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.

Rabbit, I've done the sticks and didn't like it. Part of it was the wrong roses and part was not watering often enough. I'm happy with 95% of my roses now - OGRs that get nice & bushy. Chelly, I can remember saying that. Oh, thank you, Seil. No, Ingrid, you see about 6 bushes in the top photo and only one (Duquesa - last photo) of them is in early full flush. The others are in their later half of bloom (Clotilde) or almost no bloom left. Maybe this will evolve, but even the first flush isn't all at once, and then repeats depend on the timing of individuals. Le Vesuve (and the other half of the garden) are not in the pictures - deliberately - because he's been void of flowers for a good while and is just starting to rebloom. I'm not complaining. It's just an oddity of rose selection, I guess. Maybe some roses are more similar in their timing, but mine seem to be all over the place. When Mme Abel was in gorgeous full bloom, Clotilde was sitting there twiddling her thumbs (though gorgeously green). It's okay because it generally means there are flowers here and there all the time - but never all over all at once. I've seen pictures of California gardens that are all awash in flowers, absolutely everywhere. Don't know the reason or if it will change. Still learning. Thanks for the praise, Ingrid, and especially for that big hug. Kate, thank you. I would probably be doing just that but I do have a job, but I take tons of photos - that never get deleted! Ooohh, Rosefolly, I like that. Long may they bloom!! Thank you so much. All of you should share in the success because without your encouragement, support and wisdom there would be no garden. Sherry Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

I have some white iceberg roses which I hardly water at all, not more than once a week--or even that, but they're well established..about 5 or 6 years. They bloom almost year-round in my zone. The problem might be that the plants may have just been planted at the wrong time of year, after it already started to heat up in your zone. Almost anything planted "late" needs more water than usual to get it through the heat. An initial deep soak when planting natives is di rigeur, but I'm beginning to think that may also apply to almost anything else--at least here in Calfornia. It also seems that often when plants are on a drip or irrigation system of some type, they tend to be watered shallowly more often which keeps plants' roots from going "down" where they can survive a heat spell. It might not be too late to do a deep soak, and then back off and do longer, deeper waterings less often. I had a tree that was in the ground for two years that looked pretty shabby and I was ready to yank it. I did a deep soak and then started doing soaks once a week, and then stretched it out to every 2 weeks over time. It looks much better...like it will survive now. As a side note, I LOL'd at the thread, "echinaceas fussy for you?", because like the OP, I have never had any luck with echinaceas or coneflowers. Davissue, in the thread, said they require more water than their drought-tolerant reputation would lead you to believe. I think she's right.

They said they were seeing a few 90's in Texas a few posts above.....well Oklahoma has now also seen their first 90's this last weekend as well. So the warming trend is moving north. I have some trees stuck up north waiting on a truck and I expressed my concewrns to the grower that I was getting past my comfort zone on planting time for conifers. Like most folks in the north he told me not to worry because the trees were still dormant due to the cold weather they were still in. What I try to get most northerners to realize is it's the shock factor that worries us.......not just the fact this tree will have to endure so much more heat that it has been used to throughout the summer, but nothing turns a tree into a crispy critter faster than for it to come from nice cool cloudy growing conditions and drop it right in the middle of a heat wave of 90 - 100 degree temps and full sun. mark