The history of polio, told as a cartoon
Here's a history of polio, Polio: A Virus's Struggle, that is both informative and entertaining...
(Via Boing Boing)
(Via Boing Boing)
Search This Blog
Respectful Insolence is a repository for the ramblings of the aforementioned pseudonymous surgeon/scientist concerning medicine and quackery, science and pseudoscience, history and pseudohistory, politics, and anything else that interests him (or pushes his buttons). Orac's motto: "A statement of fact cannot be insolent." (OK, maybe it can be just a little bit insolent.)
Popular Posts
Salon.com flushes its credibility down the toilet
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
My favorite part was at the beginning:
ReplyDelete"Diseases nearing eradication support group (Participants need not be to scale)." Good stuff, thanks for the link!
-Ali
The interesting part is that anti-vaccinists will claim that better sanitation is what beat polio back to begin with. They do not appear to realise that better sanitation did reduce the spread of polio but increased its virulence through less exposure to the organism (kind of an ironic twist). They frequently try to claim that the vaccine never did anything to affect polio because of this reason (even though they ignore data from 3rd world countries that obviously refutes this idea).
ReplyDeleteFor example, mentioned in the comic is the point that numerous areas were sprayed with DDT to try and stop the flies transmitting polio. Of course, this didn't work but several 'cranks' have since tried to prove that the DDT spraying (or other generic 'toxins', sounding familiar Orac?) was linked to the outbreaks of polio.
Surprised that never came up in the comic actually because it would be a good contrast with the 'leeches' and other insane things (like flies transmitting polio ;)) that people thought.
Actually, most anti-vaxers will concede that sanitation made polio worse. They just shift their argument to:
ReplyDelete-infected monkeys and SV40 causing cancer
-denying polio was such a big deal since most people who got it didn't get sick
-claiming polio cases still exist but have been replaced with aseptic meningitis (I'm sure polio survivors would've liked to have aseptic meningitis instead)
-saying OPV is really, really bad since it causes paralysis (even though they also say polio isn't so bad)