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How We Almost Got Rid of Polio · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
1:01
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
1:10
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
1:13
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryan over there, and this is Stuff you Should
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Speaker 1: So you can go preorder that book everywhere. Okay, um wow, Chuck,
2:32
Speaker 1: we're getting really good at that. Now let's talk polio.
2:36
Speaker 1: So we're not good at it's transitioning. No, we're not.
2:38
Speaker 1: We never have been. Um So polio I was when
2:43
Speaker 1: I was researching this, I kept running across whenever I
2:46
Speaker 1: typed in polio, you know that auto suggest in the
2:49
Speaker 1: search bar um, it would say things like does polio
2:52
Speaker 1: still exist? And it absolutely does. But it's one of
2:56
Speaker 1: those diseases that we're really really lead close to eradicating
3:01
Speaker 1: thanks to UH an extraordinarily robust vaccination campaign UM one
3:07
Speaker 1: of the first really big vaccination campaigns UM in the
3:11
Speaker 1: history of the world, and it was also one of
3:13
Speaker 1: the most successful too, so much that we're down to
3:16
Speaker 1: just three countries. I believe Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are
3:20
Speaker 1: the only three countries where polio is still endemic, where
3:24
Speaker 1: like you can just walk around and catch polio. Um.
3:28
Speaker 1: And there are outbreaks in other countries. We'll talk about
3:31
Speaker 1: exactly why. But it went from this global worldwide problem
3:34
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the twentieth century down to three
3:37
Speaker 1: countries and we're like that close to to getting rid
3:41
Speaker 1: of it forever from the planet basically. Yeah. So um.
3:46
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to to read about polio and it's
3:50
Speaker 1: vaccine during the middle of our own pandemic with coronavirus
3:54
Speaker 1: and COVID nineteen because there's there's a lot of similarities
3:57
Speaker 1: and overlap. It's interesting there's a pandemic. Yeah, that's why
4:01
Speaker 1: I haven't seen you in three months. I know. Are
4:04
Speaker 1: you getting used to it yet? I mean sure, just
4:08
Speaker 1: as anyone gets used to something that stinks. Oh thank you.
4:13
Speaker 1: I don't mean not seeing you, I mean everything but short,
4:15
Speaker 1: that's part of that, that's for sure, part of that.
4:19
Speaker 1: But it is weird talking about it, for sure, because
4:21
Speaker 1: there are some some real similarities. For sure. Yeah. So
4:25
Speaker 1: polio is the disease. Uh, But polio virus is the
4:30
Speaker 1: antio virus, which is a virus of the intestinal tract,
4:34
Speaker 1: which is an RNA virus like COVID nineteen. Um. But
4:37
Speaker 1: the disease itself, like covid is the sickness, polio is
4:42
Speaker 1: the disease, as coronavirus is the poliovirus. I mixed that
4:47
Speaker 1: all up, but I think it's right. So coronavirus is
4:50
Speaker 1: to covid what poliovirus is to polio. Yeah, that's the
4:56
Speaker 1: cleaner way to say it, right. And then apparently polio specifically,
5:00
Speaker 1: if you say, um, oh this person, my grandfather had polio, um,
5:05
Speaker 1: you're not talking about just a polio infection. There's a
5:08
Speaker 1: specific kind of disease that you can get from the
5:11
Speaker 1: polio virus where it attacks your central nervous system and
5:14
Speaker 1: can cause all sorts of problems. And that specifically is
5:17
Speaker 1: what somebody's saying when they say they had polio, which
5:20
Speaker 1: is in that case called polio mielitis, Which is what
5:24
Speaker 1: people are talking about when they say when they're talking
5:26
Speaker 1: about polio, the disease. Yeah, because a lot of people
5:31
Speaker 1: got the poliovirus UM didn't know it had no symptoms.
5:36
Speaker 1: Your body kicks in the gear, that immune system just
5:38
Speaker 1: fights it off. You got those antibodies for life, and
5:42
Speaker 1: that's it. That happened a lot um. But yeah, like
5:46
Speaker 1: you said, if you if you get polio, that means
5:49
Speaker 1: that it hits your your central nervous system. And we'll
5:52
Speaker 1: get more into detail about all this, but UM polio
5:56
Speaker 1: virus is where it colonizes is in the throat and
5:59
Speaker 1: the digest of system. And we're talking about uh, your
6:05
Speaker 1: feces being contaminated or infectious and contaminated and your saliva
6:11
Speaker 1: depending on how you get it. So there's basically two
6:13
Speaker 1: ways to pass it along, either with your poop or
6:16
Speaker 1: with your saliva. UM. And the fecal transmission is much
6:21
Speaker 1: more prevalent, especially in the developing world because of poor sanitation,
6:27
Speaker 1: and like if you look at just the natural history
6:30
Speaker 1: of the virus, of the poliovirus, it's it's ideal is
6:33
Speaker 1: to just replicate, right, That's the whole purpose of the viruses,
6:36
Speaker 1: Just make as many copies of itself as possible and
6:39
Speaker 1: so living in the water um, the drinking water supply
6:44
Speaker 1: and then infecting people UM, infecting their gut, replicating being
6:49
Speaker 1: passed as feces back into the water supply to infect
6:52
Speaker 1: other people, but without you know, really developing symptoms and people.
6:56
Speaker 1: That's ideal for for the virus itself. UM. Every once
7:01
Speaker 1: in a while though, I thinking about one quarter of
7:03
Speaker 1: people who become infected the the the poliovirus will enter
7:08
Speaker 1: the blood stream, It'll leave the gut and enter the
7:10
Speaker 1: blood stream and will produce what's called viremia, where um
7:15
Speaker 1: it infects the blood, it starts to infect other organs
7:18
Speaker 1: and those people will develop flu like symptoms for a
7:20
Speaker 1: couple of days. That sees, that's still not that bad.
7:24
Speaker 1: Probably nothing we would amount at a global eradication campaign against.
