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.

Bon, I hope it isn't the kind of ice that sticks to power lines and trees! I hope it is just hitting the ground and not things that will break. Betty, I'd never experienced thundersnow or thundersleet until we moved here. I think the first time we had thundersnow was February 2004. I was at the vet's office and we were standing and watching it snow and you could occasionally see lightning and hear thunder. It was so freaky that first time, but I am more used to it now. Lately, it seems we have thundersnow, thundersleet or both just about every year. I think it is cool mostly because it is fairly rare. Down here it is only very light rain this morning, but I can hear thunder occasionally. I'm grateful for every drop of anything wet that falls. I just wish we could store it up and save it for summer. We've had about 3.5" of precipitation in the last 30 days, so right now everything is muddy and every car that slides off the highway (or other roads) in the rain is instantly bogged down in the wet ground. That's already happening today, so the cops and towing services are going to be busy...and it is barely raining at all! Why can't people here drive in rain? Because it rains so seldom they've forgotten how? : ) I have angry cats looking at me and saying "What is this crap? It's raining again?" After being dry for so long, they've rediscovered how much they dislike having cold, wet paws. I wouldn't mind if it raining at light to moderate rates every day for weeks and weeks to replenish our soil moisture, if only it would stop in time for us to get our potatoes and onions planted on time.

We've had about three quarters of an inch in the last two days. We didn't have any ice at all here, but I've been driving to Weatherford every morning this week to work and I got about halfway there this morning and had to turn around because the roads got icy. My car was never meant to handle ice and I'm not about to test it. It's pretty crazy how the road can go from fine to horrible in just a few feet. It's very dangerous. I love the rain but I'm ready for it to be nice out. I have a lot to do before it's time to plant and I'm running out of time. I'd like it to be dry and warm long enough to get everything done and then it can rain as much as it wants. I'd add "but not too much!" to the end of that, but it's not like it would ever do that here anyway. lol Leslie

Only 0.85" here south of Marietta but that was plenty. The lower end of the garden is very muddy, especially in the pathways between raised beds. Those pathways have been muddy for so long that the soil smells soured. The raised beds are fine but I had to stand in about an inch of muddy water in the paths in order to put floating row cover over a raised bed containing 27 tomato plants last night and the mud beneath the water was very slippery. The clay mud is about the consistency of pudding. After two drought years, every drop of rain is a blessing but I'd love one whole week with no rain so the garden could dry up enough for us to finish getting the warm-season crops in the ground. I doubt that will happen as more rain is in the forecast for early next week. Helen, Ever since the Joplin tornado, I worry about you every time the radar looks bad over your area. I am glad the rain was all that you got out of these storms. Dawn