Polio Vaccine

Scientists in three laboratories in the United States and Europe are preparing to test samples of an experimental polio vaccine stored for more than 40 years to determine whether it might have inadvertently been the spark that ignited the worldwide AIDS epidemic. The scientists will be testing a highly controversial and seemingly far-fetched theory that holds that an oral polio vaccine, used in vaccine trials in what was then the Belgian Congo in the 1950s, might have been made with chimpanzee tissue that might have been contaminated with an ancestor of the AIDS virus.

The news that the Central Intelligence Agency had been running a fake vaccination program in Pakistan first surfaced in 2011 and quickly ignited fears that the covert operation could compromise the global campaign to eradicate polio. Late last month, a handful of vaccine workers, including a teenage girl, paid the price for the CIA's deceit: They were gunned down as they tried to give the polio vaccine to children living in the Pakistani city of Karachi and other areas. No one has taken responsibility for the attacks, although the Pakistani Taliban has threatened vaccine workers in the past.

A generation after children lined up for sugar cubes that promised protection from polio, doctors are returning to injections to prevent rare cases caused by the oral vaccine.It's a move that might well have outraged Dr. Alfred Sabin, father of the oral polio vaccine, who argued bitterly against the injected vaccine championed by his scientific rival, Dr. Jonas Salk.But public health authorities say the time has come to move away from the Sabin vaccine in the United States, capping a debate that's simmered within public health circles for years.

As taken from the pages of The Aegis dated Thursday, November 15, 1962: Harford's fatality rate rose to 24 people with a crash this week 50 years ago in Aberdeen. Helen Harris, 47 of Garden City Park, N.Y., died instantly when the car in which she was a passenger struck a concrete barrier along Route 40 in Aberdeen. The driver of the car was rushed to Harford Memorial Hospital for treatment of a fractured pelvis and multiple lacerations of the face. The couple's 1961 Cadillac convertible failed to negotiate a curve on the highway and hit the barrier.

Swimming pools closed. Businesses were quarantined. Hospitals transported infected patients in special ambulances. Worried citizens avoided crowds by staying away from buses and theaters. That's how Maryland, and much of America, coped with the polio epidemics that swept through the country in the 1950s. "Your parents would tell you, don't get overly tired and don't get too close to crowds. Then the summer would come and they'd close the pools and that would be it," said Richard Holland, 72, who grew up in Catonsville and graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1951.

North American Vaccine Inc. said yesterday that it is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval to start human clinical trials on a vaccine that combines in one injection the company's new vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis with a polio vaccine.The polio vaccine is made with inactivated polio virus, which is considered safer than the live polio predominantly used in oral vaccines.Beltsville-based North American, which is developing vaccines for infectious diseases, said the small-scale trial would seek to establish that the vaccine has no adverse side effects in infants and children.

The news that the Central Intelligence Agency had been running a fake vaccination program in Pakistan first surfaced in 2011 and quickly ignited fears that the covert operation could compromise the global campaign to eradicate polio. Late last month, a handful of vaccine workers, including a teenage girl, paid the price for the CIA's deceit: They were gunned down as they tried to give the polio vaccine to children living in the Pakistani city of Karachi and other areas. No one has taken responsibility for the attacks, although the Pakistani Taliban has threatened vaccine workers in the past.

Dr. Jonas Edward Salk, inventor of the vaccine that freed millions from the terror of polio, won the undying gratitude of the American people but the scorn of fellow scientists who envied his discovery and the celebrity it brought him.Some of Dr. Salk's contemporaries -- including the late Dr. Albert Sabin, whose oral vaccine eventually supplanted the injections developed by Dr. Salk -- were so infuriated by his success they refused to believe his vaccine...

Lions, tigers and elephants, oh my! Treating zoo, farm and domesticated animals is a practice for the chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, Dr. Jim Pelura. "Veterinary medicine is my first love," says Pelura, who founded the Davidsonville Veterinary Clinic in 1983. But he adds, "I've always been concerned about what power politicians have over us." "His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time" / by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi The book is extremely powerful and shows that your religion does not have to be compromised with the laws of government.

Mutated polio vaccine infects three in Haiti, Dominican Republic SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - A mutated polio vaccine has infected at least three people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, causing the first outbreak of the disease in the Western Hemisphere since 1991, the Pan American Health Organization said. The outbreak "has raised serious concerns" because it has been traced to the same oral vaccine that experts have used to eliminate the disease in many countries, said a statement released Saturday by the organization, which is a part of the Washington-based Organization of American States.

