I have seen, repeatedly, on another (shall remain nameless) board, the claim that Jonas Salk testified before Congress that all or nearly all cases of polio at that time were caused by the vaccine. Now, I think what he actually was saying was that the disease had been nearly eradicated “in the wild” and so that’s all that was left. But I can’t prove that without being able to read more about it than that quote. And I can’t find anything but that quote anywhere. I’ve looked by date, 4/4/77, by name, by the quote itself. I’m hoping that the Dopers can supplement my not-so-hot Google skills and give me something to go on. I’ll be happy with a link or even directions where to look. Thanks.
CDC pretty much agrees. Doesn’t say anything about Salk, but I’d bet he wasn’t offering original research on the subject.
Thank you for those. I’d really like to be able to fight fire with fire, as it were, with the actual context of the quote they’re all throwing around. Then, who knows, depending on how much of a glutton for punishment I am, maybe I’ll do some research on the idea that most of those diseases were going away spontaneously by themselves.
I already got called a troll in the circumcision thread. Because I acted like a good little Doper and asked for cites.
The following info is from sourcewatch at this URL
Dr. Jonas Salk senate hearings & reporting of VAPP
The inventor of the IPV, Dr. Jonas Salk; testified before a senate subcommittee that nearly all polio outbreaks since 1961 were caused by the oral polio vaccine. At a workshop on polio vaccines sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and the CDCP, Dr. Samuel Katz of Duke University noted the 8 to 10 annual cases of “Vaccine Associated Polio Paralysis” (VAPP) from the oral polio vaccine to a four year absence of polio in the west. Jessica Scheer of the National Rehabilitation Hospital Research Center in Washington, D.C., also noted that most parents were unaware of that polio vaccination entailed “a small number of human sacrifices each year”. However, due to low reporting and misdiagnoses of vaccine reactions, it is likely that the small number of VAPP sacrifices is much higher than CDC’s figures. [40]