India Frees Itself of Polio 309
An anonymous reader writes "It's been three years since the last recorded polio case in India and health officials hope to officially certify India polio free in the next few weeks. 'Hamid Jafari, director of the WHO's polio-eradication campaign, says the agency's ambitious quest to stop all polio transmission by the end of 2014 is now within reach. If that is achieved, and no new cases crop up for three years, polio—like smallpox—will be officially banished from the planet. "India was one of the most important sources" from where the virus spread to other countries, said Dr. Jafari.'"
Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)
All it took was a single country to do the needful.
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That... (roll)... works. Damn. Well, you guys have to pay for the pizza.
Not so fast ! (Score:4, Informative)
Next door to India, Polio is making a come back.
Same thing also happening in Nigeria, as well as in Mali.
The common thread in the three locations that is helping Polio making a revival is Islam.
Yes, Islam is helping to make Polio a permanent fixture to the human race.
In Pakistan, they actually KILL health workers trying to eradicate Polio. Same thing happen in Nigeria, where Boko Haram has threaten (and sometimes kill) people trying to stop the spread of Polio.
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If you think Islam = Al Quaeda (sp?) then that is true. Al Q's rejection of the West goes that far.
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing to do with Al Quaeda
http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/cleric-says-polio-vaccination-unislamic-warns-of-jihad-against-docs/961503/ [indianexpress.com]
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing to do with Al Quaeda
AQ is a big part of it, and for GOOD REASON. The United States used health workers, including people administering polio vaccine, to collect intelligence against AQ and the Taliban. Some AQ people were killed as a result. The US has openly admitted doing this. They did it in Abbottadad, to try to local Osama bin Laden (the film "Zero Dark Thirty" showed health workers collecting intelligence). If you don't want health workers targeted in a war, then don't use them to target others.
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They could demand only doctors belonging to their own faith
The health workers working for the CIA were muslims.
islamic countries like Saudi or Pakistan has sufficiently good doctors.
This is astonishingly ignorant. The government of Saudi Arabia is the PRIMARY target of AQ. AQ's number one reason for attacking the USA on 9/11 was our support for Saudi Arabia. To suggest that they would/should trust Saudis is absurd.
They could even demand to have medicines handed over and do the vaccinations themselves.
So all they need to do is ask, and the legitimate governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan will hand over health administration to a terrorist organization? Sure, whatever.
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Thank you! You are a master communicator. I think your arguments come across especially rationally with the use of bold, italics and CAPS. All signs of truth and reasoned positions. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, Islam is helping to make Polio a permanent fixture to the human race.
The former two catholic popes did similar stuff with condoms and HIV in Africa and South America. I hope this one has more common sense.
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, Islam is helping to make Polio a permanent fixture to the human race.
The former two catholic popes did similar stuff with condoms and HIV in Africa and South America. I hope this one has more common sense.
Funny, I can't remember the last pope murdering health workers. Even if he did - does that make it right for Muslims to do it too?
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The Church also forbids sex outside of marriage. If people chose not to follow the no sex rule, then why do you think Church rules would prevent someone from using a condom?
Maybe you mean husbands giving their faithful wives aids? If the man isn't using a condom with prostitutes, do you really think he would use one with his wife?
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:4, Insightful)
The Roman Catholic church has these fellows called "Priests", who actually expect all good Catholics to confess their specific sins, and recieve counseling and do penance for each one as set by the priest. It often defaults to a scoring system, where sex gets you points, then planning for the sex in advance by buying condoms gets you more. Some people therefore feel less guilty, and are treated as officially less guilty, if they can say they didn't plan the sex in advance, it just happened. Since the sex itself can be a powerful motivator, doing the least 'sins' that still result in the reward is often the choice, instead of 'not sinning' at all.
The question is, even under RC doctrine, why is sex a sin and doing something that indicates you planned it in advance a greater sin, instead of sex itself being a sin, but trying to reduce bad consequences such as disease spread to yourself OR YOUR PARTNER not a sin? Why is it assumed that using a condom is either to avoid preganacy (again, itself a sin), or to protect only yourself from the "God given consequences" of sin, but never out of genuine feeling for your partner? Why are priests specifically trained to discount that possibility?
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> why is ... trying to reduce bad consequences such as disease... not a sin?
Personally, I think it has to do with God writing doctrine before we discovered bacteria. WHich makes me want to put airquotes around the word God.
