Polio surge in Nigeria after vaccine virus mutates

LONDON – Polio, the dreaded paralyzing disease stamped out in the industrialized world, is spreading in Nigeria. And health officials say in some cases, it's caused by the vaccine used to fight it.

In July, the World Health Organization issued a warning that this vaccine-spread virus might extend beyond Africa. So far, 124 Nigerian children have been paralyzed this year — about twice those afflicted in 2008.

The polio problem is just the latest challenge to global health authorities trying to convince wary citizens that vaccines can save them from dreaded disease. For years, myths have abounded about vaccines — that they were the Western world's plan to sterilize Africans or give them AIDS. The sad polio reality fuels misguided fears and underscores the challenges authorities face using a flawed vaccine.

Nigeria and most other poor nations use an oral polio vaccine because it's cheaper, easier, and protects entire communities.

But it is made from a live polio virus — albeit weakened — which carries a small risk of causing polio for every million or so doses given. In even rarer instances, the virus in the vaccine can mutate into a deadlier version that ignites new outbreaks.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090814/ap_on_re_af/af_med_polio_nigeria

With all their bullshit superstitutions about AIDS, not to mention a little help from the Vatican in spreading stupidity, just what we need is some actually evidence that a vaccine is spreading a disease. Then they'll wonder why Nigerians are banned from admission to the US and other countries.

And suddenly it's no longer so difficult to imagine how such epidemic stupidity can thrive in third world countries, when we have reasonably educated idiots in the USA spreading and believing rumors about death panels and other stupid shit.

This is why dictators come to power: it eventually becomes obvious that people as a group are too stupid to self govern.

but this is worrying:


"The oral polio vaccine used in Nigeria and elsewhere contains a mild version of the live virus. Children who have been vaccinated pass the virus into the water supply through urine or feces. Other children who then play in or drink that water pick up the vaccine's virus, which gives them some protection against polio.

But in rare instances, as the virus passes through unimmunized children, it can mutate into a strain dangerous enough to ignite new outbreaks, particularly if immunization rates in the rest of the population are low.

Kew said genetic analysis proves mutated viruses from the vaccine have caused at least seven separate outbreaks in Nigeria."

:(

vaccinated with the killed vaccine. Then you have a pool of immune people. I imagine they did not think about introducing the OPV into an unvaccinated population. Doctors aren't as smart as they once were.