Questions for the "Polio toxin theory"
The toxin theory, Pt. 3
My series on polio has also been, in part, a dialogue with the polio chapter in “Turtles All the Way Down,” and with the “dream” that this chapter would offer the vaccine-skeptical reader: That vaccine worship is founded on a completely fraudulent “creation myth” regarding polio eradication.1
Turtles explicitly promises the reader an opposite salvation, in which the false religion of vaccination is supplanted by a “secret knowledge” (gnosis) of poisons being dosed to children in the American countryside and cities during “harvest season” — only for the victims of these poisons to be disappeared by “reclassification” at exactly the time the Salk and Sabin vaccines were put into use. This statistical trick, if true, would represent a bigger (purported) illusion than the Moon Landing. (Turtles does not emphasize reclassification as heavily as the related polio argument in Dissolving Illusions, but in practice reclassification is critical to the toxin theory.)
An illusion pulled off right in front of the entire world’s face for decades, which today only the “initiated” believer of the toxin theory can perceive — this secret knowledge makes the believer special, in their own eyes — but does it make them a functional critic of modern American vaccine worship, or merely its mirror image? Is the “polio truther” really a skeptic of the religion of vaccines, or merely a subscriber to an alternate faith? (And was inflaming this “religious reflexivity” the intention of including the toxin theory in Turtles?)
Surely the test of this question is whether the polio truther can acknowledge and answer the flaws of the toxin theory, many of which are available to common sense.
This post summarizes and condenses the flaws previously reviewed in the series. It serves as a mirror of its own, reflecting the list of “unsolved mysteries” in the Turtles polio chapter.
This post is about the toxin theory alone
This post is not a defense of the mainstream (or any other) explanation for polio — but purely an attack on the toxin theory. As such I will consider comments regarding problems with the mainstream explanation to be essentially off-topic. (These problems are already the subject of a different post.)
But first: DDT was used in American suburbs throughout the 1960s
Besides the list, I want to highlight an update made to the discussion of DDT use after 1955 in Pt. 2 of the toxin theory series. I put a bit more effort into researching the topic yesterday, and found that suburban DDT spraying in fact intensified immediately before and during the Salk era of 1955-1959. The full updated section is here.
An excerpt from a 1960 report on Detroit, which raises points that will be referenced in the list below:2
The first known occurrence of Dutch elm disease in Michigan was found in Detroit in the summer of 1950. […]
A number of communities started control programs in 1953 or 1954 and by 1959 at least 35 cities and townships within the three counties ringing the sprawling metropolis of Detroit had had control programs underway over a several-year period (Lovitt, letter).
Steps in the control program consisted of […] a spraying program with DDT to kill, control, or prevent the spread of the bark-beetle vectors of the disease. Most communities followed State and Federal recommendations (see Michigan State University Extension Folder, F-195, and U.S. Department of Agriculture Belletin No. 193) in the matter of formulations, dosages and methods of application […] In the earlier years of the programs both foliar and dormant sprays were used, with two or sometimes three applications annually, but the tendency in recent years has been to reduce the applications to one dormant treatment per year, either in the fall after leaf drop or in the early spring before the elm buds open. Hydraulic sprayers were used mainly at first, but there was a gradual conversion to mist blowers over the years […]
And an excerpt from a report on Sheboygan, WI:3
Naively, Dutch elm disease was not considered a serious threat, even as an aggressive program of spraying began in 1957. DDT was the pesticide of choice, recommended by the State of Wisconsin Agriculture Department and the DNR. Sprayed by plane and truck in Sheboygan, the city of Sheboygan Falls used helicopters. Spraying slowed the progression of the disease but certainly did not stop it. […]
In early 1969, Wisconsin declared DDT to be a hazardous pollutant and recommended strongly that the pesticide not be used in the state. It was banned in 1972
Polio “toxin theory” unsolved mysteries
The following sums up all the flaws reviewed in Pt 1 and Pt 2 of the toxin theory series, as well as my stand-alone post on reclassification. Contents:
i. The Mysteries of Polio Eradication.
ii. The Mysteries of DDT Safety.
iii. The Triviality of “Chemical Coincidences.”
iv. The Mystery of Polio Symptoms.
v. The Mystery of Polio Timing.
vi. The Mystery of Polio Immunity.
i. The Mysteries of Polio Eradication
If polio was caused by toxic pesticides, why did polio cases and epidemics decline after 1954 in the US and elsewhere, reversing the prior trend of increase in the US and globally — and exactly when the polio vaccines were put into use?
