The person-to-person spread of polio is a rather modern occurence. Historically, the virus has been transmitted through water contaminated with fecal matter. Usually it would be picked up when an infant was nursing and protected by its mother's immunity, so that while the virus was endemic, the disease presentation was rare. It was only after the large scale water purification projects of the late 19th/early 20th century--which were intended to control cholera outbreaks--that the virus was no longer introduced in infancy. When introduced later, when the child is not longer protected, and poliomyelitis results.-- TychaBrahe 20:39, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
There is no discussion of the disagreement over whether to use OPV (live, Sabin) or IPV (killed, Salk) vaccine. IPV is considered safer, as there is the slight but real possibility that OPV may revert to a more virulent form. IPV is more effective. It is also more expensive. The OPV, because it is administered orally, is much easier to give. Since the majority of poliomyelitis is in developing nations where vaccination is spotty, the OPV is preferred because attenuated virus is excreted in the feces. If the community does not or cannot maintain cleanliness and prevent the fecal-oral mode of transmission of wild poliovirus, they will also spread the vaccine via the same route in a process called secondary immunity. In the same manner, however, the OPV has resulted in cases of VAPP (Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis) where a person contracts the disease through virus shed by someone who has recently been vaccinated.
In the late 1990's the US revised it's polio vaccination schedule, first to one dose of IPV and two of OPV, and then to all IPV. Other developed nations followed suit. Developing nations have not followed suit, primarily because VAPP is not considered consequential when there is a high number of wild poliovirus infections.-- TychaBrahe 21:03, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
someone please rewrite this:
I have no idea what it is saying. njaard 05:01, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
You should add Bangladesh to the list... new cases reported after 7 years.. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071027/ts_afp/healthbangladeshpolio_071027065842 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.9.135.252 ( talk) 08:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
This review by Colin is based on this version. Some items have been dealt with, some have not. Feel free to add or revise any aspect of this list or the article in general.-- DO11.10 23:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Colin° Talk 13:41, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Colin° Talk 13:46, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Colin° Talk 15:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Wow. The Klenner cite may not be perfect. Okay. But someone is going way out on a limb to suggest he is a crackpot. This is how bad genes replicate. Klenner delivers a paper to the AMA convention in 1949, I believe. He says he resolved 60 out of 60 cases of poliomyelitis. No one tests the hypothesis, and now you want to make his even his 1949 paper a fiction, and erase his name from history. Is this what they mean by revisionist history? Also, he may be vindicated by work at the National Institutes of Health by Mark Levine et al, ( http://www.pnas.org/content/102/38/13604.full.pdf+html). Apparently, vitamin C is involved in making hydrogen peroxide at the site of a cancer cell. This paper deals with cancer but note this sentence: "Use of ascorbate as an H2O2-delivery system against sensitive pathogens, viral or bacterial, has substantial clinical implications that deserve rapid exploration." Why should I be surprised that my previous entries on the same subject matter were deleted? One has only to remember that in the early 1600s it was known that lemon juice was a good preventative for scurvy, yet this knowledge was lost for 100 or 200 years. Hundreds of sailors died. But the knowledge was eventually recovered, and perhaps the "crackpot" Klenner will be vindicated eventually, in 100 or 200 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tbbarnard ( talk • contribs) 06:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Colin° Talk 10:56, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
There are two dead links:
This link is unresponsive:
Colin° Talk 21:41, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Fixed now! Wow did you check all the links? I am kind of surprised that only three went bad. -- DO11.10 23:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Try this :-) Colin° Talk 00:14, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Colin asked me to lend a hand here. So far it looks good. I'll start a section here to add my comments as I work (feel free to revert anything stupid I do and to remove inline queries I may add as you address them—no need to check with me):
I'm done. Besides the minor MOS issues (mentioned above) that need adjustment still, I'm concerned about the overuse of italics throughout, and I'm still not sure why there is no Signs and symptoms section. VERY nice job; the careful effort that has gone into this article shows. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
