Anyway, he says that half of the cases were probably not polio at all but it didn’t matter because the total cases of paralysis were less in the vaccine group compared to the control. How does a scientist explain the discrepancy. Meaning how does a polio vaccine cause non-polio paralysis to decrease? Do scientist not care about these types of questions?

The 1955, Journal of American Statistical Assn 50: 1005- 1013, stated of the Francis report:

“59% of the trial was worthless because of lack of adequate controls. The remaining 41% may have been alright, but contains internal evidence of bias in favour of the vaccinated.”

Referring to this quote from an American Heritage article “The Making of the Polio Vaccine”.

“…in seven years the Salk vaccine …reduced the incidence of polio in the United States by more than 96 percent, from 38,476 reported cases in 1954 to 1,312 in 1961″

“The 1954 “polio” data includes all paralysis. While some of this may have been from polio, in reality, much of it was from other causes. With the change of diagnostic criteria in 1955 that reduced case numbers, followed by laboratory testing that excluded vast numbers of other causes, the 1961 data only includes the small subgroup of paralysis caused by poliomyelitis”

1) we can’t know the number of pre 1954 true polio vs other paralysis cases, yet the blog post continues to suggest that indeed the true polio cases are small in comparison.

2) The overall suggestion that the polio vaccine was not effective fails to take into account the huge drop in polio numbers even given the pre 1955 diagnostic changes (which were not nearly as drastic as the article suggested. For instance, the only number given in the article suggested that perhaps 50% of the reported cases (in the 1954 trial) were not “true” polio. Given that that trial noticed a massive decrease in cases using the same diagnostic criteria (up to 80% depending on the historical reading). Specifically, of the 863 cases identified as polio 113 occurred in vaccinated children. That is a success rate of between 50 and 75%. Again, this is based on unchanged diagnostic criteria.

Its little self inconsistencies that make some of the articles here difficult to read.

Here is a brief article about the 1954 trial which includes some numbers. http://www.stat.luc.edu/StatisticsfortheSciences/MeierPolio.htm

thanks for this info. Indeed the numbers (relatively) and chronology are very similar. I cant wait to see next parts of Polio Provoked. Once different factors are identified by IV it will make sense to look for common patterns accross countries.

I checked the Israeli statitstics of Polio mortality.
1954 – 89 cases
1955 – 51 cases
1956 – 45 cases
1957 – 6 cases (Salk vaccine introduced this year)
1958 – 49 cases
1959 – 3 case
1960 – 4 cases
1961 – 12 cases (Sabin vaccine introduced this year)
1962 – 1 case
1963 – 1 case

Seems quite similar to the pattern you observed in Poland.

Once this data is available we could maybe see how many paralisis cases were really saved by vaccination back in 60′s. I see in your comments that this data is not available any more.

In some articles related to US I could find that the cases of asymptomatic meningitis increased and that this is the missing piece.