Answer A: “It was already declining.” (Turtles: “In fact, the data show that a major decline in polio morbidity in the 1950s occurred before the vaccine was put to use.”)
No, it was increasing. In the first weeks of 1953, only a year before the Salk field-trial, the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis deployed a second “poster child” to reflect the unprecedented fact that the funding needs for polio care had doubled compared to the past↗ — not to celebrate the currently ongoing march towards a natural disappearance of polio. (Note that Turtles overtly refers to the global polio surges of the 1950s at multiple points, and offers the reader no real explanation for the contradictory claim of natural decline — as if simply hoping it goes unnoticed.)
Answer B: “DDT was secretly put into disuse.” (Turtles: “While the destructive effects of DDT were new to the public [in 1962], [mystically all-powerful and invisible] government authorities, however, had no need for such an introduction [bwa-ha-ha, foolish mortals!]. They had been aware of the compound’s dangers for years [possibly they were witches also] and, as we shall soon see, had already taken [nefarious, mystical, invisible] steps to monitor [“monitor”?], and even [“even”?] reduce, its use.” [Why wouldn’t DDT use be monitored, given that it was initially considered a wartime military asset? And literally what do you mean “even” reduce? Was there a reduction “years before” 1962, or not? Numbers, please?])
How can DDT secretly have been put into disuse if many American cities began spraying DDT directly into suburbs in the mid-1950s, to control Dutch elm disease?↗ And if these programs continued throughout the 1960s? Shouldn’t there have been more polio than ever after 1955?
Why did the DDT programs put into place around Detroit from 1953-1959 refer to current, active Federal recommendations on spraying DDT (“Most communities followed State and Federal recommendations (see Michigan State University Extension Folder, F-195, and U.S. Department of Agriculture Belletin No. 193)”4)?
Why was Silent Spring published in 1962 in response to the ongoing use of DDT? (“The impetus for Silent Spring was a letter written in January 1958”5)
And why, if again it had stopped being used in 1955, did Federal use of DDT (in Federal Lands) only begin to be restricted in 1957? Why did the USDA then go on to cancel registration for DDT use against house flies and on 17 crops, plus cabbage and lettuce, in 1967 - 1969? Why 50 more crops plus livestock, on finished wood products and buildings, in food processing plants and restaurants, and in landscaping in 1970 — unless DDT was still being used in all those contexts up until that year?6 And etc.
And how could any of these reductions after 1960 (which aren’t even timed correctly for the eradication of polio) have immediately reduced the everyday American’s exposure to DDT, given that previously sprayed DDT persists in the environment?
Answer C: “Polio cases were secretly reclassified.” (Turtles: “If the poliovirus is not found in the samples, the case is diagnosed as non-polio AFP. This procedure also applies in Western countries.”7)
Where are these reclassified cases?! There were 7,042 cases of Meningococcal infections and acute infectious encephalitis in 1954, vs. 38,476 polio cases. There were 6,307 cases of Meningococcal infections, encephalitis, and aseptic meningitis in 1963, vs. 449 polio cases. Now we have a new category added after 1956 — but even with this new category, where are the missing 38,000 polio cases? And even counting paralytic polio alone (only reported separately starting in 1951), there are at least 7,685 missing cases per year in the decade ending 1970.
