[Note: AAP = American Academy of Pediatrics; CDC = Centers for Disease Control; VAERS = Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System]
From the CDC's Vaccine Information Sheet:
From the Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, 16th edition:
The AAP recommended vaccination schedule:
IPV does not contain the mercury preservative Thimerosal, which has been the subject of some recent controversy. However, IPV should not be used in children who are allergic to neomycin, streptomycin, or polymyxin B, which are used in the culture process. There are also small amounts of preservative in the vaccine: 2-phenoxyethanol (0.5%) and formaldehyde (0.02%). Calf serum is used in the culture, but it's from countries free of BSE (aka "Mad Cow Disease"). The other main ingredient of the culture medium is monkey kidney cells, grown entirely artificially.
As a parent, you have the right to see the product insert from any vaccine that's going to be given to your child. Be prepared for a lot of very tiny print. We have the product insert for Pasteur Merieux Connaught's IPOL vaccine, the brand that our physician administers.
According to the insert, in 1955 (pre-vaccine) the annual incidence of paralytic polio in the United States was 11.4 cases per 100,000 population. The four-dose regime of IPV is 97% effective at providing antibodies to type 1 polio virus and 100% effective at providing antibodies to type 2 and type 3 polio virii (the types are different strains of the virus; they do not have different clinical manifestations), according to several studies carried out on children in the United States. Of note is the fact that antibodies exist in 95-100% of children after the first two doses.
The minimum age for this vaccine is 6 weeks.
The table of reactions shows swelling at the vaccination site in about 11% of children, and tenderness in about 30%. Systemic reactions include fever (1%), iritability (65%), tiredness (61%), anorexia (17%), and vomiting (2%). However, systemic reactions were studied in children getting polio and DPT vaccinations simultaneously, and "rates are comparable in frequency and severity to those reported for whole-cell DPT given alone."
The only major adverse effect listed is Guillain-Barre Syndrome: "Although no causal relationship between IPOL and GBS has been established, GBS has been temporally related to administration of another inactivated polio vaccine."
The National Vaccine Information Center is probably the largest anti-vaccination group around. Their page on polio has several links. They are in favor of OPV being removed from the market, and concerned about the use of live polio vaccine in troops sent to the Gulf War. However, their main concern with current US polio vaccines revolve around SV40.
SV40 is a simian (monkey) virus that some researchers say has entered the human population via vaccines (such as IPV) grown on cultured monkey tissues. Researchers have cultured SV40 from lung, brain, and bone cancers. Other researchers make more sensationalistic claims, including a claimed link between polio vaccination and AIDS: "California microbiologist Howard B. Urnovitz, Ph.D., had provided compelling evidence at the Eighth Annual Houston Conference on AIDS in America that the human immunodeficiency virus Type 1 (HIV-1) is a monkey-human hybrid that was created after more than 320,000 Africans were injected in the late 1950's with experimental live oral polio vaccines contaminated with live simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). Pointing out that endogenous retroviruses can easily recombine with fragments of other viruses, both human and animal, and form new hybrid viruses called chimeras, Dr. Urnovitz explained how SIV could have recombined with the normal genes of the Africans, who received the contaminated vaccines, and created a monkey-human hybrid now known as HIV-1."
The CDC completely dismisses the claimed association between polio vaccine, SV40, and cancer. One particular point they make is that current vaccine cultures are not contaminated by SV40, and the methods used to check for contamination are known to work. However, the NVIC says the government researchers were biased and that their conclusions are bad science.
VaccineWebsite.com collects a wide variety of somewhat disorganized information about many vaccines, including the polio vaccine. They repeat the information about polio, SV40, cancer, and AIDS, and provide more links in this area. They also suggest associations between polio vaccine and autism and chronic fatigue syndrome. This site does not strike me as a balanced attempt at presenting the medical literature, but it's worth a quick look.
Randall Neustaedter's The Vaccine Guide: Making an Informed Choice (see my review) challenges the notion that the eradication of polio in the United States was due to the polio vaccine. He suggests that the dramatic decline in cases when the vaccine was introduced was due to a redefinition of what should be reported as polio. This, I fear, is simply nonsense: talk to anyone who grew up in the forties and remembers friends with polio ( which is almost everyone who grew up in pre-vaccination days), and you'll realize that the disease has declined, not just been renamed. Neuestaedter also suggests that the epidemic perhaps "just lost its steam."
Neuestaedter also reports on suspected association with GBS, on polio caused by OPV, and on the simian virus controversy. He recommends avoiding OPV entirely, and using IPV if you have concerns about polio.
Like smallpox, polio is one of the diseases that we may actually be able to eliminate from the world -- in which case, we could stop vaccinating against it. You can read about these efforts on the World Health Organization's Global Polio Eradication Initiative website. Some highlights:
| Date | Revision |
| 10/6/00 | Original page |