Ending HIV (1) 2014 (Polio)

By


Sampson I.M Onwuka

The Chapter was destined to be written and the final solution begins from where we started….

There is something about the Medical Institutions and the Act of medical discoveries that can plunge an entire world of information into some abyss until perhaps redemption. All the breakthroughs in science and technology need not be rehearsed as a consequence of these long years of experiment and studies, leading to disasters of all types and sometimes with some degree of consequence. One man whose theory concerning the problems of perpetual error and why institutions carry on with these mistakes is Joseph Greenberg in his dissertations about language and human dispersion theory, theories well evident by the Luigi Cavalli-Sforza. Mistakes can be conceived by any number of institutions and can be transferred from one form to another and until a breakthrough; it survives some of the assumptions in business and elsewhere. The advent of HIV at least in the least in the last 35 years is no different from this kind of problem, especially those of Polio which has given us all the headache known to us.     

That a thing and perhaps a sickness such as paralyses from Polio eluded the frontiers of sciences for at least 40 years in spite of the breakthrough by the Karl Landsteiner on A, B, O on the bone marrow and the brilliance of a certain Jewish immigrant by name Simon Flexner who for his sake and for the need of medical research that they developed the Rockefeller Institute in New York. These men including those took umbrage under his leadership, (1) Herald Cox (2) Max Theiler (3) Isabel Morgan (4) Thomas Francis (5) Tom Rivers (6) Peter Olitsky (7) Albert Sabin, names very familiar with us in Virology and the culture, and like in many open sources these are champions of medicine for many years in vaccination and early attempts stem cell research. The book that throws some light on the history of these few including the familiar Max Theiler who succeeded in growing a Virus in the brain of mouse is called Polio; An American Story, by David M. Oshinsky (05), we should be able to quote from this book, at least in gainsaying on some of the assumptions about the connection between Polio and HIV, where the author made some medical blunders no more than the ones that Merck made about the unknown dynamics of the human immune system.

But in Oshinky’s ‘Polio’ story we are privy to his citations describing an important figure in fight of Polio by name Karl Landsteiner that “At his Laboratory in Vienna, Landsteiner produced an emulsion from the Spinal cord of a boy who just died of Polio. He passed the liquid through a porcelain filter, injected the contents into the stomach of two rhesus monkeys, and waited to observe the result. It didn’t take long; the monkeys proved to be wonderfully susceptible hosts. Both succumbed to Polio, their spinal cords showing much the same damage that had occurred in the little boy. The Polio virus had been isolated.” The process of extracting a virus would in future be that complicated but they follow the same process, yet the intentions behind rendering the piece in spite of the Polio is taint the discourse with the bone marrow incident regarding the treatment of immune deficiency syndrome that much effort has been put in to help the victims of the AIDS whose bodies are racked by the virus by chemotherapy in removing much of the bloods in the spleen and bone marrow of the affected areas or areas of interest, and using a foreign entity and bone marrow try to restore the blood of the patient in a process that is similar to cancer treatment yet they get worse and worse. The point that HIV is at least for now a blood borne Virus does not       

If the virus is fed through the mouth the victim hardly suffers any special injuries and any specific inductive injuries but when the Virus is fed through the nose, the reactions were very fatal. In fact the mode of infection which are so believed as the same and similar to Tuberculosis which infected people through the nose and breathing, cursed severe reaction in the body of the victims particularly the monkeys, may have given some reason that the mode of penetration of the virus was similar to other agents of the body.

David Oshinsky writes that “No one found a way to block poliovirus from entering the body or to neutralize it with drugs or chemicals once it got inside” For many years the conception that the nose was how the virus entered the body proved frustrating to scientist and in the image of Simon Flexner who help to carry out major reforms in virology, there was hardly anyone to challenge the basic assumptions. There was something else, apparently the reason why the mouth feeding of the virus did not convey any particular kind of adaptive meaning, is that the monkey used for these experiment is called Rhesus monkey. Its ability to mount immune response depended on many things, in part for the silaic acids which are contained in the body and are presence in the nose and nasal cavity, exfoliates its existence and as someone theorized, many people did not know why we couldn’t stop the virus from entering the body. It would seem that it was only through the nose that such penetration of the body was possible.

The story on how it was discovered that other primates reacted differently to the virus when fed from the mouth is not clear, but the opposition of Flexner to the use of these primates proved that it was a well-known fact or suspected as such that a particularly kind of monkey acted differently when the virus is fed through the mouth. The rest were victims of the same thing. For that reason, the understanding that the route of the virus was from the alimentary canal and not the nose or at least more than nose, proved a damage to Flexner’s theories and became a point of rally for all scientist. This new knowledge is so critical to further enhance the experiment on Polio viruses that it led many scientists to shift their attention from monkeys to chimpanzees.