7:28
Speaker 1: It's just that in a very small proportion of people
7:31
Speaker 1: who become infected, the poliovirus not only infects the blood stream,
7:35
Speaker 1: it actually travels to the central nervous system and attacks that.
7:39
Speaker 1: And then that is the real problem that comes from polio.
7:42
Speaker 1: What we were talking about earlier, poliomyelitis. Yeah, and no
7:46
Speaker 1: one knows why that happens. Uh, no one knows. I
7:53
Speaker 1: mean basically they just think it's it is completely random.
7:57
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that seems to be the case of
7:59
Speaker 1: whether or not you get the paralytic version or not. Uh,
8:03
Speaker 1: it is not many people, but when you spread those
8:06
Speaker 1: numbers out, it can be a lot of people. So
8:09
Speaker 1: when you look at numbers like uh point five percent
8:13
Speaker 1: of everyone infected UM have paralysis. If you look at
8:19
Speaker 1: a human population, that's a lot of people, right, Um Yeah,
8:24
Speaker 1: when when Yeah, just that very small percent of everybody
8:27
Speaker 1: or a ton of people around the world, and for
8:30
Speaker 1: centuries have you know, an infection. It does add up
8:34
Speaker 1: big time for sure enough. So and so not just
8:37
Speaker 1: the number also, chuck, but just the devastating effects that
8:41
Speaker 1: UM polio can have, poliomyelitis can have on a person.
8:45
Speaker 1: It's um, it's a really bad jam because not only
8:49
Speaker 1: can it cause what's called a cute flaccid paralysis, where
8:54
Speaker 1: your your motor neurons or your muscles are attacked so
8:58
Speaker 1: that you can't you your muscle and your um, your
9:02
Speaker 1: limb starts to wither, maybe you just become fully paralyzed.
9:05
Speaker 1: It can also UM travel to your brain and affect
9:09
Speaker 1: things like you're swallowing, reflex or breathing, and so it
9:14
Speaker 1: can very very easily kill you when it starts to
9:16
Speaker 1: to progress to the central nervous system phase of poliomyelitis. Yeah,
9:22
Speaker 1: and there's no treatment for polio UM and we'll talk
9:26
Speaker 1: about the vaccine here in a minute to a great extent.
9:29
Speaker 1: But um, it's just like any other virus. You let it,
9:32
Speaker 1: you let it run its course. Um, your body will
9:35
Speaker 1: probably do the right thing and step up and fight
9:38
Speaker 1: it back and not let it get to your blood stream.
9:41
Speaker 1: But like you said, even if it gets to your
9:42
Speaker 1: blood stream, you might just get sick. Um. But that
9:45
Speaker 1: point five percent chance that you actually have the paralytic version. Um,
9:51
Speaker 1: there is no cure for that. No, which was weird.
9:53
Speaker 1: I was like, so what you're you know, you're just
9:55
Speaker 1: a goner if you get pilot poliomyelitis or that's what
9:58
Speaker 1: the case was. And apparently your body can still fight
10:01
Speaker 1: it off. You can get polio myelitis and if you
10:04
Speaker 1: receive the proper care um. One of the one of
10:07
Speaker 1: the better um inventions to combat polio is called the
10:11
Speaker 1: iron lung, which would breathe for you using a bellows
10:14
Speaker 1: and negative and positive pressure to move your chest up
10:17
Speaker 1: and down. Um, Like that could keep you alive long
10:22
Speaker 1: enough to give you a chance for your body to
10:24
Speaker 1: fight off the infection with your immune system. But like,
10:27
Speaker 1: that's not a cure. That's just keeping you alive long
10:30
Speaker 1: enough for your body to fight it off. It was
10:32
Speaker 1: really surprising to me that there's still to this day
10:35
Speaker 1: no treatment for polio. Yeah, I can't help but think
10:38
Speaker 1: of the Big Lebowski when I think of iron lungs.
10:43
Speaker 1: Who is in an iron lung in that Remember when
10:45
Speaker 1: they go to visit the they think the kid um
10:50
Speaker 1: stole the car or they found it that they found
10:54
Speaker 1: the kids school work in the back of the car,
10:56
Speaker 1: and they got to his house and it was this
10:58
Speaker 1: this former TV writer huho, who's inside and he's in
11:02
Speaker 1: an iron lung. I genuinely don't remember that part. I'm
11:06
Speaker 1: sure I'm being shouted at by some of our listeners,
11:08
Speaker 1: but sorry, it was played for laughs. The one I
11:11
Speaker 1: think of is um Ralph Macchio and the Outsiders after
11:15
Speaker 1: he gets burned from running in that house to save
11:17
Speaker 1: those in iron lung. That's what I thought, and so
11:20
Speaker 1: I looked it up to verify, and there's no mention
11:23
Speaker 1: of it. So I guess when I was a kid,
11:24
Speaker 1: I just made up that Ralph Maccio is in an
11:26
Speaker 1: iron lung and the Outsiders. If I'm not mistaken, he
11:30
Speaker 1: was just had a I guess what you would call
11:33
Speaker 1: a respirator today, Okay, but wasn't then. Yeah, I think
11:38
Speaker 1: he was. I think he was faced down and traction
11:41
Speaker 1: and suspended and on a respirator. If I'm not mistaken, well,
11:45
Speaker 1: my my tiny little impressionable brain translated that into an
11:49
Speaker 1: iron lung. That's okay, stay gold, my brain hasn't gotten
11:53
Speaker 1: much better, Chuck, Sure it has so. Um So you
11:58
Speaker 1: can survive. You can fend off a polio infection, even
12:01
Speaker 1: with polio myelitis. But the problem is that very frequently
12:05
Speaker 1: would would not let you survive. Um, it would kill you.
