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