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.

We have been really up and down in rainfall, and April has been so dry that I feared the early onset of drought. Then, 2.6" of rain fell in one day last week, I think, and turned our dust bowl into a mud bowl. Since then, I think we've had a couple of days with minor rain....about .3" one day and then maybe .1" on a couple of other days. One thing you forget when you're dry in spring is that rain makes weeds grow a foot overnight. This past week, we mowed and weed-eated three times and with a couple of acres to mow, that chews up a lot of time. I believe we have more rain in the forecast beginning tomorrow....even with last week's rain, we're still below-average for the month, but only a little. Have y'all noticed rain in these parts of the country seldom comes in realiable, steady amounts like "one inch a week". It seems to come in amounts that are too much or too little.

I brought in 16 more winter squash (Seminole) yesterday and still have more to harvest today and it seemed like a lot until I read Jay harvested 50. : ) That brings my total Seminole harvest so far to about 36. We had quite a few butternuts over a longer harvest period, but Seminole is a much heavier producer for us even though they mature very, very late most years. I have had all the winter squash curing in the lovely heat and humidity of the sunporch, but with temperatures dropping down to freezing or lower the next couple of nights I plan to move them to the garage today since it stays warmer at night. I went ahead and covered up the one bed of peppers that has the jalapenos and habaneros after stripping them of every jalapeno pepper of a usable size. There's tons and tons of little ones left, so if I can get those plants through this weekend's cold spell, the little peppers will have a chance to get bigger. I don't know if I can keep them warm enough. The forecast is for 32 tonight and 33 tomorrow night and we often drop significantly lower than forecast. I also have the southern peas and bush beans covered. Yesterday's harvest was at least as big as the one the day before, and I was too tired to process them last night, so today I'll be shelling peas and snapping beans, blanching them and freezing them. If yesterday's harvest was the last one, I'd be perfectly satisfied with how well the fall beans and peas produced...but I am greedy enough that I'd love to keep them producing another week or two. I have been picking tomatoes at breaker stage every day this week, and today will look to see if there's any I missed. The pepper harvest was great. I picked about 5 gallons of peppers and didn't even pick all the habaneros. If they were orange, I picked them. If they were green, I left them. The sweet peppers are in a different area and I am not even going to try to cover them up. The only plants left with full-size peppers are the Yummy Orange. All the yummies are currently green but full-sized, so I guess I'll pull up those two plants by the roots and hang them in the garage today. I guess today I'll pick the two little watermelons that have formed in the last few weeks. They are only about the size of a baseball and won't be mature enough to be sweet, but I'll cut them in half and give them to the chickens. Even if I manage to get my warm-season stuff through this weekend's cold spell, I know its' time is limited. I think this is the last time I'll cover up the warm-season crops with row covers. The next cold spell can have them, if this one doesn't take them out despite them being covered. We are harvesting cool-season crops already, so I have plenty to keep me busy as it is. I need to harvest herbs today and harvest some catnip for the cats. We still have morning glories, nicotiana, Laura Bush petunias, periwinkles, zinnias, dahlias and four o'clocks blooming in the garden. I expect that after tonight's freeze, we'll only have nicotiana and Laura Bush petunias left. Some zinnias might survive because they are in the bed with the purple hull pink eye peas so they are covered up. The bees and butterflies will miss those flowers once they're gone. I don't know how well the containerized plants in the greenhouse will do on these cold nights, but I stripped all the usable peppers and tomatoes from them yesterday. There's a lot of green tomatoes left. Last night the greenhouse only went down to 48 degrees while our outside temperature was 44. Maybe tonight it will stay warm enough for them to live a little while longer. Chris stopped at a grocery store in Denton on his way to work this morning to pick up groceries for the fire station, and as he left the store he was greeted with light rain with a little stuff that was either sleet or snow pellets and a few snowflakes. It was 45 degrees at the time. He was a little freaked out by it. Said it only lasted about a minute before it all turned to rain. I wish we had that rain here. After harvesting most of the day for the last two days, I am totally exhausted, especially from bending over picking all those rows of beans and peas (about 220 row feet of them). I think I will hibernate inside in the kitchen today and focus on food preservation. I have more food to preserve than I can manage in one day, but I think I can get about 75% of it done today and then will do the rest tomorrow. The first veggie I will process is the cowpeas, and that is so I can cook a pot of them for lunch. I'm still watching Hurricane Sandy in a sort of horrified fascination. I cannot believe how bad it potentially could be. I hope the people in the area that will be impacted are preparing for it. We may have lots of wacky weather in OK, but at last we don't have hurricanes and nor'easters here. Of course, we had Erin a few years back but she was just a remnant low pressure system by then, and that's about as close to a hurricane as I expect we'll ever see here. Y'all stay warm today. Our wind chill is pretty cold here. It definitely feels colder than you'd expect from the temperature we have. Last time I looked, it was 44 degrees with a wind chill of 36. Dawn