Raw data at google sheets, compiled in sheet named “graphs 204” Where are reclassified polio deaths? Polio was a substantial portion of deaths not attributed to accidents or certain other causes (e.g. circulatory or respiratory diseases) in Americans aged 1 - 39 in the early 1950s. Where did those deaths go after 1955? They are not found in the numbers for “similar” causes.↗ Wouldn’t finding these missing deaths “prove” reclassification took place? So where are they?
Methods and further discussion in the “reclassification” post. Why would local newspapers and governments stop reporting polio epidemics as they had done before — based on a handful of observed cases in hospitals announced by telephone, regardless of lab verification? If polio epidemics were still occurring, the news would want to report it before the epidemic “finished,” and would not wait for the earliest cases to be “verified” or reclassified as something else.
Relatedly, why did Alexander Langmuir (then-chief epidemiologist of the CDC) write in 1952 that “if poliomyelitis were removed from the list of reportable diseases in all States, an informal reporting system would develop overnight. Newspapers, teachers, various business enterprises, hospitals, nurses organizations, and other agencies would collect, pool, and exchange information on the occurrence of the disease.”8 Was he lying? If not, how did he stop this “overnight” reaction from occurring when polio was “reclassified”?
In conclusion, the disappearance of polio exactly when the polio vaccines were used creates profound and obvious problems for the toxin theory — and everything that Turtles proposes in order to address these problems is stupid, patent bunk.
It would be just as convincing to propose that polio was caused all along by roving aliens who were finally hunted down by fighter jets.
ii. The Mysteries of DDT Safety
If DDT is behind the rise in polio cases “after WWII,” why didn’t cases rise specifically during the US Public Health Service Malaria Control Program, which was the first wide-scale non-military use of the pesticide? During this program, DDT was sprayed directly into millions of (southern-) American homes in order to act as a residual insecticide.↗ Yet during the program, overall US polio cases and deaths decreased in two out of three years, and the portion of US polio deaths reported by the south did not change.
Raw data at google sheets, compiled in sheet named “Southern polio...” Why didn’t polio increase after 1955, when multiple American suburbs began spraying DDT (and related organochlorines) to control Dutch elm disease (to repeat the point previously raised in this list)? Anecdotes of the residential spraying programs in question describe children at the time lounging under just-sprayed trees, while insect-killing-solutions moodily dripped down from above.9
At the same time, what of this problem?: It cannot be that DDT reduced polio by displacing the sale and use of arsenate of lead in the US, because polio cases and epidemics increased after 1947. To wit, it cannot be that DDT explains both the presence and lack of post-war or post-Salk increases in polio — either it increased polio or reduced it. Yet it clearly didn’t increase polio, given the examples of the malaria eradication program and Dutch elm disease campaigns. Yet, also, it clearly didn’t reduce polio, given that cases increased after 1947. The rise in polio after 1945 falsifies the central tenant of Turtles — that American use of lead arsenate was behind the emergence of polio epidemics to begin with.
Likewise, why did polio in the US decline in the 1920s, if polio was caused by an agricultural pesticide? What mysterious new resistance factor emerged to protect American kids from “harvest seasons”? (Here I must reiterate that this post is an attack on the toxin theory, not a defense of alternate theories.)
Why, in Detroit in 1958 (the most prominent example of an epidemic occurring during Dutch elm disease DDT spraying campaigns) were paralytic cases concentrated in the treeless, majority-Black, less-vaccinated inner city, and less frequent in the white, more-highly-vaccinated suburbs being doused with DDT (not to mention rural fringes)?
Molner, Agate. (1960.) Location of paralytic polio cases in Detroit 1958 polio epidemic. What? Turtles doesn’t mention that the Black inner city dominated paralytic cases in 1958? How weird… 
Google image search results for Detroit’s historic Black Bottom neighborhood (before being displaced by the I-375 highway): No trees. Since Salk-era epidemics occurred during residential DDT spray campaigns, why didn’t they mirror spray campaign timing — either occurring, in the Detroit example, two or three times a year, or in the late fall, or in early spring? “In the earlier years of the programs both foliar and dormant sprays were used, with two or sometimes three applications annually, but the tendency in recent years has been to reduce the applications to one dormant treatment per year, either in the fall after leaf drop or in the early spring before the elm buds open.” It would appear, instead, that “more DDT, less polio.”
