CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME: THE HIDDEN POLIO EPIDEMIC by Dr. William Campbell Douglas (Second Opinion Newsletter)

Periodically, we receive letters such as the following (but surprisingly few, considering the controversial nature of the subject):

"I like your publication and gain a lot of useful information from it. But I question all of your ideas because of your stand on vaccinations. It is perfectly obvious that the major infections diseases caused by viruses have been eliminated by vaccinations."

This letter is fairly typical. Most of them are not vindictive or insulting. They are simply, like this example, disbelieving that something as "obvious" and effective as vaccinations can be challenged by a medical doctor. As I explained to one of my medical colleagues who supports vaccination almost to the degree of a religion, it took a lot of serious pondering and soul-searching to join Dr. Robert Mendelsohn in his crusade against immunizations. It's not easy to take a stand that you know will alienate 95 percent of your medical colleagues and 99 percent of the scientific community.

Post hoc, ergo prompter hoc reasoning states that "A" happened, then "B" happened, thus "A" caused "B." So if we gave children polio shots and the polio epidemic ceases, then it is "obvious" that the vaccine halted the epidemic. But this faith in the polio vaccines will not even stand up to this faulty reasoning because...

The Salk vaccine failed completely (we'll issue a special report on that at a later date). And the Sabin vaccine was a disaster. It caused many cases of polio and showed no relationship to the disease except for an increase in polio during the early '60s, caused by the vaccine itself. And now we have the sensational findings from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, which strongly indicate that polio did not go away at all, but now manifests itself as chronic fatigue syndrome. The public press is strangely silent on this sensational report -- I wonder why.

I remember 20 years ago hearing someone to whom I paid little attention (although the seed was planted) say that polio had not gone away. He said that since the advent of the shots, polio had changed and was called something else by the neurologists. I was intrigued, but I quickly discarded the idea -- where were the thousands of paralyzed kids, the iron lungs, the shriveled limbs? I had not seen a case of active polio (I thought) in my entire career. Then I heard that the neurologists were calling chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) "Myalgic Encephalomyelitis." That's funny I thought, why are they calling it "myalgic," which means muscle; "encephalo," which means brain; and "myelitis," which means inflammation of the covering of the nerves?
Being slow, I just decided they gave it this fancy moniker because it sounded more scientific than chronic fatigue syndrome.

And then, almost like a divine revelation, I saw the report in the New York Academy of Sciences and said: "Of course, why didn't I think of that--chronic fatigue syndrome is the modern form of poliomyelitis. "Now don't hang up on me. I know it sounds like a front-page piece from the National Inquirer, but this is from legitimate research. As you may recall, polio is contracted from ingesting the polio virus, which then goes to the small intestine and reproduces there. With the use of the vaccines, especially the oral Sabin vaccine, the traditional polio viruses were replaced by other members of the same family called Coxsackie viruses.

When the Coxsackie viruses were first isolated from CFS patients, it wasn't realized that we were simply dealing with a new form of polio. This new polio was caused by the replacement of the polio viruses with their brothers, the Coxsackie viruses. As the researchers didn't get the connection at first, these new polio cases were labled "post-polio syndrome," "chronic fatigue syndrome," and "myalgic encephalomyelitis."

Modern genetics has confirmed the genetic similarity between polio viruses, Coxsackie, and another group called the Echo viruses. Before the advent of the Salk and Sabin vaccines, there were only three polio viruses. Now, with the drastic alteration of the human gut over the years as a result of these vaccines, there are at least 72 viral strains that can cause polio-like diseases.

Sadly, this evidence of the changing of polio rather than the elimination of it is not new. The first epidemic of "atypical polio" was reported in Los Angeles in 1934 and there was another epidemic of CFS called "abortive poliomyelitis" in Switzerland in 1939. After the introduction of the vaccines, the trend toward a new polio rapidly increased and it has been recognized by the neurologists for 40 years. The terms "atypical" and "abortive" polio have been quietly dropped because they would point to the awful realization that polio is more common than ever and caused by polio vaccination.

The neurologists and the vaccinators just seem to have gone into a state of denial about the ubiquitousness of polio. The GPs and the internists were unaware of the polio research of the 1950s, and the pediatricians were completely out of it because CFS/polio/ME is a disease of adults -- "infantile paralysis," as polio was called, has become in the modern era "adult paresis" (muscle weakness).

