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.

Oh, sorry, I posted on the LB in New Haven county thread - I'm in CT, I did take leaves in on Thursday and they said it looked like late blight. Now I am inclined to believe them (or at least it's gray mold or something) and not my uncle b/c I could have sworn I got every single leaf that had a spot this AM and this PM there were more. I haven't pulled the plants b/c PhD at extension told me on Friday to pull the leaves and spray and I could possibly get a few weeks out of them so I could harvest. I did email this AM and ask if they got them to sporulate and whether I should pull the plants, they have not updated the map on USA Blight to show my county, so I asked if that meant they haven't confirmed that's what my potatoes have. No reply yet so I don't know if it's official, or if I'm "clean" (he did say my blueberries looked like gray mold took after frost damage, took samples of those in Thurs too, so maybe it's the same thing though he didn't think so?). Really don't know what to do besides pull leaves and spray - but at some point either the plants are going to die of LB, or run out of leaves since I've been pulling them for 5 days now (and gave them a severe trim on Sat).

Natsua, I am still optimistic that the tomatoes will survive, peppers are looking a little pale green. It rained all day yesterday and started up again this morning. The forecast is for rain each day thru this coming Friday. At least I am not in Southern Ohio, I am just above Columbus. Southern Ohio seems to get most of the snow and rain coming through. I am still trying to get all the tomatoes staked and tied. I do the Florida Weave but when they grow too fast before I can get to them, they seem to turn crooked and it is hard to get them going straight.

Kim, Why is the neighbor burning oil or tires? Is that not illegal in Texas? If someone does it here, we can call and report them to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality. Hooray for the rain for those of you who got it. We have invisible sprinkles this morning. You know, the kind that fall about 8' apart from one another, so you feel a sprinkle, you stand still and look around you. You don't see anything and you wonder if you dreamed it up, but then you feel another one a few minutes later. Of course, these tiny sprinkles add up to nothing in the rain gauge, but perhaps they are a sign we might get rain later. Amy, I swear, I could hear your son's eyes rolling too. (grin) I only ran out of gas once in my life, and I sure did learn my lesson and never did it again. Perhaps your day for heavy rain is today....or tonight or tomorrow. Jay has had good rain. Michelle has had good rain. Jennifer finally got rain there at her place. We've had rain down here. Rebecca and Nancy always get rain (grin). It seems like it surely must be Amy's turn now. Y'all watch for severe stuff today. I started its own thread for that topic so anyone who comes to the page is more likely to see it. Dr. Forbes is supposed to be live on TWC from 6-8 pm Eastern time, and since he's gone to part-time, he's generally only live on the air when somebody is expected to get severe weather. While we are a part of that somebody today, there's other places at risk too. Dawn