Re:Unfair accusations (Score:4, Insightful)
In many dioceses the Church also makes selling or giving away condoms a sin. Healthcare workers are also forbidden from recommending condoms for birth control. Marriages that cannot be "correctly" consummated, e.g. one partner has HIV so barriers must be used, are not considered valid.
It's not money and comfort, it's power that attracts many people to the priesthood. Power over parishioners in the case of the parish priest, or really enormous power over the political process affecting the lives of millions when they reach the position of archbishop or cardinal.
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I suspect you'll hope in vain.
The Americans are responsible for the attacks on doctors
Their fake vaccine programme that preceded their extra judicial murder of Osama Bin Laden is what has caused the distrust.
You cannot place all the blame on the brown people, the united states has become an international bully preying on those with resources it desires, that's the real problem but don't expect to hear much about that.
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The Americans are responsible for the attacks on doctors
Their fake vaccine programme that preceded their extra judicial murder of Osama Bin Laden is what has caused the distrust.
These murders have been going on long before Bin Laden was killed. Islamic fundamentalists kill not so much doctors, but want to destroy Western institutions in their country. Western medicine, schools for girls, tv stations that air western tv series, etc.
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't think that this only takes place in Africa and South America. My wife used to work for a private all-girls Catholic junior high school in New York. One year, she was teaching health and needed to cover sex education. They brought in someone else to teach it (which, honestly, my wife welcomed since teaching sex ed in a private Catholic school is kind of like grabbing a dangling power line and hoping it isn't live). This person proceeded to tell the girls a bunch of lies like all condoms have tiny holes in them that let sperm and viruses through.
My wife complained to the principal. Telling the girls not to have sex before marriage because God says so would be one thing. It is a religious school, after all. But spreading blatant lies like this is just wrong. The principal was shocked (or acted so) and promised to look into it. We don't know if this speaker was ever brought back because soon after this we had our second child and my wife quit her job to stay at home with him.
Still, the fact that there's someone who sells their services going from school to school spreading lies to scare kids into not having sex is frustrating. All this will do is cause kids to have unprotected sex which will lead to teen pregnancy and STDs. Even if they find out the truth, it means they'll be less likely to trust what an adult tells them and might not listen to another piece of advice that could have been life-saving.
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
"Religious leaders were persuaded to join the effort. "The calls that went out to the Muslim faithful every Friday contained reminders to take children to the immunization booths," said Mr. Kapur of Rotary International. "These were the people initially most skeptical of the vaccines but, once convinced, they became our biggest agents of change."
So it's not Islam in general that's anti-polio. Indeed, you don't get those craziness in any Muslim culture with well-educated populace.
The people who are killing health workers administering vaccines in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are not just Muslims. They are Salafi, an extremely fundamentalist Muslim sect that espouses strict Koranic literalism and advocates for a return to the practices of the "original Islam" (which, basically, translates to society and culture frozen as it was in the times of Muhammad). Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, Caucasus Emirate etc - these are all Salafi.
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. Indeed, you don't get those craziness in any Muslim culture with well-educated populace
No they just fly planes into buildings [time.com]
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"Well-educated" implies, among other things, the ability to rationally think about one's own religion.
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"Well-educated" implies, among other things, the ability to rationally think about one's own religion.
A strange definition, but if you go with it "Well educated Muslim" is an oxymoron. Also you would have to be clear that you count people with university degrees, doctors, engineers as "not well educated" when you say that Muslims carry out terrorist attacks because they are not well educated. Otherwise people might get the impression that the solution would be improving their level of education.
I would suggest that for the purposes of communication yo just say the same as i do; Islam suppresses any thought
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if you go with it "Well educated Muslim" is an oxymoron
Not really. They could have thought rationally about their religion and decided that their faith was well-based. "Well educated" means you've been given the tools (and presumably have the intelligence) to make choices for yourself -- it does not put any requirements on the actual choice you end up making.
Everyone (including atheists) like to assume that their group has made the right choice and that anyone with enough brains would do the same, when in fact there is no "right" choice. At least not until o
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Well-educated fundamentalist Muslim is an oxymoron
You do realize that religion, not just fundamentalist religion, is negatively correlated with both intelligence and education, right?
Re:The 9/11 attackers were college educated ! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Well-educated" implies, among other things, the ability to rationally think about one's own religion.
Fact: Many Islamic Terrorists were college educated !