12:09
Speaker 1: And so, like we said, just mounting this campaign became
12:13
Speaker 1: kind of paramount. But polio is tough because they think
12:18
Speaker 1: it's such an old virus. They think it's been around
12:21
Speaker 1: for a very very long time. And that's kind of
12:24
Speaker 1: evidence by the fact that polio is um it's only
12:28
Speaker 1: humans that that it lives in and tries to replicate,
12:31
Speaker 1: and there's it's not like other viruses where there's like
12:34
Speaker 1: reservoir animals that it can um, it can hang out
12:38
Speaker 1: in and and and just basically stay alive until it
12:40
Speaker 1: can infect a human. It's just humans basically, although there
12:45
Speaker 1: was a case in nineteen sixty six of some chimps
12:48
Speaker 1: becoming infected from humans with polio. In that sense, yeah, uh,
12:55
Speaker 1: And you know, if we need to um. If you
12:57
Speaker 1: need to go over viruses again, folks, look no further
13:01
Speaker 1: than the recent stuff you should know Classic from March
13:05
Speaker 1: twenty Virus Talk with Josh and Chuck. That was from
13:10
Speaker 1: March twenty, the rerelease What do you what do we
13:14
Speaker 1: call those classics? Select? Aren't you like one half of
13:19
Speaker 1: this podcast? I am, but I call them classics in
13:22
Speaker 1: my brain. I don't know what the official branding is. Selects. Yeah,
13:26
Speaker 1: like we have hands selected this classic episode. Yeah, classics.
13:30
Speaker 1: I think if you scramble the words selects, classics is
13:34
Speaker 1: in there somewhere, but I think spelled. But yeah, that
13:37
Speaker 1: one just came out recently. So that'll catch up on
13:39
Speaker 1: what a virus is. But should we take a break
13:41
Speaker 1: and talk a little bit about the ancient history? Perhaps
13:44
Speaker 1: a folio? Yes, all right, we'll be right back everybody.
13:48
Speaker 1: I want to learn about how to take the perfect
13:51
Speaker 1: all about fractals, think it's un the Lizzie Border murders,
13:55
Speaker 1: that kind of all runs on the plane everything we
13:59
Speaker 1: should know. Ward up, Jerry, all right, so I mentioned
14:21
Speaker 1: ancient history. Um, we don't know exactly where polio started
14:27
Speaker 1: because old diseases have shoddy record keeping. Um, they just
14:32
Speaker 1: didn't keep up with stuff like they do now, but
14:34
Speaker 1: we do. You know, if you looked at some of
14:37
Speaker 1: the mummies in ancient Egypt, you might see some limb
14:41
Speaker 1: deformities that could have been polio. U. There are UM
14:46
Speaker 1: paintings on walls and things that maybe could be polio.
14:50
Speaker 1: But this is us extrapolating this from a modern lens. Um.
14:55
Speaker 1: They you know, those limbs could have been smashed in
14:57
Speaker 1: a you know, heavy object accidents as well a combine accident.
15:03
Speaker 1: Well I was going to say that, but they didn't
15:05
Speaker 1: have combines, so um, a barge accident, how about that?
15:10
Speaker 1: So UM. Like, over the years, people were studying polio,
15:15
Speaker 1: and I mean we kind of started to get a
15:16
Speaker 1: pretty good handle on it. We didn't understand what viruses were,
15:19
Speaker 1: so we didn't know it was a virus until the
15:22
Speaker 1: twentieth century. No, the twentieth century, I think eight are old.
15:26
Speaker 1: Frank Carl Landsteiner, who developed UM blood types, was also
15:31
Speaker 1: the one of the two people who identified the polio
15:34
Speaker 1: virus in nineteen o eight, but other people had contributed
15:37
Speaker 1: up to that point. Like it was recognized as UM
15:40
Speaker 1: being an epidemic disease, that there were outbreaks that kind
15:43
Speaker 1: of stuff, and but everybody was kind of okay with
15:48
Speaker 1: polio existing, like it was not something that we were
15:51
Speaker 1: happy about, but nothing that like there was this great
15:55
Speaker 1: urgency to cure until about the beginning of the twentieth century.
15:58
Speaker 1: And they think that that people living together, close in
16:04
Speaker 1: close quarters, urbanization and better sanitation lead to polio outbreaks
16:12
Speaker 1: that hadn't been seen before because the better sanitation produced
16:15
Speaker 1: a population that had not been exposed to polio virus. Yeah,
16:20
Speaker 1: that seems counterintuitive, it does, but it makes sense because
16:23
Speaker 1: if you've got a virgin population, that thing can just
16:26
Speaker 1: hop from person to person to person, whereas if you
16:28
Speaker 1: have an endemic population where any proportion of the population
16:33
Speaker 1: is already immune from having been exposed to the virus before.
16:36
Speaker 1: Because don't forget, remember we said a lot of people,
16:39
Speaker 1: most people, I think people who are infected never even
16:43
Speaker 1: show any signs or symptoms. So if you don't have
16:46
Speaker 1: people like that anymore because of improved sanitation, but you
16:49
Speaker 1: also don't have a vaccine program, you've got a virgin population,
16:53
Speaker 1: that virus can just run rampant in and that's familiar
16:57
Speaker 1: that it does. That's what started happening in the early
17:00
Speaker 1: twentie century, and it started scaring the Bejesus out of
17:03
Speaker 1: parents because it was largely affecting kids. Yeah, and it
17:07
Speaker 1: happened in clusters, UM because it was so easily transmitted,
17:11
Speaker 1: and like you said, with the virgin population, that would
17:14
Speaker 1: be these big outbreaks and that causes panic, uh with
17:17
Speaker 1: parents especially UM. In nineteen sixteen in the US, six
17:22
Speaker 1: thousand people died from polio in about twenty seven thousand
17:26
Speaker 1: paralytic cases, UM ninety two paralytic cases. And also we
17:33
Speaker 1: said in our in our book, you remember in the Mr.
17:36
Speaker 1: Potato Head chapter that polio outbreak is what made Mr
17:40
Speaker 1: potato Head one of the big, the first big, because
17:44
Speaker 1: so many kids were We're stuck at home that summer
17:47
Speaker 1: because of a polio outbreak. That's right, and that that's
17:51
Speaker 1: exactly what happened, because you know, kind of mirroring what
17:54
Speaker 1: we're seeing now is they would shut down parks, in
17:58
Speaker 1: swimming pools and schools in public events. UM and America
18:03
Speaker 1: rallied behind it back then and said, yeah, that's what
18:06
Speaker 1: we should do for the good of the public. UM.
