Didn't the polio vaccine come from
animal experimentation?
Animal experimentation actually delayed this
much-needed vaccine throughout the first half
of the 20th century.
When polio first appeared around 1835, it rapidly
paralysed and killed its victims. In 1908, a
virus was suspected and scientists began working
on a vaccine. Note: In developing vaccines, it's
crucial to determine how the infection enters
the body. Luckily, pathologists discovered the
polio virus in human intestines as early as 1912,
suggesting entrance through the digestive tract.
Meanwhile, researchers successfully infected
monkeys with polio. But because monkeys contract
polio nasally rather than orally, this "triumph" only
postponed the development of an effective vaccine
for decades. Incredibly, the scientists working
on the vaccine chose to ignore the human digestive
data in favour of the monkey data!
It is true that a "vaccine" was derived
from animal experimentation. But manufactured
from monkey tissue, this "cure" resulted
in six human deaths and 12 cases of paralysis.[9]
It was abandoned. Further animal experimentation
led to the development of a nasal treatment,
which only caused permanent olfactory damage
to the children tested. [10-11]
In 1941, Dr. Albert Sabin studied human autopsies
to finally disprove the nasal theory. He found
the virus confined to the gastrointestinal tract,
as had been documented nearly 30 years earlier.
Sabin later denounced the monkey model blunder:
"... prevention was
long delayed by the erroneous conception of
the nature of the human disease based on misleading
experimental models of the disease in monkeys."[12]
Finally, in 1949, Nobel Prize winner John Enders
paved the way for a vaccine by growing the virus
in tissue cultures.[13]
Though the vaccine could have been produced from
human tissue, convention prevailed and manufacturers
opted to use monkey tissue instead. Containing
the live virus, the animal-based vaccine infected
204 people with polio and resulted in 11 documented
deaths. It also resulted in at least one virus
(SV4O) jumping the species barrier and infecting
humans.
Because of that, the polio vaccine is now grown
in human diploid-cell culture rather than animal
tissue.
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