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/14/opinion/14bergen.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
"We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. We found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators' educational levels is available - the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002 - 53 percent of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree"
The 1993 attack on World Trade Center
"The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education"
Of the 9/11 attack
"The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities, a prestigious and elite endeavor for anyone from the Middle East. Indeed, the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university in, of all things, urban preservation, while the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina . We also found that two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college"
They were educated in colleges in America as well as in Europe. If they still can't THINK RATIONALLY after getting their college education in WESTERN UNIVERSITIES, who is to blame ?
The Western Universities or that bloody religion of Islam ?
Some people's thinking is so strange. Muslims with a University education commit acts of terrorism. Muslims without a University education commit acts of terrorism. So ... lets redefine "well educated" to mean thinking critically about religion and claim that the common factor is that "uneducated" commit acts of terrorism
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not so fast ! (Score:5, Informative)
One of the reasons for that was some IDIOT in the CIA apparently using a polio vaccination program as a cover for a covert operation in Pakistan.
It was actually hep-b vax and it was specifically intended to get info on bin laden in abbotobad. Not clear if it was helpful or not.
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/the_fake_vaccination_scheme_absent_from_the_bin_laden_hunt_debates/ [salon.com]
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It was a real polio vaccination program, and the covert operation caught the #1 terrorist (of whom Pakistan claims they had no knowledge, of course).
You'd think the so-called "mainstream Muslims" (remember how they tell us only 0.0001% of Muslims are terrorists or support terrorists, terrorism is against Islam, etc) would be happy about both things. Nope!
No - just blame them for their own actions (Score:2)
The blowback death toll of murdered medical staff and disease victims is increasing daily.
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The common thread in the three locations that is helping Polio making a revival is Islam.
Right. That's the only thing these three countries have in common. That explains why all those other muslim majority countries are also seeing polio rates increase. Oh wait...
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Re:Not so fast ! (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have a source or are you are retard?
My god how far has the propaganda that Islam is as harmless as the women's institute gone. Surely you must have read about all the polio workers killed [aljazeera.com]?
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I find humanity's ability to eradicate previously deadly and epidemic diseases to be something to wonder at. Personally I rate this little wonder of the world higher than the Moon landing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_diseases [wikipedia.org]
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I find humanity's ability to eradicate previously deadly and epidemic diseases to be something to wonder at. Personally I rate this little wonder of the world higher than the Moon landing.
Seconded! The elimination of smallpox is probably the single greatest triumph of modern medicine; in the 20th century alone, it saved more lives than were lost in every war put together. And contrary to the claims of the racist naysayers who think we should have left epidemics alone so they could control third-world popu
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Indeed. And it wasn't the free market that did it. Go figure.
Re: Excellent! (Score:2)
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But vaccinations give you autism (Score:5, Funny)
Jenny McCarthy wouldn't lie to me!
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they gave her brain damage and swollen breasts.
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Jenny McCarthy says vaccines put dangerous toxins in your body. Obviously, you don't want "dangerous toxins" even if it would protect you from horrible diseases. Now, if you'll excuse her, she needs to go get an injection of botox to prevent some wrinkles.
it'll be back (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it'll be back (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the epidemic of stupid parents that refuse to immunise children nowadays it should not be long till many of the old virus's and diseases rear their ugly heads again.
I wouldn't call this 'good' news; but polio is sufficiently unpleasant to send your basic chickenshit first world antivaxxer running screaming to the nearest vaccination location (for most childhood diseases for which vaccines are available, you aren't helping your odds by playing at anti-vax; the serious disease effects are still somewhat more common than the vaccine side effects; but polio is a genuinely nasty customer).
Thankfully it has no animal vectors (of any note in the wild, I'm sure you can buy a mouse model or something that is susceptible in the lab) so it mostly hangs out in areas so remote or underdeveloped that sheer logistical difficulty keeps vaccination efforts sporadic.
The one nasty anti-vax angle with polio is, I'm ashamed to say, pretty much our fault: The CIA came up with a clever ruse to do some DNA gathering [theguardian.com] under the guise of a vaccination program (one for hepatitis B), and the subsequent revelation of this fact has not done much to quell the 'zOMG vaccines are a western and/or zionist conspiracy against muslims!!!' rumor mongering present in certain areas.
Re:it'll be back (Score:5, Interesting)
The old terrors of disease have been eradicated in developed countries for so long that even the cultural memory is fading. People do not fear a disease they know absolutely nothing of.
Just ask people what the symptoms of cholora are. Most of them probably don't know, and that's still endemic in parts of the world.