18:09
Speaker 1: It's not happening now, unfortunately, but back then everyone got
18:12
Speaker 1: on board. UM. Between I think a quarter of a
18:16
Speaker 1: million and six hundred and fifty thousand Americans. Um, we're
18:21
Speaker 1: alive at any given time in the twentieth century that
18:24
Speaker 1: had lifelong uh issues caused by polio. Right, that's a
18:30
Speaker 1: lot of people. I mean, that's a real problem. You know.
18:33
Speaker 1: That's not over the twentieth century, that's at any given
18:35
Speaker 1: point in the twentieth century, right, Yeah, at any given point.
18:40
Speaker 1: So you can kind of understand why around then, you know,
18:43
Speaker 1: especially when when people were seeing entire classrooms of children
18:48
Speaker 1: struck down, you know, with polio, some of whom you know,
18:52
Speaker 1: went on to have lifelong mobility issues, some of whom died.
18:56
Speaker 1: Um that that was that scared parents a lot, and
19:00
Speaker 1: it's scared everybody so much so that it kind of
19:03
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for this big national and actually an
19:07
Speaker 1: international push toward coming up with, if not a treatment,
19:11
Speaker 1: which they tried at first and found that was not happening,
19:14
Speaker 1: then a vaccine for polio. And and that's exactly what
19:17
Speaker 1: we did. Yeah. Uh. And a big driver for this
19:22
Speaker 1: vaccine was a little organization called the March of Dimes,
19:26
Speaker 1: which was originally founded by Franklin Roosevelt, was called the
19:31
Speaker 1: National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis And I never knew this,
19:36
Speaker 1: but they had a march and people would send dimes
19:40
Speaker 1: as donations to the organization, and that's why it's called
19:43
Speaker 1: the March of Dimes. It's amazing. And because of that,
19:46
Speaker 1: because of all those individuals sending in dimes to the
19:49
Speaker 1: March of Dimes or to them, the Infantile Paralysis Foundation, UM,
19:56
Speaker 1: the that laid the groundwork for the financial support for
20:00
Speaker 1: all of this research that was going on, specifically for
20:04
Speaker 1: the research of one of the guys who came up
20:06
Speaker 1: with a vaccine for polio. Because we actually have more
20:08
Speaker 1: than one UM. But the most famous of them all
20:11
Speaker 1: was Jonas Salk, who came into the picture in about
20:16
Speaker 1: and because of those dimes that were contributed by average,
20:21
Speaker 1: everyday people, because those that money directly funded his research.
20:25
Speaker 1: He very famously refused to patent the UM the vaccine
20:31
Speaker 1: that he came up with for polio and just said,
20:33
Speaker 1: this belongs to the world. Yeah, just like a farmer, bros.
20:38
Speaker 1: Same exactly, same morals, right right, UM, so this is
20:44
Speaker 1: a good chance. I'm glad when we get to do
20:45
Speaker 1: shows like this because um, Jonas Salt gets so much
20:49
Speaker 1: credit and deservedly so as a genuinely great human that
20:52
Speaker 1: walked the planet. Um. But a lot of people had
20:56
Speaker 1: chipped in over the years to get this vaccine where
20:59
Speaker 1: it was. And we get a chance to talk about
21:01
Speaker 1: those people now, which is always fun. UM. In the
21:04
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, late nineteen forties, John Franklin Enders, Thomas huckle
21:09
Speaker 1: Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins, all three serial killers. That's right,
21:16
Speaker 1: they figured out how to grow the poliovirus culture in
21:19
Speaker 1: a lab, which if you want a vaccine, that's the
21:23
Speaker 1: first big step is to grow that culture in a lab.
21:25
Speaker 1: And they won in nineteen fifty four for those efforts. Uh,
21:28
Speaker 1: they won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, which is great. Yeah,
21:31
Speaker 1: it was um so the first that was a huge
21:35
Speaker 1: first step. Like you were saying, the people had tried
21:38
Speaker 1: to create a vaccine even before that first step, though,
21:43
Speaker 1: I guess the old fashioned way. UM. Brody and Colemer
21:46
Speaker 1: John Colemer, I don't know Brody's first name, but they
21:49
Speaker 1: when they were working together, UM, they created a vaccine
21:53
Speaker 1: that actually killed uh, five of their ten thousand test subjects,
21:58
Speaker 1: which was not um. It wasn't good. Uh, and it
22:02
Speaker 1: actually kind of set the whole the whole vaccine UM
22:06
Speaker 1: movement back a hint. But astoundingly, it didn't kill it.
22:10
Speaker 1: And rather than saying like, no, we're not going to
22:13
Speaker 1: try this, people looked at polio cases and said this
22:17
Speaker 1: is so bad. We need to keep pushing forward despite
22:20
Speaker 1: that and so UM. By the time Salt came along
22:24
Speaker 1: and started working on his vaccine, you know, people were
22:28
Speaker 1: already a little jumpy about the idea UM, and it
22:31
Speaker 1: was made all the more so that he was trying
22:34
Speaker 1: UH an unproven form of vaccine, whereas most vaccines used
22:40
Speaker 1: UM attenuated virus, which is it's live, but it's a
22:45
Speaker 1: weekend version of the virus, and it's in a UM.
22:48
Speaker 1: It's it's in a much smaller dose. What what Salt
22:52
Speaker 1: was suggesting, what he wanted to use was a an
22:56
Speaker 1: inactivated virus, which is it's dead in the in the
22:59
Speaker 1: sense that can't replicate no longer. It's been treated with formaldehyde.
