The IPV is recommended at 2m, 4m, 6-18m, and 4-6y. Doses must be given at least 4 weeks apart, and while 4 doses are on the recommended schedule, 3 doses is considered sufficient vaccination so long as the final dose is given after age 4. The IPV is not recommended over the age of 18years unless the person will be traveling to certain regions with high rates of polio. The MTC does not have this on their list of recommended vaccines (although it might be recommended for specific missionaries if they are going to those areas). Polio gets a bad name because of cases like FDR, who developed lifelong paralysis. Many people know someone who was paralyzed by polio…what they do not realize is that millions of other people had polio and were NOT paralyzed. In fact, only around 5% of cases of polio resulted in any kind of paralysis, and fewer than 2% of those had lifelong paralysis. In other words, only something like 1 of 2000 infected people had residual paralysis, and not even all of those were para- or quadriplegics. The truth is that many cases of polio were not as dangerous as we have been told. Now this is not to say that it’s no big deal—the risks were and are real, but they are just not terribly common.
***2023 NOTE***
As of the early 2000s there had been NO cases of wild polio reported in the western hemisphere since 1991. BUT in 2022 there was an outbreak in the US among unvaccinated individuals... We almost had Polio eradicated (the way we eradicated smallpox 30 years earlier), but non-vaccination has allowed it to get a foothold again. When I wrote this post in 2007 I wrote that researchers estimated we would have Polio eradicated by 2010...but guess what.
Polio is still a ‘posterchild’ for vaccination, just as smallpox was. (Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, and the vaccine has not been administered since that time, although small samples of the virus do still exist in laboratories.) Eradication has been delayed but is still achievable.
***BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING***
It is important to recognize the different forms of the polio vaccine. For decades the oral (live) polio vaccine was given. As with any live vaccine, it was quite effective, but also very dangerous (it caused paralytic polio in about 10 people each year). Now the USA uses only the injected Inactivated Polio virus (IPV). The CDC reports current research showing that 2 doses provides 90% immunity, and 3 doses provides 99-100% protection from paralytic polio. Duration of protection is unsure, but adults who were fully vaccinated as children typically still have immunity.
IPV contains formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol (ethanol—toxic, depressant, tranquilizer), and neomycin, streptomycin, and polymyxin B (antibiotics—Included to prevent germs in the vaccine cultures!) The vaccine serum is grown in cells taken from monkey kidneys. There are documented cases of monkey viruses spreading to humans via polio vaccinations, and there is current suspicion that SV40 (another monkey virus) may be being transmitted, and may be causing certain cancers in humans. Some experts even believe that early HIV/AIDS transmission to humans came via contaminated polio vaccine serums. Of course this cannot be proven, but the spread of AIDS among humans occurred at around the same time and in the same areas as the increasing usage of the polio vaccine, so the theory is not unfounded. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My Conclusions Polio can be a dangerous thing, with lifelong side effects. The oral polio vaccine was scary, but the IPV seems relatively safe.
2023 Update: we fully vaccinate for Polio, with the first dose after 6m and a total of 3 doses (not 4) with the last dose after age 4. It would be awesome if we could stay on track for eradicating this one...we were so close.
2 comments:
Polio is passed through the feces and was already in rapid decline before the vaccine was introduced. It's really a matter of hygeine more than anything else.
Your biggest threat is getting it from people who have received the Oral Polio Vaccine, which is what caused the 5-6 person "outbreak" in the Amish community a few years ago. A tourist brought the OPV strain in, and none of those 5-6 children actually got sick.
The IPV will not protect you from the OPV virus.
This is what my mother constantly hounds me about when I try to say we rarely see cases in the US of certain diseases like Polio. She insists that people coming from other countries are going to spread it all over the US. I'm just not convinced of this-it is difficult to decide if it's worth the risk of my child contracting a nasty disease, to not vaccinate her. Thank you for writing all of your thoughts on the subject.
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