A Flu Virus May Contribute to Fibromyalgia

Is Chronic Fatigue the New Face of Polio?

Just as tuberculosis, once believed to have been eradicated by modern medicine, has now returned in more virulent, drug-resistant strains, so may polio be with us again in a disguised form. We may be mis­takenly calling it chronic fatigue syndrome (U.S.) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (Eng­land).

According to William Campbell Dou-glass, M.D., editor of the medical newsletter Second Opinion, polio is more common than ever and may actually be caused by the polio vaccination. This intriguing and poten­tially electrifying theory is based on infor­mation Dr. Douglass gleaned from several clinical studies.

Dr. Douglass argues that the Salk and Sabin vaccines, widely administered to chil­dren in the 1950s for poliomyelitis, did not eliminate polio at all, but forced it to change its form. While the vaccines suppressed the polio virus, the virus was replaced by genet­ically similar ones, such as Coxsackie virus, which is often found in elevated levels in CFS patients.

The Coxsackie family of viruses, first isolated in 1948, consists of 29 different strains and is linked to numer­ous illnesses. When physicians first began identifying these viruses in the blood of CFS patients, they failed to discern their con­nection with polio.

The sustained use of polio vaccines for over 40 years has resulted in "at least 72 viral strains that can cause polio-like dis­eases," says Dr. Douglass. Before the polio vaccines, there were only three polio viruses. He notes that he was not the first to point to evidence of "the changing of polio rather than the elimination of it." As early as 1934, cases of "atypical" polio were reported in Los Angeles, and "abortive poliomyelitis" was reported in Switzerland in 1939.

Dr. Douglass suggests that the trend towards the emergence of a new polio—its predominant symptom changing from infan­tile paralysis to adult muscle weakness— has rapidly increased since the polio vac­cines were introduced. "We now know that chronic fatigue syndrome is not a new dis­ease, but simply an 'aborted form' of the more serious paralytic polio," he states.

If Dr. Douglass's speculations prove correct, the credibility of conventional medicine's mass vaccination program will be seriously undermined. It is hardly a public-health ben­efit if a vaccine simply modifies an existing disease, forcing it to take another form in the next generation of patients. The indis­criminate use of vaccines may prove to be as counterproductive as has the overpre-scription of antibiotics.

A Flu Virus May Contribute to Fibromyalgia

In a study of the possible connection between flu viruses and fibromyalgia (chronic muscle pain), nine out of ten fibromyalgia patients tested positive for antibodies to influenza type A and three out of ten in an age- and sex-matched second group of people with fibromyalgia tested positive for influenza B.* Influenza A is a viral infection that mainly affects the respiratory and autonomic nervous systems.

The sympathetic branch of the auto­nomic nervous system is associated with arousal and stress, increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. If this branch is affected by a flu virus, mus­cle tension would be affected. The researchers conclude that influenza A may be implicated in the development of fibromyalgia, the primary symptom of which is widespread muscle pain.