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i think it's like crazy diarrhea. doh!
Re:it'll be back (Score:5, Insightful)
This is definitely the biggest problem with vaccines. Their very success is their biggest weakness. As people don't personally remember diseases like measles, mumps, whooping cough, etc, they mentally minimize the severity of it. Whooping cough? Sounds like you just have a bad cough for a week or two and then you're fine, right? Then they hear FUD about vaccines that leads to them mentally overestimating the risk of the vaccines. Before you know it you have a person who is thinking of injecting their child with this horrible mix of highly dangerous chemicals just to prevent their child from maybe coughing for a few days. They make the perfectly rational (in their mind, given their flawed assumptions) decision to forego vaccinations.
Sadly, the people who suffer are children like Dana Elizabeth McCaffery [danamccaffery.com] who die because they were too young to get the vaccine or people who have valid medical reasons for not getting the vaccine (immune system issues, allergies, etc). These people rely on the rest of us keeping herd immunity up. As the anti-vax movement grows, herd immunity breaks down and more people will die. The good news is that, as more people die, the anti-vax movement should be self-limiting. Who's going to seriously listen to Jenny McCarthy railing about vaccines if a hundred thousand people come down with measles? The bad news is that many, many people will get sick and either die or suffer permanent injury from vaccine-preventable diseases before this happens.
Re:it'll be back (Score:5, Insightful)
The CIA came up with a clever ruse
The CIA endangers everybody on the planet with their little game(s) - 'clever' could only be applied superficially.
Re:it'll be back (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say, though, that you might be more accurate to say that it's a myopically clever plan, rather than a superficially clever one. Within the narrow, barely relevant, context of 'so, we need a DNA sample from a well guarded private compound in a country where most of the locals hate our guts and going through the official channels would mean somebody tipping off our suspect within hours, any ideas?' A fake vaccination program is among the better available answers.
In the broader context of the fact that there's never been a man alive nearly as dangerous as some second rate infectious diseases, it's about the dumbest answer imaginable. (Extra demerits awarded for hampering control of polio, which is right on the edge of being finally eradicated, and for doing so in a region where any remaining infections are atypically likely to spread via the more downmarket Hajj trips to assorted other areas where vaccination programs are nontrivial).
Somehow, none of this is terribly out of character for the CIA, unfortunately.
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Hey - let us feel good for a change! (Score:2)
Given the epidemic of stupid parents that refuse to immunise children nowadays it should not be long till many of the old virus's and diseases rear their ugly heads again.
Can't we feel good about doing something noble for a change? Even for a minute?
Have a heart, guy!
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Not if it's extinct.
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Smallpox has been absent since the 70's, and hasn't show up yet... So if the premise is the same with polio, yes we can say that it is extinct... I think.
I think it only exists in one CDC facility and one research / germ warfare facility in siberia, now.
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Smallpox has been absent since the 70's, and hasn't show up yet... So if the premise is the same with polio, yes we can say that it is extinct... I think.
I think it only exists in one CDC facility and one research / germ warfare facility in siberia, now.
Meh. I'm sure it exists in other places as well. For example, the sequence for smallpox is well-known, so it could be reconstructed by a government even if those samples were destroyed. Furthermore, there's always the random serendipity of as-yet undiscovered samples:
Century-old smallpox scabs in N.M. envelope [usatoday.com] (found in a library, of all places...)
However, I concur that the disease is extinct in the wild, and, barring malfeasance, there will never be another epidemic of smallpox.
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Smallpox has been absent since the 70's, and hasn't show up yet... So if the premise is the same with polio, yes we can say that it is extinct... I think.
I think it only exists in one CDC facility and one research / germ warfare facility in siberia, now.
Meh. I'm sure it exists in other places as well. For example, the sequence for smallpox is well-known, so it could be reconstructed by a government even if those samples were destroyed. Furthermore, there's always the random serendipity of as-yet undiscovered samples:
Century-old smallpox scabs in N.M. envelope [usatoday.com] (found in a library, of all places...)
However, I concur that the disease is extinct in the wild, and, barring malfeasance, there will never be another epidemic of smallpox.
Interesting that the FBI sent the envelope to the CDC via mail... aside from being illegal I would've thought that this would of at least raised a few eye brows at the CDC.
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We don't need the old diseases to come back as drug resistant bacteria has the potential to kill modern medicine.