This an excellent article - well done indeed! But, (why is there always a but), I don't like the wording of this section which is about immunoprophylactic antisera. An antibody serum is simply an antiserum. You can't isolate a serum, but you can prepare an antiserum and this is what was done. An antiserum was prepared, (or even developed?) that was shown to be 80% effective, would be a better wording. GrahamColm 13:29, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, here we go. This is just a start:
Looks much better, as you predicted. The text is so much clearer. Thank you. -- DO11.10 23:48, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
More to come later. Fvasconcellos ( t· c) 17:27, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, here's some more:
That's basically it. Overall, the article is excellent, and if you're concerned about it being lay-accessible, don't worry too much; in my view, medical jargon is used only when necessary and is very well explained. Great work. Fvasconcellos ( t· c) 21:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Would the very interesting History section not be better placed at the top of the article? What do you think? GrahamColm 19:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
In Poliomyelitis#Classification it states: "Approximately 1 in 200 to 1 in 1000 cases progress to paralytic disease, in which the muscles become weak, floppy and poorly-controlled, and finally completely paralyzed; this condition is known as acute flaccid paralysis" citing the source Frauenthal HWA, Manning JVV (1914). Manual of infantile paralysis, with modern methods of treatment.. Philadelphia Davis, 79–101. OCLC 2078290. ( Poliomyelitis#_note-Henry1)
In History_of_poliomyelitis#Epidemics it states: "In children, paralysis due to polio occurs in 1/1000 cases, while in adults, paralysis occurs in 1/75 cases." citing the source Gawne AC, Halstead LS (1995). "Post-polio syndrome: pathophysiology and clinical management". Critical Reviews in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 7: 147–88. ( History_of_poliomyelitis#_note-6)
This appears to be a contradiction.
-- Dan Dassow 12:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
The lay reader is being asked to learn a lot of terminology in this article. I think we have to be sensitive to that. I have taken two paragraphs from "Mechanism" and xxxx-ed out the words that will be unfamiliar (in my opinion) to most readers. As you can tell, it is quite a few. It is for this reason that I am concerned about the technical level of the article. While the article does explain many of these terms, it continually introduces new ones. A reader can only sustain such prose for so long before they are overloaded. They cannot use all of the new words.
Reading such prose is easy for someone familiar with it, but not for the rest of us! Awadewit | talk 10:44, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree completely that this is a challenging problem here and with most medical articles that are encyclopaedic in depth (rather than just at patient fact sheet level). The Mechanism section is usually the worst. Some parts of medicine are just hard to understand/explain. Be grateful the section wasn't called Pathophysiology! There are several options and techniques:
My point in mentioning these is that effort has already been made to help the lay reader. IMO, this article has a more accessible Mechanism section than most medical articles (including other FAs). There is room for improvement but I don't think there's much here I'd like to excise (I speak as a lay reader who doesn't follow it all). What might help is for there to be a lay-friendly overview paragraph at the start of this section. As for other sections, there may be less excuse for over-technical words. Colin° Talk 11:50, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
"The disease is transmitted primarily via the fecal-oral route, by ingesting contaminated food or water, and occasionally via the oral-oral route,[10] especially in areas with good sanitation and hygiene.[11] "
The latter clause was added here. I don't understand it. Why would good sanitation and hygiene help transmission, and it is somewhat ambiguous as to whether this helps oral-oral or both transmission types. Colin° Talk 13:40, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
There was one major concern expressed while this article was under consideration for becoming a featured article: the article was too technical for the general reader. I personally believe that the article strikes the correct balance between technical correctness and readability. However, there are still readers who would find the article too difficult to comprehend. One possibility that I have been pondering would be to translate this article into Simple English. This would allow a larger readership while retaining the integrity of the current feature article. A good example of a Simple English article is the Simple English translation of the article on Water( http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water).
This would a huge task that I would be interested in performing over the next few months if there is sufficient interest. In order to test out the feasibility of translating this article, I plan to translate a much simpler article into Simple English.-- Dan Dassow ( talk) 12:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I undid the edit ( http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Poliomyelitis&diff=183928464&oldid=183782194) by Undid revision 183928464 by 66.32.194.254 ( talk). The following sentence should not have been removed: "Bulbar polio leads to weakness of muscles innervated by cranial nerves."
