Unbeknownst to most doctors, the polio-vaccine history involves a massive public health service makeover during an era when a live, deadly strain of poliovirus infected the Salk polio vaccines, and paralyzed hundreds of children and their contacts. These were the vaccines that were supposedly responsible for the decline in polio from 1955 to 1961! But there is a more sinister reason for the "decline" in polio during those years; in 1955, a very creative re-definition of poliovirus infections was invented, to "cover" the fact that many cases of "polio" paralysis had no poliovirus in their systems at all. While this protected the reputation of the Salk vaccine, it muddied the waters of history in a big way.
Even during the peak epidemics, unifactorial poliovirus infection, resulting in long-term paralysis, was a low-incidence disease that was falsely represented as a rampant and violent crippler by Basil O'Connor's "March Of Dimes" advertising campaigns. At the same time as Basil O'Connor was pulling in 45 million dollars a year to fund the Salk vaccine development, scientists started to realize that other viruses like Coxsackie, echo and enteroviruses, could also cause polio. They also discussed the fact that lead, arsenic, DDT, and other commonly-used neurotoxins, could identically mimic the lesions of polio. During the great epidemics in the United States, the pathology called polio was reversed by alternative medical doctors who attested to great success, using detoxification procedures available at the time – yet they were categorically ignored. Now it is admitted in the medical literature that other viruses can cause polio, yet few people on the street have any idea.