Oshinsky put it kindly that “if Polio virus entered through the mouth and worked its way down the digestive tract, then it must travel through the blood before entering the central nervous system. If so, a vaccine designed to raise anti-body levels in the bloodstream would be able to neutralize the virus before serious damage was done.”

From this development, they were able after almost forty years of the studies on Polio virus to now learn how the virus develops and what makes it work and why the virus became a hit for the rest of the scientific America. At least Scientists were now able to focus at (early infection) and the blood stream was the place. In the words of John Paul, “It meant that small amount of virus which invaded the blood could probably be overcome by relatively small amounts of circulating anti-body, and by this means could be blocked from gaining access to the central nervous system….At one fell swoop, the problem of immunizing man had been rendered easier than was expected.”  

Among the first investigators to look at the virus in previous and neglected blood samples was a certain Dorothy Horstmann, who was a member of Yale crack Polio Unit team of invested much of her time in looking at blood of the victims that came into the hospital from the 1943. A basic line should include David Bodian and his group; she was not the first or the only one that looked at the blood of the victims that were infected by the Polio virus. And the blood became very central to the point of demonstrating from the stored blood of nine year old, that unless the virus was not in the system and in the body already, there was no way of knowing unless she got sick. That it was only on this account did any change take place in the body at all, that as soon the blood realized that it had a disruption in its system, proteins and folded inwards and then the attack on the nervous system which is primary to the virus.

If fed through the mouth the virus could invade all the stomach and reach down the body where it profligates, but majority of time and according to several practices which are done, the virus hardly makes it into the blood stream in large amount when induced through the mouth of some monkeys and ended up creating paralyses leaving antibodies which has neutralized the virus. The whooping size of his academics raised the tempo of suspicion towards Apes, Chimpanzees, and Monkeys as probable origins of the Virus which eventually came in with their mutations in human and hence nearly justified the all kinds of experiments in Congo. I must confess I have only casually flip through the books and do not intend on writing on what clearly obvious from his missive that the general academic consensus favors a Spillover from Monkeys and Chimpanzee into Human beings.

Philip Alcabes (2010) Dread book that attempts to consider what the early CDC workers attempted to achieve with HIV and how some of the jokes about HIV did not shy from the social stigma of those who were called freaks or in the 60’s bums, who suffered all kinds of malfunction in the body and were essentially housed elsewhere till perhaps redemption which sometimes arrived too late. If it is not impossible to locate this item elsewhere is because of alternate historical account of outbreaks in City wide location, point to breakthroughs that gave medicine a new and profound meaning. In his chronicle on HIV he pointed to an early date made by CDC released in September 1982, that “Homosexuals or bi-sexual makes – 75%, intravenous drug abuser with no history of homosexual activity – 13%, Haitians with neither a history of homosexuality or intravenous drug abuse – 6%, persons with hemophilia A with no other risk factors – 0.3%, and persons in none of the other groups – 5%.” Whereas anyone could get the virus he argues, HIV was simply the most dreaded thing partly for the fact that there was no cures at the time, but largely for the social stigma that was associated with it. Many of the Black and Hispanic in New York did not see it as very present and dangerous virus capable of infecting black as well others, and they loathed the virus as a white-man disease.

But before long, it was gradually shown that the virus began as a series of carefully planned conquest over the host immune system, and after a decade of the virus of the human it degenerates into something else.

For if Blacks were gradually gaining up to others despite being one of the smallest groups of minority in New York in terms of new cases on HIV, it was due to the problems of information and reaction, which do not add to anything useful.

For Asians and Africans, they were largely hung over on the transfer of the new virus emanating from Gay Communities in New York to other parts of New York and elsewhere, and since they loathed these communities; they are easily vulnerable to the viruses.  Although New York in times past may have entertained the arrival of diseases and other infectious disorder, it has lead the fights against dangerous diseases, against Polio and Influenza, against diseases; both airborne and waterborne. The City is hive of visitors with long term view of the City and travelers for other reasons and immigrant population since the 18^th hundred has continued to sprawl till very recent days.

New York downtown has no particular architectural, the immigrant populations; Irish, Italians, Jews, Africans, Caribbean, North and Central America, and other income capable brackets were primarily concerned with their own survival. Although the immigration continued in New York by Europeans, it helped to form some of the assumptions about new diseases and epidemics, to a point that it can be said that studies about the early diseases in New York in the last 100 years or so were mostly derived from reaction to outbreaks such as Chicken Pox (Varicella), Pertussis (Whooping Cough), Pneumococcus, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Rotavirus, Influenza, Meningococcal and some variety of human papillomavirus. In a sense some of the assumptions about these diseases made outsiders temporary targets for reasons of their own.

