of it from poop though. That's right,
like that's literally in the last polio dump happened. Yeah,
it is kind of crazy because you do, at least
in the United States, you associate polio with like the
the early twentieth century, you know. Yeah, so the last
polio poop came out, didn't hook up with anyone that
(38:57):
didn't have immunity. And the good news about type two
going away was remember how we were talking about the
VAP the v APP situation with the o p v's confusing, uh,
Type two was the part most likely to cause that
vaccine infection, that vaccine derived infection. So with that out
(39:17):
of the way, you were just left with the o
p V for types one and three, which is way
more safe and effective. Right. And I saw that type
three had actually been declared eradicated as well. Um I
think that it's made some sort of weird comeback in Nigeria,
but that um, I believe it was declared eradicated in
(39:38):
two thousand nineteen. I'm not sure if they double back
on that or not, but either way, there does seem
to be this idea that we could and we're right
there um on the cusp of being able to eradicate polio.
And there's a difference between eradicate and eliminate, eradicate is
whether zero cases to where the only polio that exists
(39:58):
as like in a lab or invaccinated form um, eliminated
where it just doesn't exist on Earth anymore. And for
all we know, type two polio virus has been eliminated,
but type three, type one right has been are close
to being eradicated. For example, for all types of polio.
(40:19):
In not not very long ago, there were three hundred
and fifty thousand cases worldwide. Still, so there's still a
lot of polio. In two thousand and seventeen it was
down to twenty two twenty two worldwide. So we're making
like great headway, but unfortunately the CIA seems to have
really gotten in the way and set polio eradication back
(40:43):
by decades from what I've read. Oh yeah, yes, did
you see that Scientific American article I sent? I didn't
get to that tell us about it. So when when
the the US was hunting for Osama bin Laden, one
of the ways that they tried to find him was
through a fake vaccination campaign. And it wasn't for polio,
(41:05):
it was for hepatitis C. But they basically got a
public health official to mount a fake vaccination campaign to
gain entry to the bin laden compound or suspected bin
ladon compound and basically take DNA samples of the children
there while they were um vaccinating them, and they they
I guess that they didn't happen. It didn't um, it
(41:27):
wasn't successful. I don't remember how they found out he
was in there or not. But the UM, the fact
that the word got out that this fake vaccination campaign
had been used as a ruse by the c i
A completely undermined all other vaccination campaigns around the world
in places that were already wary of the CIA. Because remember,
(41:50):
polio is endemic in three places Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan,
and none of those three places really have a great
impression of the CIA. So legitimate UM public health vaccination
campaigns in those countries were totally delegitimized in the eyes
of local population and the local governments. And in fact,
(42:11):
some vaccination workers were murdered, um and kicked out of
countries directly because of that that ruse that the CIA
had undertaken. And from what I read, they say that
it's set this eradication campaign for polio back literally decades
because it is built around public trust that these scientists
(42:34):
who are injecting them with stuff, these American scientists are
are trustworthy. Um. And and that that trust has been
lost sadly in that nuts that that can have that
kind of ripple effects like that. And now we're gonna
have to live with polio at least another twenty years
probably It is said polio said you got anything else?
(42:56):
I got nothing else. Well, let's say for polio everybody
soon that's it for polio. Uh. And since I said that,
it's time for a listener mail, I think, right, yeah,
I gotta call this. Oh, just correcting us on some stuff,
how about that? Uh? Sorry, guys in a bit behind.
(43:18):
So this uh is somewhat old news, but since it
involves the Byzantine Empire, perhaps oldest relative and the stuff
you should know episode how flamethrowers work, Josh says, in
reference to the Greek fire, something like the Byzantines, who
we know as Turks, we're most notorious for using this stuff.
(43:39):
I didn't see that he said you said it at
five thirty one. That sounds made up. That's a made
up times. The Byzantines were not Turks in the sense
that white Afrikaners in South Africa are not Zulus. The
Byzantines were Greek speaking colonists from the Roman Empire. The
capital of the Roman Empire was moved to Byzantium and
(44:01):
three a d. By Constantine the Great Uh and the
strategic port was duly christened and Christianized for a while
at least as Constantinople, as the Byzantines were, much as
the Afrikaaners were with the Zulus, at odds with the
indigenous Turks for most of their history, until they were
(44:24):
overthrown by the latter in the mid fifteenth century. The
name Constantinople was changed officially to istanbul And nineteen thirty,
but had been in use by the non Greek speaking
natives there for centuries even before the city fell to
the Turks in fourteen fifty three. Why the heirs of
the Roman Empire spoke Greek rather than Latin is similar
(44:44):
to why modern South Africans speak English mostly rather than Afrikaan.
It's probably a couple of whole shows you could do
about the convoluted colonial histories touched on above, and that
is from Conrad be rub A. Thanks Conrad, I appreciate it.
I still dispute that I said anything as ridiculous as
what you say I said, but regardless, I'm glad it
(45:05):
resulted in that top not email. If you want to
be like Conrad and send us a top notch email,
you can do that. Send it off to Stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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