The sentence is supported by the article http://www.health.ri.gov/chew/refugee/Alerts/InfoRefugeesExposedPoliovirusSHD%5B1%5D.pdf .
Note: this is the first and only edit by 66.32.194.254
-- Dan Dassow ( talk) 02:11, 13 January 2008 (UTC) what is up y feb1 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.28.2.216 ( talk) 23:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone think it would be good to crop the upper right picture to remove some of the background and have a more close-up view of the subject? I can do it if people want. delldot on a public computer talk 06:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Where did the poliovirus come from? Has it been endemic to hominids for millions of years, or did it recently migrate to us from an animal we domesticated? 129.215.48.112 ( talk) 06:32, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
"PV infects and causes disease in humans alone." Jane Goodall says that the chimpanzee communities in the Gombe were affected by an outbreak of polio in November 1966 to January 1967. http://www.janegoodall.org/jane/study-corner/chimpanzees/gombe-timeline.asp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.204.181.123 ( talk) 06:11, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
The original Mission statement promoted if not necessarily written by Franklin Roosevelt included a search for a cure. I have contacted the March of Dimes and see that no effort is being made toward finding a "cure" for polio. A survivor myself who had to be removed from a hospital due to conditions that horrified my parents at Herman Kieffer Hospital in Detroit which was allied with the March of Dimes. At that hospital, parents were not allowed to visit their patients in the wards. They were permitted to visit for thirty minutes every other week.They weren't allowed to see the ward.That was when I had to go to an iron lung.Dad finally brroke in and took pictures of the ward and me and general conditions.Those pictures were dated and indicated location and still exist. My parents signed all sorts of releases and were forced under duress to state they would seek no further treatment for me. I have copies of some of it. All of this happened in late 1950 and early 1951.
I went to Children's Hospital in Detroit where parents were permitted to see the conditions in which their children lived. We had clothing and were not kept nude in our own filth as children of fifteen months there. I survived despite the March of Dimes and contribute nothing to them as they have deserted the some 400-500,000 polio survivors alive in the US. They have undertaken a new worthy cause. Birth defects are a worthy cause.I won't deny that but they have left a job undone. They also basically spit upon us who brought them to prominence.
This article almost totally neglects hypothalamus and thalamic damage to polio survivors, no matter the degree of infection (even people who had no paralytic polio have problems of the thalamus and hypothalamus as polio may infect not only the spinal cord but the brain) or paralysis. I still have trouble breathing though that is not surprising after months in an iron lung. Damage is done to the lower brain and has been recognized by disability standards in the US. I will be happy to cite references to these assertions.
I can also retrieve the reference in Science Magazine about pilio virus and virus fragments being found post mortem in polio survivors who have since died from infections many years ago. The article is from the 1990s but I have seen no refutation. It would be informative to take spinal fluid froma polio survivor and inject it into a monkey and see if symptoms develop. This would clear matters up. I confess I am a scientist and prefer verifiable experiments with appropriate controls. That created some conflicts between me and many federal and state government microbiologists who chose to use no controls, either positive or negative in their testing for salmonella or varieties of Listeria.That attitude has grown since I left federal service and I believe is unfortunate.