23:03
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's a huge dose of it. So
23:06
Speaker 1: if it's not dead, you're in big trouble. Yeah, And
23:10
Speaker 1: it was a big deal of the time because it
23:11
Speaker 1: was a new science and a lot of scientists said
23:15
Speaker 1: that I don't think you could administer this much even
23:20
Speaker 1: uh killed virus safely. And so what you had was
23:24
Speaker 1: a couple of different things going on, a couple of
23:27
Speaker 1: potential pathways to take. Was give a little bit of
23:31
Speaker 1: that weakened virus that's still alive to kids, which we
23:34
Speaker 1: know is going to infect them with a virus. So
23:37
Speaker 1: it's gonna generate those antibodies, but hopefully it's not gonna
23:41
Speaker 1: be strong enough to get to that central nervous system
23:44
Speaker 1: point of infection or super dose them with this inactive virus,
23:51
Speaker 1: and that's going to cause antibodies in the blood, so
23:53
Speaker 1: that will prevent polio from happening. That will keep it
23:58
Speaker 1: from going to the central nervous system. They knew that, uh,
24:02
Speaker 1: and that's great news. But boy, you better be sure
24:05
Speaker 1: that that virus is perfect, because if it's not, then
24:08
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble. Right And not only not only
24:12
Speaker 1: that that's that's a big risk with it, but if
24:15
Speaker 1: you do it right, if the risk goes very close
24:18
Speaker 1: to zero. The other problem with it is because it
24:21
Speaker 1: produces antibodies in the blood stream, that leaves out the gut,
24:25
Speaker 1: which means that you could still be infected by polio
24:29
Speaker 1: and colonize your gut and replicate and be passed in
24:32
Speaker 1: your feces. But because you have those antibodies in your
24:34
Speaker 1: in your blood stream, it's going to protect you from
24:37
Speaker 1: ever developing poliomyelitis. Yeah, they were trying to stop the disease,
24:42
Speaker 1: not stop the virus. Right. Well, it depends on the paradigm,
24:46
Speaker 1: Like the one that actually infects you with polio is
24:51
Speaker 1: going to prevent any poliovirus from ever colonizing your gut
24:56
Speaker 1: ever again, Um, so it depends on which approach you
24:59
Speaker 1: were coming from. And over the course of some you know,
25:03
Speaker 1: a couple of decades, both came into use enough around
25:07
Speaker 1: the world that we actually have come close to eradicating
25:10
Speaker 1: polio thanks to this combination of both of them. Yeah,
25:13
Speaker 1: so salk Um developed a two part test that he
25:18
Speaker 1: used on himself and volunteers, and then in nineteen fifty
25:23
Speaker 1: four you had to you know, this was you had
25:26
Speaker 1: to get a massive pr campaign behind this, like, uh,
25:30
Speaker 1: in a big way because they had to vaccinate a
25:35
Speaker 1: million children. They were called the Polio Pioneers. And even
25:39
Speaker 1: though it was even though it looked good, it's still
25:43
Speaker 1: a big deal to vaccinate a million kids with this
25:47
Speaker 1: new vaccine that you're not quite sure about yet, but
25:50
Speaker 1: they figured just that was their only choice. They're like,
25:54
Speaker 1: we can't just let polio continue to thrive and paralyze
25:59
Speaker 1: and kill our chill during we have to take a
26:01
Speaker 1: chance with these pioneers, right. So so during this polio
26:06
Speaker 1: pioneer um experiment UM, it was actually, from what I saw,
26:10
Speaker 1: the first double blind in a major public health study,
26:13
Speaker 1: so no one knew whether they were getting the placebo
26:16
Speaker 1: or not, or getting the vaccine. But one segment of UM,
26:22
Speaker 1: this group of polio pioneers, two hundred thousand of them
26:25
Speaker 1: were given a vaccine with UH that wasn't inactivated. So
26:30
Speaker 1: it's a huge dose of still alive polio vaccine. And
26:34
Speaker 1: forty thou of those two hundred thousand people came down
26:37
Speaker 1: with polio. Two hundred of them were kids who developed
26:42
Speaker 1: paralysis and ten died. And this was huge, huge, Like
26:47
Speaker 1: can you imagine a setback like that were two hundred
26:49
Speaker 1: thousand kids were given a vaccine that hadn't been done properly,
26:56
Speaker 1: like that would just stop it in its tracks now.
26:58
Speaker 1: But again, because as polio was so bad, America at
27:02
Speaker 1: the time was feeling very utilitarian and said, you know,
27:06
Speaker 1: two kids developing paralysis is horrible. But without this vaccine, UM,
27:13
Speaker 1: you know, in ninety seven thousand had developed paralysis. So
27:18
Speaker 1: again they still pushed forward. Even with the government temporarily
27:21
Speaker 1: suspending vaccination programs or this this test, I believe um
27:26
Speaker 1: American parents still move forward and vaccinated their kids anyway.
27:30
Speaker 1: With this this salk Um what came to be known
27:32
Speaker 1: the IPv or um inactive polio virus that that salk developed.
27:39
Speaker 1: That's right, the inactivated poliovirus vaccine just still around today.
27:45
Speaker 1: Uh and again doesn't prevent the the infection um, but
27:50
Speaker 1: it does prevent the bloodstream from moving it on to
27:54
Speaker 1: the central nervous system, which is so that's poliomyelitis. That's
27:58
Speaker 1: again what people mean when they say polio. That's right.
28:02
Speaker 1: Should we take another break and talk about the other vaccine?
28:06
Speaker 1: All right, We'll be right back to talk about the
28:08
Speaker 1: cheaper vaccine. Right after this. I want to learn about
28:11
Speaker 1: a Terroristorto College act, how to take a perfect But
28:14
Speaker 1: with all about fractal kiscon that's another hun the Lizzie
28:17
Speaker 1: Border murders that they kind of all runs on the plane.
28:19
Speaker 1: Everything this we should know word up Jerry. All right.
28:43
Speaker 1: So there's another guy who is somewhat famous, but not
28:46
Speaker 1: nearly as famous as Jonas salk Um. Salk he announced
28:51
Speaker 1: his findings on CBS Radio UM and became like a
28:56
Speaker 1: household name overnight. I think America was kind of smitten
28:59
Speaker 1: with him because he had tested the vaccine on himself,
29:02
Speaker 1: his wife, his three sons, sterilizing his his syringes in
29:06
Speaker 1: his own kitchen. Um. And he was very much derided
29:10
Speaker 1: by his main rival, a guy named Albert Sabin or Sabin,
29:14
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which way you pronounced it. I don't
29:17
Speaker 1: think it matters at this point. Oh that's a good one.