To summarize, the toxin theory of polio is “stuck between a rock and a hard place,” in which, either DDT actually reduced poisoning from previously used lead arsenate pesticides (which cannot explain why polio increased after 1947), or DDT increased poisoning (which cannot explain the lack of southern polio surges in 1945-1947 or lack of white, suburban surges after 1955).
iii. The Triviality of “Chemical Coincidences”
Having just demonstrated the astonishing lack of association between American polio trends and deployment of the most historically infamous “poison chemical” outside of mustard gas, it is now appropriate to pose the following question:
Why should any particular overlap between polio and agricultural or industrial chemical use arouse suspicion to begin with, given that virtually all of American economic activity was either agricultural or industrial between 1890 - 1955? In other words, what is the “false discovery rate” for chemical exposure in New England in 1893? Wouldn’t there inevitably be some new chemical in use, whenever, wherever polio chanced to emerge, or increase, or decline?
iv. The Mystery of Polio Symptoms
If the thing being called “polio” (which Turtles and the toxin theory posit was some amorphous, pesky blob of barely-relatable conditions) was caused by neurotoxins, why is it that over and over, when children diagnosed with polio were encountered and described, they were found to be fit and unperturbed in personality and mood?
As the newspaper men passed crib after crib, each holding a child 4 or 5 years old suffering from the disease in some form, they saw only children otherwise strong in body and above normal in mind.
— 1916, describing the polio ward at Willard Parker during the 1916 New York City epidemic.10
There is a youngster of eight with a brace on one leg who does a hop, skip and a jump every once in a while, telling the world he is getting better. A large delegation between 10 and 15 are just plain boy-roughish and sizzling with energy.
—1931, describing the polio colony at Warm Springs.11
And yet, disruptions in personality are the signature harm of lead poisoning (and many other neurological poisonings):
Children who survive severe lead poisoning may be left with permanent intellectual disability and behavioural disorders. At lower levels of exposure that cause no obvious symptoms, lead is now known to produce a spectrum of injury across multiple body systems. In particular, lead can affect children’s brain development, resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioural changes such as reduced attention span and increased antisocial behaviour, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anaemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioural effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.12
In summary: How can it be that an “amorphous blob” of poison-induced neurological symptoms — if that is what “polio” was — could regularly, consistently not include the first and most durable symptom of neurological poisoning, unless in fact this “amorphous blob” was not caused by poison exposure at all?
In other words (and adding to “more DDT, less polio”), it would seem that “more polio, fewer bona fide neurological poisoning symptoms.”
v. The Mystery of Polio Timing
If pesticides caused polio by application, why didn’t polio cases surge in the spring or early summer?
If pesticides caused polio by “harvesting”, why didn’t polio cases persist at peak levels (which on a per-capita level were still always quite infrequent) into September and October in New England, Canada, etc.?
And generally, if the thing called “polio” was caused by pesticides, why wouldn’t the timing of “this thing” be almost completely sporadic? Pesticides were kept in stores and homes year-round, and (sporadic) exposure to children would have been constant.
In summary: Turtles repeatedly demands that an association between “harvest season” and polio outbreaks be taken as circumstantial evidence of a link between pesticide exposure and the disease in question — even though high levels of pesticide exposure would have preceded and outlasted polio outbreaks.