It is not clear from my reading if the virus is potentially infective or even active but it is a rather simple virus as my education and work in microbiology, chemistry and virology indicate. It has even been reconstructed in the laboratory as can be seen is Internet searchable sites. The fact that the virus was found over fifty years after my initial infection in a spinal fluid sample from me is something I find suggestive of a tough virus.(I have had spinal surgery since then.) From my observations, viruses tend to be tougher than bacteria. The best a bacterium can do is form a spore and wait for an opportunity. Viruses are rather tough.Much more work is needed to make this article truly informative. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Petitjean1 ( talk • contribs) 21:47, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
The number of new cases in 2007 was 1,310. Just though the figures could be updated.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5718a4.htm
Comrinec ( talk) 18:40, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
The person-to-person spread of polio is a rather modern occurence. Historically, the virus has been transmitted through water contaminated with fecal matter. Usually it would be picked up when an infant was nursing and protected by its mother's immunity, so that while the virus was endemic, the disease presentation was rare. It was only after the large scale water purification projects of the late 19th/early 20th century--which were intended to control cholera outbreaks--that the virus was no longer introduced in infancy. When introduced later, when the child is not longer protected, and poliomyelitis results.-- TychaBrahe 20:39, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
There is no discussion of the disagreement over whether to use OPV (live, Sabin) or IPV (killed, Salk) vaccine. IPV is considered safer, as there is the slight but real possibility that OPV may revert to a more virulent form. IPV is more effective. It is also more expensive. The OPV, because it is administered orally, is much easier to give. Since the majority of poliomyelitis is in developing nations where vaccination is spotty, the OPV is preferred because attenuated virus is excreted in the feces. If the community does not or cannot maintain cleanliness and prevent the fecal-oral mode of transmission of wild poliovirus, they will also spread the vaccine via the same route in a process called secondary immunity. In the same manner, however, the OPV has resulted in cases of VAPP (Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis) where a person contracts the disease through virus shed by someone who has recently been vaccinated.
In the late 1990's the US revised it's polio vaccination schedule, first to one dose of IPV and two of OPV, and then to all IPV. Other developed nations followed suit. Developing nations have not followed suit, primarily because VAPP is not considered consequential when there is a high number of wild poliovirus infections.-- TychaBrahe 21:03, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
someone please rewrite this:
I have no idea what it is saying. njaard 05:01, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
You should add Bangladesh to the list... new cases reported after 7 years.. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071027/ts_afp/healthbangladeshpolio_071027065842 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.9.135.252 ( talk) 08:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
This review by Colin is based on this version. Some items have been dealt with, some have not. Feel free to add or revise any aspect of this list or the article in general.-- DO11.10 23:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Colin° Talk 13:41, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Colin° Talk 13:46, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Colin° Talk 15:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Wow. The Klenner cite may not be perfect. Okay. But someone is going way out on a limb to suggest he is a crackpot. This is how bad genes replicate. Klenner delivers a paper to the AMA convention in 1949, I believe. He says he resolved 60 out of 60 cases of poliomyelitis. No one tests the hypothesis, and now you want to make his even his 1949 paper a fiction, and erase his name from history. Is this what they mean by revisionist history? Also, he may be vindicated by work at the National Institutes of Health by Mark Levine et al, ( http://www.pnas.org/content/102/38/13604.full.pdf+html). Apparently, vitamin C is involved in making hydrogen peroxide at the site of a cancer cell. This paper deals with cancer but note this sentence: "Use of ascorbate as an H2O2-delivery system against sensitive pathogens, viral or bacterial, has substantial clinical implications that deserve rapid exploration." Why should I be surprised that my previous entries on the same subject matter were deleted? One has only to remember that in the early 1600s it was known that lemon juice was a good preventative for scurvy, yet this knowledge was lost for 100 or 200 years. Hundreds of sailors died. But the knowledge was eventually recovered, and perhaps the "crackpot" Klenner will be vindicated eventually, in 100 or 200 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tbbarnard ( talk • contribs) 06:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Colin° Talk 10:56, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
There are two dead links:
This link is unresponsive:
Colin° Talk 21:41, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Fixed now! Wow did you check all the links? I am kind of surprised that only three went bad. -- DO11.10 23:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Try this :-) Colin° Talk 00:14, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Colin asked me to lend a hand here. So far it looks good. I'll start a section here to add my comments as I work (feel free to revert anything stupid I do and to remove inline queries I may add as you address them—no need to check with me):