Imagine getting a scratch on your hand and having to amputate because the doctors can't prevent infection..
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One day we'll figure out that all the cool things modern medicine can 'fix' is mainly stuff that modern life created. Everything else is pretty much soap and not shitting in your water.
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It's not that I don't understand "mainly", but I disagree that most of what modern medicine fixes is due to problems caused by modern life. People have been suffering and dying of illnesses for thousands of years. For most of that time, treating the issues was a little better than a stab in the dark. You could quarantine the diseased but this broke down if the person transmits the disease before showing symptoms.
Modern medicine allowed us to finally understand why people got sick and how to prevent or (i
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I've met people dealing with the side effects of the polio they contracted 40+ years ago. There are a LOT more people with post-polio syndrome then there are people who have had deleterious effects from the vaccine, and a lot of them are going to die from PPS.
It is still a tough fight ahead (Score:5, Informative)
Fantastic (Score:5, Interesting)
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By all means let us thank the government of India, its politicians, bureaucrats and workers. Also the philanthropists throughout India and around the world. Also the tireless workers, some facing grave danger to bring vaccine to children in cities and remote areas.
If the world is to enjoy freedom from this vile virus let us not forget to thank the countless mothers who walked for miles and stood online for hours to get their children the vaccine. These are heros to future generations as well.
Good on them! (Score:5, Interesting)
From the Polio Eradication Website [polioeradication.org]:
Polio remains endemic in three countries – Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Until poliovirus transmission is interrupted in these countries, all countries remain at risk of importation of polio, especially in the ‘poliovirus importation belt’ of countries from west Africa to the Horn of Africa.
Only 372 cases [polioeradication.org] worldwide last year! If we're careful, if we can convince certain political groups that polio is not an appropriate weapon of terrorism(*), we'll soon eliminate it completely.
Interestingly, polio is monitored from the sewage system [polioeradication.org] in India. Since that appears to work for polio, people are thinking about using this method to monitor other things: other diseases, weapons manufacture, drug manufacture, and so on.
(*) Not making this up - some groups in Afghanistan think that spreading polio is a good way to get back at the Great Satan.
Re:Good on them! (Score:4, Funny)
There's a common rumor in Afganistan that the Polio vaccine is actually a potent lifetime contraceptive, distributed by western powers in order to keep Muslim women from breeding in readyness for a planned Christian invasion.
The most unbelieveable part of that is the idea of a government planning so far ahead.
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They plan fifty years ahead, but the plans get thrown away and rewritten from scratch every two years.
Re:Good on them! (Score:4, Interesting)
The US and other western countries have done this for quite some time now (15-20 years in California that I know of), particularly for monitoring drug consumption of the population as a whole. I'm not sure if the resulting information is made readily available to the public, but there is a government agency out there somewhere collecting this information and using it for something important enough to substantiate the costs involved.
Source: One of my clients engineers the big compressors that are used to separate waste in sewage plants. Once separated, samples are taken and tested for various compounds.
They also engineer subsystems that are designed specifically to collect 'unintentional waste of reasonable value' - also known as jewelry. Your wedding ring that went down the shower drain? It didn't get dumped into the ocean. It's most likely that your local sewage plant found it and melted it down for the value of the metal and gems. I found out about this something like ten years ago, and that year my local plant had gained over $400k from reclaimed jewelry. So it seems that sewage treatment really is a dirty business.
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Not making this up - some groups in Afghanistan think that spreading polio is a good way to get back at the Great Satan.
Sounds like a genius plan. Spread a disease which is almost universally vaccinated against within the USA, but not within your own community. That will get them far...
Meanwhile, in Syria... (Score:5, Informative)
The WSJ:
NPR: [npr.org]
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Congrats to Rotary and Bill Gates... (Score:2, Insightful)
As much as everyone likes to hate Bill Gates - India and a number of other countries owe him (and the global Rotary community) for helping in this effort. More on End Polio [endpolio.org].
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As much as everyone likes to hate Bill Gates - India and a number of other countries owe him (and the global Rotary community) for helping in this effort. More on End Polio [endpolio.org].
I don't necessarily disagree... but this effort predates the founding of the Gates Foundation by a few decades. We were hearing about efforts to eradicate Polio back in the 1970s!
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Yes the effort pre-dates the Gates Foundation. But the latest efforts have been partly funded by the Gates Foundation with a challenge grant. The effort was running out of gas until Bill and Melinda stepped up. The greatest thanks should go to the rotarians and health workers in the third world countries where these efforts continue. The logistics required to deliver doses to millions of children in third world conditions is massive.