We now know that chronic fatigue syndrome isn’t a new disease, but simply an "aborted form" of the more serious paralytic polio. There is just no doubt about it; it's only a question of getting the public health bureaucrats, the pediatricians, and doctors in general to face up to the facts.

Dr. Richard Bruno, New Jersey Medical School, Department of Physical Medicine, pointed out, in the New York Academy report, that of more than a dozen outbreaks of CFS before the introduction of the Salk vaccine, nine occurred during or immediately after polio outbreaks and several of the victims of CFS had been taking care of polio patients.

As the polio vaccination program opened the door for these opportunistic relatives of polio, the CFS epidemic gathered steam and the new polio was upon us. One of the forerunners in this research is Dr. Elizabeth Dowsett, a microbiologist from Britain. Dr. Dowsett states unequivocally what you don't hear in this country: True CFS (as differentiated from other fatigue states) "strikes one clinically as being polio-like and it has often been diagnosed as 'nonparalytic polio.' "

Dowsett says the term chronic fatigue syndrome was "an unfortunate mistake" because this is truly a neurological disease and the practice of doctors waiting six months before doing anything so they could label it "chronic," obviated the pollibility of identifying the virus. The harm has been done and the patient now has chronic new-age polio that will not be amenable to treatment.

I always considered CFS to be some kind of infection and wondered why photoluminescence didn't cure it. But, as was proven with old-fashioned polio 40 years ago, light blook therapy only works on the acute form of the disease, even including the usually deadly bulbar polio (see Into the Light). When there are lesions in the brain, which can now be demonstrated in CFS patients with MRI and other advanced radiologic methods, it is too late to effect a cure. Parenthetically, how can CFS be a neurotic problem, as the psychiatrists and many real doctors have labelled it, when it can be demonstrated that there are changes in the brain?

We know that multiple vaccinations, such as those given our soldiers during the Gulf War, can cause what is known as "provocation polio." The evidence is fairly convincing that the "Gulf War Syndrome" is simply vaccination-induced chronic fatigue syndrome. One argument against these new scientific findings needs to be countered before it arises, because it's a misconception that confuses the public. It goes like this: "If CFS is a form of polio, and these 72 viruses are in everybody's intestine, then why doesn't everybody come down with CFS?

Simply put, it's because everybody doesn't contract a disease because they are exposed to it. If they did, we would all be dead or at least sick all the time. Some people have stronger immune systems than others and that's why you must do everything within reason to protect your health. During the polio epidemic in the '30s and '40s, most of the children who "caught" polio didn't even know they had it. It was passed off as a cold and no one ever knew about it. This is comparable to tuberculosis, where many people are found on X ray of the chest to have clear evidence of having had TB, but they never knew it.

The evidence is overwhelming that Salk and Sabin did nothing but cause tremendous confusion in the medical world by modifying the polio disease, as Pasteur did over a hundred years ago with so many other diseases. Multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, CFS, Tourette syndrome, "learning disabilities," Guillain Barre Syndrome, idiopathic epilepsy, and many other neurological conditions may very well be just forms of polio induced by these vaccines. Salk and Sabin opened Pandora's box and we now have 72 types of polio rather than three. But it will be a long time before you read about this in the mass media -- what would this revelation do to the credibility of the vaccination programs so fervently promoted by the federal and state bureaucrats and the public health doctors?

ACTION TO TAKE

(1) As we reported to you in the October 1995 issue of Second Opinion, chronic salt depletion is a major component in the etiology of CFS and adding more salt to the diet can often help relieve symptoms dramatically. For more information on what type of salt to use, read chapter five of my special report Add 10 Years to Your Life.

(2) Read our vaccination reports, Immunizations and Lethal Injections. I also recommend that your order the Immunization Resource Guide by Diane Rozario (Patter Publications, P.O. Box 204 Burlington, IA 52601, $9.95 plus $2.00 S&H). It is a handy reference guide to information available on all aspects of childhood immunizations. It also includes a list of organizations and publishers with more information.

(3) You must resist compulsory vaccination of your children. It won't be easy. If you have no choice in the matter, give the child some vitamin C (in dropper form, if necessary). Then see a homeopathic doctor about a remedy to protect the child from the coming assault on his immune system.

Ref: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1955:273; Neurology, 1954:4; British Medical Journal, 1961:1061; What Doctors Don't Tell You, January 1996; Lancet, October 8, 1994; Journal of the American Medical Association, 1947:134.

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