The Polio virus was one of those outbreaks where a strain from African monkeys was very necessary in understanding the pathology of Polio which Flexner believed was generated from stomach to the body or through digestive tract – in essence it was ingested. Many of the experiments at the very beginning had to with mouth feeding of some of the creatures and primates – especially monkeys were fed through the mouth with strains of Polio virus and the end was not to the interest of the scientist. The main point is not the process of profligate Polio virus but on why it was necessary to ingest the various from the beginning and why the issue of blood pathogen proved a different and difficult point to redress. Look at it differently, when it became very clear that the Polio passed through several processes and especially the blood, the science committee was more than ready to handle the Polio mellitus once and for all.

Secondly, if the mentioned virus-ridden diseases and conditions, especially Influenza and Spanish Flu for instance of the 20^th century A.D, were considered from purely medical and biological point of view, they show patterns of infection and host-DNA which alters the destruction of the infection process of the virus, some produce fever others with the same viral infection may give similar but different infection in the body. The immigration population who make it to New York where left to places such as Randall’s Island, New York, a place which as the repository for those dead or dying. Of course they naturally remain quarantined saving for instances of Polio and viral strain of its culture.

The modernity of New York as now and then appears on the world map and its visible schools of medicine was not always the case, for at least we can set our eyes on the formidable FDR days, whose efforts as Governor of New York and eventually president proved a watermark for the attitude of the public to issues of health. It would not mean that Harlem River drive heading the F.D.R was named after for political reasons, but the combating of Polio by forces affiliated with his office such Bob O’Connor makes the faithful date of CDC recent as they provide the necessary tools towards the growth in health we have seen over the years. But needs be mentioned that a lot list of all the breakthroughs of sciences in the United States and in the world did not arrive by idle conjecture, did not arrive by efforts of any one group such those for instance at Rockefeller Institute which has fielded and trained more competent and decisive virologist in the last formidable century, more than nearly all institutions anywhere in the world.

Perhaps the Pasteur Institute of Paris or other Schools of interest in Massachusetts; Harvard, etc., which though perform its function along the elite schools of the country, cannot in itself expel the contribution by other schools either directly or indirectly influenced by Rockefeller Institute in the last century.

This will not mean that schools such as City College of New York with as many Nobel Prize winners as Yale is to be taken away, it shows however that the merit of open culture and attitude to this merit widens on the even the smallest avenue of possibility that what works in one area, may not apply in other cases.  It will be useful to point that the Cold Spring Laboratories in Long Island maintained an open culture and relevancy of attitude to science from the days of its founding by Watson and Company to nearly all combating of new virus which CDC is particularly known for. That will add to the assumptions that the failures over the years to deliver on HIV may be due to the fact that it was believed to be disseminated through deviant sexuality and the encouraging the scorn that it was created by God. But if half of what learnt over the years and at least in the opening heroic search for cure at the beginning was never replaced or transferred from one community to another, we may have in my view – purely in my view – put a final end to the Virus.

While it is easy for me to accept that giant steps in Medicine has failed in generating final solutions for HIV, it serves then as well now as an example for what may have transpired between Polio Virus and the arrival of the scientist who ended the whole sage. In areas I succeeded might clearly interest you with the fact that I spent 2 years studying Harvard Medicine for fun of it. And in the last returning decade and a half have spent hours of a given day on History, Anthropology, and generally studies human genetics. Majority of these studies show it’s relativity to HIV and the cure for immune deficiency syndrome prove a lengthy stay for reasons of their own, to a point that some of the conclusion vary in its results and the end point was a question of some understanding about viruses and its evolution. This aspect of our understanding of biology and chemistry is very important given the very reason why vaccinations seem to have failed.

Barely a year ago, the argument about the SVO40 virus supposedly from Chimpanzee and the Polio virus seem to have stagnated between Chimpanzees and human immunogenic viruses, which may have resulted the strain from Polio considered a leading item to HIV. But this argument in all its forms had to be dealt with, perhaps decisively given the basic premise of HIV infections and its pathology. Put it differently, there is no connection between Polio Viruses and HIV, and there is no link between immunogenic viruses which infect primates and humans saving the issues of the patterns of infection and the chief cause of the agents. The example about the slow viruses and oncogenic viruses are especially important largely for leading but misleading line of reason about HIV and the very knowledge of viruses and immune deficiency syndrome.

Looking backwards to some of the stories from Bronx and from parts of White Plains, New York in the early 90’s, there is hardly anyone who knows what the virus was all about and what its problems anywhere. It was known to be deadly, known to remain dormant for a long time, to be conversant with Homosexuals and with illicit drug users, where they speculated that sharing needles was very dangerous because of the dangers of blood contamination. Special classes are taken to handle blood and the secrets keep so tightly about victims that even some of the workers were placed on a need to basis. On a special basis as well, there are reference to Russia and the events of Cold viruses, including period of long epizootic and Moritz Kaposi (Russia) associated with description of what eventually considered Sarcoma, and pox related virus sickness.