At constant risk (Score:2, Interesting)
India will still be at constant risk. This modern secular country is right next to a muzzy hell-hole where attacks on polio workers [bbc.co.uk] are frequent [thenational.ae]. Among the many other things that Islam forbids they have now decided that polio vaccines are unislamic [indianexpress.com].
yet again this (literally) diabolical 'religion' brings death and suffering to the world.
Re:At constant risk (Score:5, Funny)
Criticises religion, "literally" places blame on satan. :)
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Luckily for them, the India-Pakistan border is already a heavily fortified one.
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India will still be at constant risk. This modern secular country is right next to a muzzy hell-hole where attacks on polio workers [bbc.co.uk] are frequent [thenational.ae].
Depressingly, Pakistani muslims are correct in thinking that vaccination programs may be controlled by western governments. The CIA used a fake vaccination program [slate.com] (not polio) to aid in the hunt for Bin Laden.
Among the many other things that Islam forbids they have now decided that polio vaccines are unislamic [indianexpress.com].
Islam does not forbid vaccination [bbc.co.uk].
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Depressingly, Pakistani muslims are correct in thinking that vaccination programs may be controlled by western governments. The CIA used a fake vaccination program [slate.com] (not polio) to aid in the hunt for Bin Laden.
So by that reckoning if a con man pretends to be a meter reader then I would be justified in killing someone working for the electric company!
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The CIA used a fake vaccination program (not polio) to aid in the hunt for Bin Laden.
So by that reckoning if a con man pretends to be a meter reader then I would be justified in killing someone working for the electric company!
That is a staggeringly stupid thing to say. It's more like a government assassin was disguised as a meter reader, with the blessing of the meter readers office. You would be justified in being suspicious of every meter reader in the future, and of blowing their back out if they made a move towards you that looked like an attack. Indeed, you'd be an idiot not to stay on your guard around them at all times.
PG&E and local fire departments have both in the past been conned into spying on citizens' activity
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That is a staggeringly stupid thing to say. It's more like a government assassin was disguised as a meter reader, with the blessing of the meter readers office .
Citation needed - this contradicts the source you provide and its link to the Guardian [theguardian.com] that says that it was a "fake" program in a wealthy area that would not qualify for free vaccinations. I would hope that "fake" here just means only they were pretending to be part of the eradication program but were not, and that the actual injections were real!
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Citation needed - this contradicts the source you provide and its link to the Guardian that says that it was a "fake" program in a wealthy area that would not qualify for free vaccinations. I would hope that "fake" here just means only they were pretending to be part of the eradication program but were not, and that the actual injections were real!
The actual inspections by PG&E and fire departments were real, too. They were collecting real information about fire hazards. That wasn't their primary purpose, though, as proven by a lack of contact attempts and willfully crossing marked property boundaries without a warrant. It doesn't actually matter if the vaccinations were fake.
endangered species (Score:2)
Finally an entry on the extinct species list that we can actually be proud of.
Polio is one nasty disease and its (almost) eradication is one of the bravest examples of human accomplishment and proof of what things our grandparents thought impossible we can achieve if we work together for a change.
Unfortunately, once again, religion is the final obstacle in mankinds road to a better world. If they create an eradication of religion program next, sign me up.
Hubris (Score:2, Interesting)
These are merely temporary measures. These diseases come back. We've already seen some of them come back in the US.
yes, this is largely due to the anti vaccination movement. But consider, that that is all it takes for them to come back.
They are still out there. Waiting. Breeding. Evolving.
The only real counter against pandemics is to control the vectors of transmission.
Take hospitals. What is more effective at controlling infection.
1. having doctors wash their hands.
2. spraying everything with industrial an
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Mosquitoes are entirely dispensable."
Tell that to the spiders, frogs, lizards, birds, fish, and the thousands of other species that evolved to subsist primarily on mosquitoes.
Also tell it to the aquatic plants that would suffocate and die if not for the mosquito larvae eating the detritus and other waste that would otherwise film the surface of stagnant lakes and create a gas-exchange barrier preventing the passage of nitrogen and oxygen.
The list goes on, but extincting the mosquito would have devastating
I survived polio! (Score:5, Interesting)
I contracted polio in rural India when I was about 5, 10 years after Salk's vaccine was deployed all over the USA. I had switched schools about six times in k-12, (civil servant dad posted to all the distant corners of the realm). In almost every class, in every school I had another victim as classmate. That is anecdotal evidence with the survivor bias too. How many had died? How many did not even attend school?