29:20
Speaker 1: Let's go with Sabine. So Albert Sabine Um. He came
29:25
Speaker 1: up with what we were talking about, the other kind
29:28
Speaker 1: of vaccine and attenuated virus that had a lot of
29:32
Speaker 1: advantages over um Salks virus or Salts vaccine um. But
29:38
Speaker 1: because Salk had kind of beaten him to the punch
29:40
Speaker 1: in America, Sabine was was forced to kind of go
29:44
Speaker 1: outside of the United States to test his his vaccine,
29:47
Speaker 1: and he ended up testing his in the USSR, I believe, yeah,
29:52
Speaker 1: And like you said, his was attenuated, so it was
29:54
Speaker 1: live and it was actually a really infectious strain. But
29:59
Speaker 1: something about this strain, it just seemed to not go
30:02
Speaker 1: to that central nervous system and infect the central nervous
30:06
Speaker 1: system nearly as much. So Uh. He went to the
30:09
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, tested more than ten million people there in
30:13
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and they said whatever Russian is for,
30:18
Speaker 1: thumbs up, way to go, great job, great ski uh.
30:25
Speaker 1: And it was widely used and came into the US
30:27
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. So then all of a sudden,
30:31
Speaker 1: we have two vaccines. We got the IPv that you
30:34
Speaker 1: have to inject um. At first that they thought it
30:38
Speaker 1: was had to be boosted every few years, but it
30:41
Speaker 1: was in fact forever injection the best kind right Um
30:48
Speaker 1: there were. It was very safe, there were no systemic reactions. Um.
30:53
Speaker 1: The cost was high, which was kind of a problem
30:56
Speaker 1: at the time as opposed to the lower costs of
30:59
Speaker 1: the op which was oral. He gave it on sugar cubes. Um. Right.
31:05
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of advantages with this O p
31:08
Speaker 1: V over the I p V. And as a result
31:11
Speaker 1: between the advantages, I mean, just lower cost alone would
31:15
Speaker 1: make public health officials be like, well, we should go
31:18
Speaker 1: with that. But that whole um, the Cutter incident where
31:22
Speaker 1: two thousand kids were accidentally given active polio um, that
31:27
Speaker 1: that really kind of shook people in Salts vaccine enough
31:31
Speaker 1: that his vaccine got supplanted by sabines O p V
31:36
Speaker 1: Laural polio virus vaccine UM, and that became the standard
31:41
Speaker 1: in the United States from about the early sixties up
31:44
Speaker 1: to I guess two thousand, basically, right, yeah, And I
31:48
Speaker 1: think we failed to mention there were three types, three
31:51
Speaker 1: stereo types type one, Type two, and type three and
31:54
Speaker 1: the O p V. You could get all three of
31:56
Speaker 1: those types onto that one sugar cube, which is great.
31:59
Speaker 1: And if you have uh, if you're infected by one
32:02
Speaker 1: of those stereotypes, it doesn't give you anybodies against the
32:05
Speaker 1: other two, and a vaccine for one doesn't protect against
32:08
Speaker 1: the other two, so you have to get inoculated against
32:12
Speaker 1: all three and and sabine Remember he found a strain
32:16
Speaker 1: of poliovirus that was very infectious but didn't attack the
32:21
Speaker 1: central nervous system very very much. And he actually identified
32:25
Speaker 1: strains for each one of those types that kind of
32:28
Speaker 1: fell into that category. But the thing is this, Remember
32:31
Speaker 1: we said that with an UM with an activated or
32:35
Speaker 1: an attenuated live virus, you are actually being given poliovirus
32:41
Speaker 1: and you are being infected with polio virus. And so
32:44
Speaker 1: that means that you can actually you're shedding poliovirus in
32:48
Speaker 1: your feces. So let's say you want to start a
32:51
Speaker 1: vaccination campaign in an area that has poor sanitation and
32:55
Speaker 1: a lot of resistance to a vaccine campaign. Well, if
32:58
Speaker 1: you can just get in there and vaccinate a few people,
33:02
Speaker 1: they're going to go and shed that polio virus in
33:04
Speaker 1: their feces. And because it's this weakened strain um, that
33:08
Speaker 1: weekend strain will go on and infect other people in
33:11
Speaker 1: the community who drink this taint of drinking water and
33:15
Speaker 1: they will kind of become what's known as passively vaccinated
33:19
Speaker 1: by this. So it was another advantage in developing areas
33:22
Speaker 1: as well. But there were some major problems with this
33:25
Speaker 1: this vaccine and still remain today, mainly because this is
33:29
Speaker 1: a live virus that you're being um you're being infected
33:33
Speaker 1: with on purpose. Yeah, and because it's live, even though
33:37
Speaker 1: it's weak, very and you know, I don't know about
33:41
Speaker 1: the word rare, but in very few cases, uh, and
33:44
Speaker 1: they think him. You know, deficiency had a lot to
33:46
Speaker 1: do with it. You could contract polio, you could get
33:49
Speaker 1: the paralysis, and you could possibly die. That was known
33:53
Speaker 1: as VAP vaccine associated paralytic polio myelitis. And that's no
33:59
Speaker 1: good than that, there are very few cases. That's not
34:02
Speaker 1: great for your pr campaign. But not only that, because
34:06
Speaker 1: it was a live virus that could still replicate, they
34:09
Speaker 1: also found that when it entered your gut and colonized there,
34:14
Speaker 1: sometimes it could undergo a type of mutation, so that
34:19
Speaker 1: what came out the other end in your feces was
34:22
Speaker 1: actually a basically a new version of the strain that
34:27
Speaker 1: you had been given. And sometimes it was way more infectious.