I'm done. Besides the minor MOS issues (mentioned above) that need adjustment still, I'm concerned about the overuse of italics throughout, and I'm still not sure why there is no Signs and symptoms section. VERY nice job; the careful effort that has gone into this article shows. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
This an excellent article - well done indeed! But, (why is there always a but), I don't like the wording of this section which is about immunoprophylactic antisera. An antibody serum is simply an antiserum. You can't isolate a serum, but you can prepare an antiserum and this is what was done. An antiserum was prepared, (or even developed?) that was shown to be 80% effective, would be a better wording. GrahamColm 13:29, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, here we go. This is just a start:
Looks much better, as you predicted. The text is so much clearer. Thank you. -- DO11.10 23:48, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
More to come later. Fvasconcellos ( t· c) 17:27, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, here's some more:
That's basically it. Overall, the article is excellent, and if you're concerned about it being lay-accessible, don't worry too much; in my view, medical jargon is used only when necessary and is very well explained. Great work. Fvasconcellos ( t· c) 21:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Would the very interesting History section not be better placed at the top of the article? What do you think? GrahamColm 19:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
In Poliomyelitis#Classification it states: "Approximately 1 in 200 to 1 in 1000 cases progress to paralytic disease, in which the muscles become weak, floppy and poorly-controlled, and finally completely paralyzed; this condition is known as acute flaccid paralysis" citing the source Frauenthal HWA, Manning JVV (1914). Manual of infantile paralysis, with modern methods of treatment.. Philadelphia Davis, 79–101. OCLC 2078290. ( Poliomyelitis#_note-Henry1)
In History_of_poliomyelitis#Epidemics it states: "In children, paralysis due to polio occurs in 1/1000 cases, while in adults, paralysis occurs in 1/75 cases." citing the source Gawne AC, Halstead LS (1995). "Post-polio syndrome: pathophysiology and clinical management". Critical Reviews in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 7: 147–88. ( History_of_poliomyelitis#_note-6)
This appears to be a contradiction.
-- Dan Dassow 12:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
The lay reader is being asked to learn a lot of terminology in this article. I think we have to be sensitive to that. I have taken two paragraphs from "Mechanism" and xxxx-ed out the words that will be unfamiliar (in my opinion) to most readers. As you can tell, it is quite a few. It is for this reason that I am concerned about the technical level of the article. While the article does explain many of these terms, it continually introduces new ones. A reader can only sustain such prose for so long before they are overloaded. They cannot use all of the new words.
Reading such prose is easy for someone familiar with it, but not for the rest of us! Awadewit | talk 10:44, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree completely that this is a challenging problem here and with most medical articles that are encyclopaedic in depth (rather than just at patient fact sheet level). The Mechanism section is usually the worst. Some parts of medicine are just hard to understand/explain. Be grateful the section wasn't called Pathophysiology! There are several options and techniques:
My point in mentioning these is that effort has already been made to help the lay reader. IMO, this article has a more accessible Mechanism section than most medical articles (including other FAs). There is room for improvement but I don't think there's much here I'd like to excise (I speak as a lay reader who doesn't follow it all). What might help is for there to be a lay-friendly overview paragraph at the start of this section. As for other sections, there may be less excuse for over-technical words. Colin° Talk 11:50, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
"The disease is transmitted primarily via the fecal-oral route, by ingesting contaminated food or water, and occasionally via the oral-oral route,[10] especially in areas with good sanitation and hygiene.[11] "
The latter clause was added here. I don't understand it. Why would good sanitation and hygiene help transmission, and it is somewhat ambiguous as to whether this helps oral-oral or both transmission types. Colin° Talk 13:40, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
There was one major concern expressed while this article was under consideration for becoming a featured article: the article was too technical for the general reader. I personally believe that the article strikes the correct balance between technical correctness and readability. However, there are still readers who would find the article too difficult to comprehend. One possibility that I have been pondering would be to translate this article into Simple English. This would allow a larger readership while retaining the integrity of the current feature article. A good example of a Simple English article is the Simple English translation of the article on Water( http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water).
This would a huge task that I would be interested in performing over the next few months if there is sufficient interest. In order to test out the feasibility of translating this article, I plan to translate a much simpler article into Simple English.-- Dan Dassow ( talk) 12:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I undid the edit ( http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Poliomyelitis&diff=183928464&oldid=183782194) by Undid revision 183928464 by 66.32.194.254 ( talk). The following sentence should not have been removed: "Bulbar polio leads to weakness of muscles innervated by cranial nerves."