pickinpink, Absolutely give the plants more space. That would give the root system of each plant a lot of room. Personally I have found that my plants do just fine in the space they are currnetly in. I don't save seed so I am not concerned about cross polination. Although, If I am as impressed with some of the varieties I am planning on growing next season I might consider saving seed on my own. Right now I am content on letting those who do that sort of thing for a living do it for me. But, getting back to planting. If the soil is healthy and you properly prepare each hole when you plant I would think the plants would thrive on 4'OC. But maybe my thinking is skewed because of my small yard. I am always trying to maximize the area so I might be pushing it too hard by going 3'. A good organic fertilzer does not get washed out of the soil like the chemical ones do. It does not appear that my plants have had to compete for nutrients. Mulching is another thing that is much easier to do when the plants are up off the ground. Mulching significanty aids with moisture retention and temperature regulation, not to mention the additional CO2 that is released into the air as the mulch decomposes. For those who live in hot climates water regulation and temp control this is very important. Even though tomato plants like the heat their roots do not. The roots like a nice comfortable cool temperature where the soil is nice and moist (not dry or soggy). In a hot climate it is hard to maintain this situation if you do not mulch. I love grass clippings for this. They decompose fast, they do a great job of creating a nice tight cap for the soil and they provide lots of good nitrogen for the microbes in the soil. There are just so many good reasons to mulch - and I have not even mentioned weed control. My cages are made from the concret reinforcing wire (CRW) that you buy at any box store or concrete yard. I bought a 6" mesh that came on a 5'x50' roll (I think it was 50'). I think I got eight cages out of the roll. It takes 5 1/2' of material to make a 21" diameter cage. Unfortunaetly there is no way to avoid 6" of wasted material for every cage you make. A mesh with smaller openings would reduce the amount of waste but it also reduces the size of the openings. Forget about getting a smallier mesh size thinking that you will cut larger openings with wire cutters. I promise you that: 1. You will not even get an extra cage by saving all the waste, unless you are talking about a roll that is about 100' long. And I wouldn't begin to think about trying to muscle around a 100' roll of that stuff, 2. if you try and cut larger openings from using smaller mesh you will cut up your hands everytime you rach inside to get a tomato. There is simply no way to smooth the razor sharp edges you get when you cut off the tines. Just go with the larger mesh size and accept the 6" of waste for each cage. I did cut one of my cages into 1 1/2' bands in order to make an extension ring for the top of the other cages. In most years my plants outgrow the 5' height by August. I attach the extenion to the top of each of the cages using heavy duty nylon zip ties you can get almost anywhere. If for some reason I want to take the extension off I simply get out the scissors and remove them. The 6"x6" mesh is just wonderful. I can get in there and take out even the biggest tomato. I would guess I have another 10 years left on the ones I already have. Actually I am thinking of making a few more, except this time I am looking into making them square cages. That way I can fold them togtether and store them much more compactly. With the CRW that comes on the roll you can make the diameter of the cage any size you want. You said you wanted to give the plants more room, well you could do that. I don't think you need to go wider than 21" but you could if you wanted. It's just that at some point if the inside diameter gets too big you might as well just let them sprawl. One additional thought... you don't have to change all your plants to cages next year. CRW comes in sheets as well (I think the sheets are 5'x8', but don't quote me on that.) You could start by doing three or four and then decide if there really is a benefit to going to the time and expense of using cages on a larger scale. Plant them at different distnaces and see if it really does impact the health of the plants. It is my guess that most people who have good soil find the plants do just fine at 3' apart. I don't think I have ever heard of anyone who went from sprawl to cages going back to letting them sprawl. Mainly because you can put so many more tomato plants in the same area. I know I am being long-winded here. But if you decide to use some cages next year be sure to make the hole that surrounds your plant almost as nearly as big as the diameter of the cage. The cage itself should sit up outside the hole. Make the hole two or three inches deep with the the tomato planted on a mound in the center where the base of the stem is at the level of the main garden. That way when you water you can fill up the hole and never have to worry about the plant stem sitting in a pool of water. Tomatoes do not like it when the water floods all around the stem. This can cause fungus and other problems. It also allows for you to do deep watering occasionally which helps the plant to develop deep roots. Of course, the deeper the better. Finally, be sure to get some 1/4" or 1/2" rebar or some ordinary stakes to anchor the cages. I use three evenly spaced. If your plants get as large as mine do they can fall over due to weight or a strong wind. This can damage (even kill) the plant. In ten years I have never had one fall over when they were staked to the ground. Hope this helps. Tom