Lions, tigers and elephants, oh my! Treating zoo, farm and domesticated animals is a practice for the chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, Dr. Jim Pelura. "Veterinary medicine is my first love," says Pelura, who founded the Davidsonville Veterinary Clinic in 1983. But he adds, "I've always been concerned about what power politicians have over us." "His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time" / by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi The book is extremely powerful and shows that your religion does not have to be compromised with the laws of government.

Too soon to drop AIDS vaccine effort Rarely does one see in the editorial pages of an esteemed newspaper the kind of anti-science mentality displayed in the column The Sun published from two leaders of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation ("Enough is enough," Commentary, March 23). They argued that because scientists have not yet made an AIDS vaccine after 20 years of trying, and it may take another 10 years or more to do so, all funding for AIDS vaccine research should stop. That is stupefying logic.

AFTER THE devastating disease of polio was finally conquered by vaccines in the 1960s, the number of people afflicted declined almost to the vanishing point. Some people then began to see no need to take the vaccine, since apparently no one was getting polio anymore, so who was there to catch it from? The result was a needless resurgence of crippling and death from this terrible disease. The kind of thinking involved in the polio fallacy has appeared in many other contexts. When some public disorder gets under way and a massive arrival of police on the scene brings everything under control immediately, many in the media and in politics deplore such "overreaction" on the part of the police to a minor disturbance.

Swimming pools closed. Businesses were quarantined. Hospitals transported infected patients in special ambulances. Worried citizens avoided crowds by staying away from buses and theaters. That's how Maryland, and much of America, coped with the polio epidemics that swept through the country in the 1950s. "Your parents would tell you, don't get overly tired and don't get too close to crowds. Then the summer would come and they'd close the pools and that would be it," said Richard Holland, 72, who grew up in Catonsville and graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1951.

FANISAU, Nigeria - If it were possible to wind back the centuries, Halima Umar's village would probably look much as it does today. Umar and her neighbors fetch water by lowering a bucket into a hand-dug well, toil in fields of millet and guinea corn, and sleep in houses made of mud, leaves and animal hair, the walls sagging like sandcastles struck by an ocean wave. In January last year, Nigerian health workers knocked on Umar's door, offering her newborn daughter a free dose of polio vaccine.

Four years after arguing that humans probably got the AIDS virus from butchering chimpanzees for food, the same researchers say they have traced the origin back one step further - to the monkeys that the chimpanzees ate. They believe the simian precursor to the AIDS virus was created in chimps that ate two kinds of monkeys with different but related viruses: red-capped mangabeys and spot-nosed guenons. They made the deduction by sequencing the genes of the simian immunodeficiency viruses in chimpanzees and 30 monkey species and then compiling "family trees" to see which were most closely related.

Scientists at Hong Kong University announced last night that they were developing what could become the first experimental vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome. They said they hoped to start testing the vaccine in animals early next month. The scientists provided few details about the vaccine except to say that human trials of any SARS vaccine would not be started until after findings of animal experiments are known, and perhaps not even then. Preliminary results of the animal experiments will not be known for at least six months, the scientists said.

Four years after arguing that humans probably got the AIDS virus from butchering chimpanzees for food, the same researchers say they have traced the origin back one step further - to the monkeys that the chimpanzees ate. They believe the simian precursor to the AIDS virus was created in chimps that ate two kinds of monkeys with different but related viruses: red-capped mangabeys and spot-nosed guenons. They made the deduction by sequencing the genes of the simian immunodeficiency viruses in chimpanzees and 30 monkey species and then compiling "family trees" to see which were most closely related.

Scientists at Hong Kong University announced last night that they were developing what could become the first experimental vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome. They said they hoped to start testing the vaccine in animals early next month. The scientists provided few details about the vaccine except to say that human trials of any SARS vaccine would not be started until after findings of animal experiments are known, and perhaps not even then. Preliminary results of the animal experiments will not be known for at least six months, the scientists said.

Mutated polio vaccine infects three in Haiti, Dominican Republic SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - A mutated polio vaccine has infected at least three people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, causing the first outbreak of the disease in the Western Hemisphere since 1991, the Pan American Health Organization said. The outbreak "has raised serious concerns" because it has been traced to the same oral vaccine that experts have used to eliminate the disease in many countries, said a statement released Saturday by the organization, which is a part of the Washington-based Organization of American States.