Well, I am glad the scourge has been eliminated in India. Hope the fundie clerics do not stand in the way of complete eradication. It is very disheartening the fundie clerics and the Haj pilgrimage is re-introducing it again in far flung regions of the world. If polio found an able adversary in science, it has found a reliable ally in the form of Muslim fundamentalists.
Don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, Jenny McCarthy will be over with a horde of uneducated soccer moms to fuck it all up for you soon enough.
Quick (Score:4, Funny)
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I doubt they would have patented it because then their work would be public. But I have no doubt they have reserves of purified polio in underground bunkers. Although you have to wonder if this is would be an effective wartime weapon. Surely something faster-acting and more challenging to inoculate against would be a better choice.
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We are safe only as long as the virus does not mutate beyond our current vaccines...
(From my understand) a key part of making sure that it doesn't mutate is having everyone properly vaccinated. If people catch it and thus provide a place to replicate, it gives it more opportunity to mutate.
That said, I'm not a virologist.
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Yeah, I knew someone would bring up that one guy who wrote a paper in the Indian medical ethics journal which contained no data to substantiate the claims.
Of course, you could look at another paper discussing polio vaccination and surveillance in India [nih.gov] which says that "[t]he programme [of polio vaccination] includes surveillance of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) to detect and diagnose cases of polio at early stage. Under this surveillance, over 40,000 cases of AFP are reported annually since 2007 regardless
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It was an unrelated qualitative study, designed to "We conducted a qualitative research to explore care and support for children with AFP after their diagnosis."
I'm aware of that. I wasn't claiming that was the focus of the paper. The point was that the paper provided information about the coincident testing for NPAFP and vaccination, and thus the fact that they would occur together is not evidence for NPAFP causing NPAFP. Which would be why that quoted part didn't include such a claim and was on another line.
Just for fun, though, we have non-polio enteroviruses [nih.gov] detected in numerous stool samples of those experiencing AFP and such enteroviruses can be associated wi
Re:NPAFP: It was name "polio" that was eradicated (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally. ... ...
Citation 1: a lot of people have been vaccinated
Citation 2: it has cost lost of monies
Citation 3: it cost the US some monies too
Citation 4: oh, and some of Bill's monies also
Citation 5: Rotary too
Citation 6: new WHO name-and-shame policy
Citation 7, 8: an acronym exists which no-one knows the origin of
Citation 22: Bill really, really wants polio gone. Seriously, he's been campaigning.
Citation 25: the first kind of relevant one to their claims, but doesn't actually seem to say what they say it does
Citation 26: Provides alternative explanation for their interpretation of Citation 25
Citation 27-28: Don't actually speak to the possible relationship and vaccine at all, but rather say that NPAFP is more dangerous than polio (loosely)
Citation 29: my personal favorite. Data which shows that in regions with number of doses, and cases of NPAFP. The winning characteristic is certainly that the claimed result is true, if you cherry-pick the regions for which it is true. i.e. if you look over all the regions and across times then you do find what they claim in two regions: the ones they present.
I'm winding it up there. The first of the 40 citations which is really relevant to the claimed connection between the vaccine and NPAFP is citation 29.
Citations 31+ likewise appear to not actually lend any support to the claim of an association between the vaccine and NPAFP, but rather point out that India has high rates of NPAFP (which is consistent with some of these being caused by enteroviruses spread via the fecal-oral route).
In summary: the paper remains bollocks, and virtually all of the 40 citations actually have 3/8 of FA to do with supporting their claim.
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Pwned.
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You need to understand that the NPAFP they're writing about is every instance of acute flaccid paralysis detected by the polio monitoring system in that country, including all the ones associated with polio, and all of the ones associated with other diseases that are well known to have AFP as a syndrome. NPAFP isn't a real thing, it's an editorial construct of that opinion piece.
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You may have not read the full text pdf, since I was quoting from a peer reviewed paper which had 40 citations backing up all figures and facts stated in the paper.
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We're able to eradicate diseases effectively when they have no non-human reservoir. That's because if we eliminate all existing cases and prevent new cases for a little while (through vaccination), the disease will die out. For diseases with non-human reservoirs, like rabies, we'd have to eliminate the disease in the entire reservoir population, too, which is infeasible.