34:31
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was way more deadly, and that would be
34:34
Speaker 1: what you pooped out into the local water supply. And
34:37
Speaker 1: at first, again compared to like the wild strains of
34:41
Speaker 1: the three types of polio virus that were out there
34:44
Speaker 1: in the world, UM, at first like it didn't matter,
34:47
Speaker 1: Like that happened, and frequently enough that that just keep
34:51
Speaker 1: going with this oral vaccine because it's really really working. Um.
34:55
Speaker 1: But as it became more and more effective and fewer
34:58
Speaker 1: and fewer people had Polly Oh, the idea that you
35:02
Speaker 1: were giving them a vaccine that could actually produce a
35:05
Speaker 1: virulent strain became a real problem and as a result,
35:10
Speaker 1: people said, well, wait a minute, we need to figure
35:12
Speaker 1: out what to do about this vaccine because we really
35:14
Speaker 1: need to start figuring out how to phase this out.
35:18
Speaker 1: That's right, um. And is this where the Dutch entered
35:21
Speaker 1: the picture. I believe so. Yeah. And you might think,
35:25
Speaker 1: what do they have to do with it? They were
35:27
Speaker 1: studying salks IPv this whole time they were using it.
35:32
Speaker 1: They were researching it. They were funded by their own
35:34
Speaker 1: government to do so, and they made it more more
35:37
Speaker 1: robust basically against all three types, which is great. And
35:41
Speaker 1: the big thing they did though, is they they found
35:43
Speaker 1: out how to reduce the cost, because the cost was
35:45
Speaker 1: one of the big drawbacks of sALS version UM and
35:49
Speaker 1: one of the big parts of the cost, very sadly
35:51
Speaker 1: is is they had to import five thousand rhesus monkeys
35:56
Speaker 1: every year uh in the Netherlands alone, five thousand monkeys
36:01
Speaker 1: and just the Netherlands. So in the seventies, these two
36:04
Speaker 1: people named Paul van Hemmert and Anton van vesel Uh
36:09
Speaker 1: they figured out how to grow cultured monkey kidney cells,
36:13
Speaker 1: which is a great record title. I think, Oh, I
36:15
Speaker 1: think so too. I hadn't thought about that. I don't
36:17
Speaker 1: know the band. The band is the Plastic Beads, okay,
36:23
Speaker 1: and their new album Cultured Monkey Kidney Cell. So they
36:26
Speaker 1: figured out how to grow these on plastic beads and
36:29
Speaker 1: steel flasks and then grow that polio virus on the
36:33
Speaker 1: kidney cells. So all of a sudden, you didn't need
36:37
Speaker 1: five thousand esus monkeys. You just needed a few of them,
36:40
Speaker 1: and you didn't have to spend eight didn't have to
36:42
Speaker 1: kill all these monkeys, which is awesome, And b you
36:44
Speaker 1: didn't have to import all those monkeys and that expense
36:48
Speaker 1: and that was that saved a ton of money, and
36:50
Speaker 1: they could all of a sudden pump out these I
36:53
Speaker 1: p V uh I PV shots at a really reduced rate.
36:59
Speaker 1: So now, all of a sudden, Salk's original or actually
37:02
Speaker 1: new improved version of Salk's original vaccine is competitive to
37:07
Speaker 1: the O p V price wise. I think it's still
37:09
Speaker 1: way more expensive, but but much less, way more expensive
37:13
Speaker 1: than it was before. But then also like it prevents
37:17
Speaker 1: polio myelitis from happening, So what public health officials started
37:20
Speaker 1: to realize, they By the way, the US started to
37:23
Speaker 1: switch back to the Salk vaccine the IPv in two
37:26
Speaker 1: thousand and what what public health officials realizes that this
37:30
Speaker 1: combination of the two could actually wipe polio out of existence.
37:36
Speaker 1: For one, you could prevent polio myhelitis from ever happening
37:40
Speaker 1: in your population with the I p V. But then
37:42
Speaker 1: also if you could knock out polio in the wild
37:47
Speaker 1: with the O p V and and keep the population
37:52
Speaker 1: that you're inoculating from developing these UM vaccine associated UM
37:59
Speaker 1: virus is right, the mutated viruses that can come out
38:02
Speaker 1: the other end, you can actually wipe polio out of
38:05
Speaker 1: the wild. And as a matter of fact, one type
38:08
Speaker 1: of polio I believe it was type two UM was eradicated.
38:13
Speaker 1: They figured out sometime around and then I believe in
38:17
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen they officially declared type to poliovirus eradicated.
38:24
Speaker 1: It's just gone that that. It's just not in the
38:26
Speaker 1: wild anymore UM because it died out because it couldn't
38:30
Speaker 1: find a host to transmit and replicate, and we killed it.
38:34
Speaker 1: We got rid of it from poop though. That's right,
38:38
Speaker 1: like that's literally in the last polio dump happened. Yeah,
38:44
Speaker 1: it is kind of crazy because you do, at least
38:47
Speaker 1: in the United States, you associate polio with like the
38:50
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, you know. Yeah, so the last
38:53
Speaker 1: polio poop came out, didn't hook up with anyone that
38:57
Speaker 1: didn't have immunity. And the good news about type two
39:00
Speaker 1: going away was remember how we were talking about the
39:02
Speaker 1: VAP the v APP situation with the o p v's confusing, uh,
39:10
Speaker 1: Type two was the part most likely to cause that
39:13
Speaker 1: vaccine infection, that vaccine derived infection. So with that out
39:17
Speaker 1: of the way, you were just left with the o
39:19
Speaker 1: p V for types one and three, which is way
39:22
Speaker 1: more safe and effective. Right. And I saw that type
39:25
Speaker 1: three had actually been declared eradicated as well. Um I
39:30
Speaker 1: think that it's made some sort of weird comeback in Nigeria,
39:33
Speaker 1: but that um, I believe it was declared eradicated in
39:38
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. I'm not sure if they double back
39:40
Speaker 1: on that or not, but either way, there does seem
39:42
Speaker 1: to be this idea that we could and we're right
39:46
Speaker 1: there um on the cusp of being able to eradicate polio.