The sentence is supported by the article http://www.health.ri.gov/chew/refugee/Alerts/InfoRefugeesExposedPoliovirusSHD%5B1%5D.pdf .
Note: this is the first and only edit by 66.32.194.254
-- Dan Dassow ( talk) 02:11, 13 January 2008 (UTC) what is up y feb1 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.28.2.216 ( talk) 23:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone think it would be good to crop the upper right picture to remove some of the background and have a more close-up view of the subject? I can do it if people want. delldot on a public computer talk 06:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Where did the poliovirus come from? Has it been endemic to hominids for millions of years, or did it recently migrate to us from an animal we domesticated? 129.215.48.112 ( talk) 06:32, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
"PV infects and causes disease in humans alone." Jane Goodall says that the chimpanzee communities in the Gombe were affected by an outbreak of polio in November 1966 to January 1967. http://www.janegoodall.org/jane/study-corner/chimpanzees/gombe-timeline.asp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.204.181.123 ( talk) 06:11, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
The original Mission statement promoted if not necessarily written by Franklin Roosevelt included a search for a cure. I have contacted the March of Dimes and see that no effort is being made toward finding a "cure" for polio. A survivor myself who had to be removed from a hospital due to conditions that horrified my parents at Herman Kieffer Hospital in Detroit which was allied with the March of Dimes. At that hospital, parents were not allowed to visit their patients in the wards. They were permitted to visit for thirty minutes every other week.They weren't allowed to see the ward.That was when I had to go to an iron lung.Dad finally brroke in and took pictures of the ward and me and general conditions.Those pictures were dated and indicated location and still exist. My parents signed all sorts of releases and were forced under duress to state they would seek no further treatment for me. I have copies of some of it. All of this happened in late 1950 and early 1951.
I went to Children's Hospital in Detroit where parents were permitted to see the conditions in which their children lived. We had clothing and were not kept nude in our own filth as children of fifteen months there. I survived despite the March of Dimes and contribute nothing to them as they have deserted the some 400-500,000 polio survivors alive in the US. They have undertaken a new worthy cause. Birth defects are a worthy cause.I won't deny that but they have left a job undone. They also basically spit upon us who brought them to prominence.
This article almost totally neglects hypothalamus and thalamic damage to polio survivors, no matter the degree of infection (even people who had no paralytic polio have problems of the thalamus and hypothalamus as polio may infect not only the spinal cord but the brain) or paralysis. I still have trouble breathing though that is not surprising after months in an iron lung. Damage is done to the lower brain and has been recognized by disability standards in the US. I will be happy to cite references to these assertions.
I can also retrieve the reference in Science Magazine about pilio virus and virus fragments being found post mortem in polio survivors who have since died from infections many years ago. The article is from the 1990s but I have seen no refutation. It would be informative to take spinal fluid froma polio survivor and inject it into a monkey and see if symptoms develop. This would clear matters up. I confess I am a scientist and prefer verifiable experiments with appropriate controls. That created some conflicts between me and many federal and state government microbiologists who chose to use no controls, either positive or negative in their testing for salmonella or varieties of Listeria.That attitude has grown since I left federal service and I believe is unfortunate.
It is not clear from my reading if the virus is potentially infective or even active but it is a rather simple virus as my education and work in microbiology, chemistry and virology indicate. It has even been reconstructed in the laboratory as can be seen is Internet searchable sites. The fact that the virus was found over fifty years after my initial infection in a spinal fluid sample from me is something I find suggestive of a tough virus.(I have had spinal surgery since then.) From my observations, viruses tend to be tougher than bacteria. The best a bacterium can do is form a spore and wait for an opportunity. Viruses are rather tough.Much more work is needed to make this article truly informative. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Petitjean1 ( talk • contribs) 21:47, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
The number of new cases in 2007 was 1,310. Just though the figures could be updated.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5718a4.htm
Comrinec ( talk) 18:40, 31 July 2008 (UTC)