~~~ Some Good News About a
Bad Bug ~~~
Through an exhaustive effort of personnel associated
with the Central and South American regions of the World Health
Organization to immunize every single child within these regions
(the US and Canada have been doing this for many years), polio appears to
have disappeared from North, Central, and, South America - all of
the Americas! A recent report from the World Health Organization, stated
that not one single new case of polio had occurred in the Americas
for the past three years. Officials are very hopeful that all of the
members of the terrible paralysis-causing poliomyelitis virus group,
have died in these regions. A similar immunization of all of the rest of
the world's children is going on at this moment. As you may know, about
40 years ago Jonas Salk (the person for whom the Salk Institute for
Research, in La Jolla, California is named), developed the first vaccine
against polio. Later, Sabin improved the vaccine, and produced an
oral-dose form (the form of the vaccine with which for many years,
everyone in the United States has been immunized). The oral form of the
vaccine is made of a live, but attenuated (non-harmful) poliovirus
preparation; Salk's vaccine was a dead virus preparation. When we take
the oral vaccine, the non-harmful, but alive and infectious, but not
disease-causing form of poliovirus, infects our intestinal epithelial
cells, where it slowly produces virus structures. We respond
immunologically against these structures in a normal way (is what our
immune system does), and in this way, develop and maintain a day-by-day,
minute-by-minute, second-by second, life-long protection against the
harmful (wild-type) form of the virus - which is pretty much all over the
place (or, at least, used to be!). Therefore, if everyone is
eventually immunized, there will not be anyone left within which
the wild-type virus can start an infection (our boosted immune system
prevents the virus from infecting any cell). Therefore, the virus cannot
reproduce, and therefore, no one can transfer it to anyone else.
Eventually, as was the result of a similar world-wide immunization effort
against smallpox virus, it is possible that poliovirus will also be
eliminated from the planet!
Book: Don't Touch That Doorknob!