39:51
Speaker 1: And there's a difference between eradicate and eliminate, eradicate is
39:54
Speaker 1: whether zero cases to where the only polio that exists
39:58
Speaker 1: as like in a lab or invaccinated form um, eliminated
40:02
Speaker 1: where it just doesn't exist on Earth anymore. And for
40:05
Speaker 1: all we know, type two polio virus has been eliminated,
40:11
Speaker 1: but type three, type one right has been are close
40:15
Speaker 1: to being eradicated. For example, for all types of polio.
40:19
Speaker 1: In not not very long ago, there were three hundred
40:24
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand cases worldwide. Still, so there's still a
40:27
Speaker 1: lot of polio. In two thousand and seventeen it was
40:29
Speaker 1: down to twenty two twenty two worldwide. So we're making
40:35
Speaker 1: like great headway, but unfortunately the CIA seems to have
40:39
Speaker 1: really gotten in the way and set polio eradication back
40:43
Speaker 1: by decades from what I've read. Oh yeah, yes, did
40:48
Speaker 1: you see that Scientific American article I sent? I didn't
40:51
Speaker 1: get to that tell us about it. So when when
40:55
Speaker 1: the the US was hunting for Osama bin Laden, one
40:59
Speaker 1: of the ways that they tried to find him was
41:01
Speaker 1: through a fake vaccination campaign. And it wasn't for polio,
41:05
Speaker 1: it was for hepatitis C. But they basically got a
41:07
Speaker 1: public health official to mount a fake vaccination campaign to
41:12
Speaker 1: gain entry to the bin laden compound or suspected bin
41:16
Speaker 1: ladon compound and basically take DNA samples of the children
41:19
Speaker 1: there while they were um vaccinating them, and they they
41:24
Speaker 1: I guess that they didn't happen. It didn't um, it
41:27
Speaker 1: wasn't successful. I don't remember how they found out he
41:30
Speaker 1: was in there or not. But the UM, the fact
41:35
Speaker 1: that the word got out that this fake vaccination campaign
41:39
Speaker 1: had been used as a ruse by the c i
41:41
Speaker 1: A completely undermined all other vaccination campaigns around the world
41:46
Speaker 1: in places that were already wary of the CIA. Because remember,
41:50
Speaker 1: polio is endemic in three places Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan,
41:55
Speaker 1: and none of those three places really have a great
41:57
Speaker 1: impression of the CIA. So legitimate UM public health vaccination
42:04
Speaker 1: campaigns in those countries were totally delegitimized in the eyes
42:08
Speaker 1: of local population and the local governments. And in fact,
42:11
Speaker 1: some vaccination workers were murdered, um and kicked out of
42:16
Speaker 1: countries directly because of that that ruse that the CIA
42:20
Speaker 1: had undertaken. And from what I read, they say that
42:23
Speaker 1: it's set this eradication campaign for polio back literally decades
42:28
Speaker 1: because it is built around public trust that these scientists
42:34
Speaker 1: who are injecting them with stuff, these American scientists are
42:37
Speaker 1: are trustworthy. Um. And and that that trust has been
42:41
Speaker 1: lost sadly in that nuts that that can have that
42:45
Speaker 1: kind of ripple effects like that. And now we're gonna
42:47
Speaker 1: have to live with polio at least another twenty years
42:49
Speaker 1: probably It is said polio said you got anything else?
42:56
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. Well, let's say for polio everybody
43:00
Speaker 1: soon that's it for polio. Uh. And since I said that,
43:03
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail, I think, right, yeah,
43:08
Speaker 1: I gotta call this. Oh, just correcting us on some stuff,
43:14
Speaker 1: how about that? Uh? Sorry, guys in a bit behind.
43:18
Speaker 1: So this uh is somewhat old news, but since it
43:21
Speaker 1: involves the Byzantine Empire, perhaps oldest relative and the stuff
43:26
Speaker 1: you should know episode how flamethrowers work, Josh says, in
43:30
Speaker 1: reference to the Greek fire, something like the Byzantines, who
43:35
Speaker 1: we know as Turks, we're most notorious for using this stuff.
43:39
Speaker 1: I didn't see that he said you said it at
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Speaker 1: five thirty one. That sounds made up. That's a made
43:46
Speaker 1: up times. The Byzantines were not Turks in the sense
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Speaker 1: that white Afrikaners in South Africa are not Zulus. The
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Speaker 1: Byzantines were Greek speaking colonists from the Roman Empire. The
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Speaker 1: capital of the Roman Empire was moved to Byzantium and
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Speaker 1: three a d. By Constantine the Great Uh and the
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Speaker 1: strategic port was duly christened and Christianized for a while
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Speaker 1: at least as Constantinople, as the Byzantines were, much as
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Speaker 1: the Afrikaaners were with the Zulus, at odds with the
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Speaker 1: indigenous Turks for most of their history, until they were
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Speaker 1: overthrown by the latter in the mid fifteenth century. The
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Speaker 1: name Constantinople was changed officially to istanbul And nineteen thirty,
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Speaker 1: but had been in use by the non Greek speaking
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Speaker 1: natives there for centuries even before the city fell to
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Speaker 1: the Turks in fourteen fifty three. Why the heirs of
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Speaker 1: the Roman Empire spoke Greek rather than Latin is similar
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Speaker 1: to why modern South Africans speak English mostly rather than Afrikaan.
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Speaker 1: It's probably a couple of whole shows you could do
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Speaker 1: about the convoluted colonial histories touched on above, and that
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Speaker 1: is from Conrad be rub A. Thanks Conrad, I appreciate it.
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Speaker 1: I still dispute that I said anything as ridiculous as
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Speaker 1: what you say I said, but regardless, I'm glad it
45:05
Speaker 1: resulted in that top not email. If you want to
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Speaker 1: be like Conrad and send us a top notch email,
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Speaker 1: you can do that. Send it off to Stuff podcast
45:13
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
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Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
45:21
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.