The problem, in other words, is that polio was biased too heavily toward one “hot zone” of the calendar to correspond to pesticide exposure. The toxin theory “trips on its own foot” when it comes to the accident of polio timing.
vi. The mystery of polio immunity
Why were older children and adults under-represented among polio cases? 4 of 5 Americans were over age 9 between 1900 and 195013, and many of them would have planted, sprayed, harvested, and eaten more food than younger children in any given year, as well as having more cumulative exposures of the same kind — yet they made up only 2/5 of polio cases in 1944.↗ What mysterious force protected them? Even assuming that developing children have more sensitive nervous systems, it makes no sense whatsoever that adults were impervious to chronic exposure to the “toxins” alleged to cause polio per the toxin theory (in the case of lead poisoning, children tend to be more highly exposed due to putting toys in their mouth).
Why were secondary attacks of polio so rare? If the thing called “polio” was caused by toxic exposure, individuals (children or older) who succumbed to such toxins should have been even more susceptible than everyone else to further exposure. Essentially every meal, by adding to prior chemical insults, should have resulted in more reoccurrence and progression of paralysis among those previously diagnosed with “polio.” And yet:
The immunity following an attack of poliomyelitis appears to be of long duration. It is not yet known whether repeated subclinical infections are necessary to maintain the state of immunity. Considering the age distribution of cases, this seems unlikely. Although not unknown, second attacks of paralytic poliomyelitis are rare.
—JHS Gear, “Recent Advances in Poliomyelitis,” 194914
The only conclusion is that the thing called “polio,” somehow, conferred resistance to itself.
The toxin theory cannot possibly explain this phenomenon (it must resort to intentionally misunderstanding post-acute polio as defying the observed immunity to second attacks of acute polio — at which point, the believer in the theory is finally reduced to screaming “I can’t hear you!” at reality).
Conclusion
The central conceit of the Turtles polio chapter is, “Look at all these secret problems with the mainstream polio narrative — mustn’t there be an alternate explanation?”
Yet at no point in the chapter is a tally made of all the problems with the provided alternate explanation. What good is the toxin theory, ultimately, if it creates even one contradiction with the evidence, let alone just as many or more flaws and contradictions as it purports to solve?
If you derived value from this post, please drop a few coins in your fact-barista’s tip jar.
Anonymous. Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth. The Turtles Team. Kindle Edition.
Wallace, GJ. Nickell, WP. Bernard, RF. (1961.) “Bird Mortality in the Dutch Elm Disease Program in Michigan.” Cranbrook Institute of Science - Bulletin 41. At http://shipseducation.net/pesticides/library/wallace1961.pdf
Beth Dippel. “Sheboygan is Tree City USA, but once was known as City of Elms.” Sheboygan Press. May 4, 2018.
(Wallace, Nickell, Bernard.)
Turtles never overtly claims that reclassification was responsible for the reduction in polio in the West after 1955 (as previously acknowledged; it is still a critical component of the toxin theory in practice).
Langmuir, AD. (1952.) “Usefulness of communicable disease reports.” Public Health Rep (1896). 1952 Dec; 67(12): 1249–1257.
https://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messages/148145/142686.html Accessed February 3, 2024:
It was great fun watching the spraying through the window. The sprayer guy operated something like an anti-aircraft set up. His seat would pivot around with the sprayer and he could pivot the sprayer up or down.
The spray had such velocity that it bent back branches. Maybe there was a fan built into the sprayer.
After the sprayer, we were allowed outside. The spray dripped off the elm trees upon us. It smelled ok. We played on the grass under the trees as if a storm had ended.
[Very charming prose, except of course that the duplication of “pivot” and choice of “upon us” are unpleasant. Not to say that I could do better.]
“Extend Use of Blood Serum” The New York Times. August 13, 1916 p 1, 5. newspapers.com
Donnelly, Reinette L. “Happy Colony Located at Warm Springs.” The Macon Telegraph.August 16, 1931. p. 16. newspapers.com
Gear, JHS. “Recent Advances in Poliomyelitis.” Postgrad Med J. 1949 Jan; 25(279): 3–8.
Very valuable work, thank you Brian. I don't know why you do what you do but I'm glad of it.
Have you heard the latest DarkHorse Podcast where Bret Weinstein interviews Forrest Maready about his Polio book The Moth in the Iron Lung?