Corrigan: "It is not true, however, that the polio vaccine or any other vaccine was ever tested on millions of people before it was approved." The clinical study for Salk's vaccine alone had 440,000 children given the vaccine, 210,000 given a placebo, and 1.2 million in the control group. Koprowski's large-scale field trials involved over 7 million children in poland. If you count the Soviet Union's immunization campaign, whose results they studied and which helped confirm the validity of it to the rest of the world, Sabin's vaccine's "trials" involved tens of millions. http://www.polio.info/polio-eradication/front/templates/index.jsp?siteCode=POLIO&codeRubrique=34&lang=EN Yet, Salk's was but one vaccine. What I said was indeed accurate. There were millions involved in the clinical trials of polio vaccines. You're right that vaccines *usually* don't have such a large test size, but polio was an exception. "As far as the viral cause of polio, well, yes, but what triggers the paralysis? Polio was endemic before the introduction of the vaccine. Everyone was infected by early childhood. And yet poliomyelitis was rare before the modern age." That's because the virus is transmitted through the fecal-oral route -- with a twist. Like how chicken pox is less virulent the younger you are infected, the same is true with polio. The oldest clear reference to poliomyelitis is in a 3,000 year old Egyptian stele. Historically, due to poor sanitation (which led to outbreaks of many diseases, like cholera), almost every infant would be exposed with poliovirus. If it was symptomatic, they simply died, without the cause ever being revealed. If it wasn't symptomatic, they were immune for the rest of their life. However when, to combat various other plagues, modern sanitation began to be used (so fecal waste wasn't dumped into the same water that people would drink), people weren't exposed to polio as infants. When they were exposed at older ages, then the problems arose. Those with the best health situations tended to be struck the worst; it became a disease of the affluent. Which is probably why so much money was poured into curing it, unlike, say, malaria (which still kills millions). :P There's absolutely no evidence that the rate of poliomyelitis compared to the rate of poliovirus infection in adults has ever changed significantly. As for the pesticide hypothesis, that particularly doesn't stand up to scrutiny. DDT wasn't even invented until '39, but the US had huge polio outbreaks before then. Remember FDR? :) H.L. Menken wrote about polio outbreaks happening virtually every summer in Baltimore in the late 1800s. It's illogical, too. Poliovirus progressing into poliomyelitis involves how readily the virus passes the brain-blood barrier. While chemicals that pass the brain-blood barrier are few, even fewer are the chemicals which alter how well *other* things pass through the barrier.

I'm pretty sure agrimycin is not systemic. Of course the minute I post above that I have not seen any FB this year I find my first strike.. at least it was only one small strike. Thomis, sorry to hear about your PC problems, they can sneak up like that one day and POW. Every year I make a note to start protection earlier the next year and every year I am too busy then and miss it. I had protection down pretty early this year, just not renewed enough so some varieties will be overthinned. Scott

The tree came from Johnson's Nursery in Georgia. I planted it along with four other apples, gala, golden delicious, gold rush and red delicious. Nothing was added to the planting site except orchard starter tablets, and to the other trees. This year I planted a watermelon patch around this tree, but not the others. The area was amended with aged horse manure,and covered in permeable black plastic, as a weed control. All of the melons have a drip emitter at the base of each plant, but not at the tree. I sprayed all of the trees with a fungicide twice during the spring and they all were fed 10-10-10 twice this season. The other trees look great. This is the only tree that had signs of fireblight, and I've had to prune out those areas a number of times, during a wet spring, but afterwards the tree seemed to recover. The present problem just started about 2 weeks ago. All of the trees get very little hand watering. They rely almost solely on rain. There is at least five feet of separation between this tree and the melons. If it isn't fireblight, then what is it, and what do I do about it?

hi guys, sorry to bump this tread, but a couple follow-up questions... I am considering following the suggestion above, and applying a copper spray soon (autumn time) to hopefully prevent any ailments next spring.. as I mentioned before I am planning to transplant a couple citrus trees (a Meyer Lemon and a Bearss Lime) to the same general area as the peach tree.. Will spraying the peach tree with copper cause any problems for the nearby (young) citrus trees? I could always cover the citrus to protect the trees/foliage from the spray, but what about the copper being in the surrounding soil..? I also have an (adolescent-age?) loquat tree in very close proximity to the peach tree... any potential harm there, from the copper spraying? And finally, I was also planning to plant some garlic bulbs under the peach tree, but again.. is this a bad idea if I plant to spray with copper? hoping to get the citrus transplanted and the garlic planted in the next week or two... probably wont do copper spray until next month... does this seem like a poor idea? thanks for any advice.. :)