Polio an enduring question....

Recently I read a book titled 'Thugs, Drugs and the War on Bugs'. In this book I found some very interesting tidbits regarding the polio epidemic that plagued our nation during the first half of the 20th century.  There seem to be many cases in which many people developed symptoms of polio but never contracted the virus itself.  How can that happen?  What other factors contributed to the Polio epidemic?

 The answer lies possibly with an outbreak in the Phillipines in the late 1940s.  The outbreak was contained on US military bases and did not affect the surrounding villages.  So with Polio being so contagious, supposedly, why then were the locals not afflicted, especially since many locals were frequently on the base facilities as either employees or contractors for the military?  Logic would dictate that if the Polio virus were on the bases as the epidemic would suggest it was, the villagers would also be afflicted.   I'm not aware of any racist viruses but it would appear that if the polio virus were present in the PI in 1948 it is my contention that the locals would be equally afflicted if not more severely.  What happened?

 DDT was a chemical pesticide that was sprayed on the military bases exclusively as a means of controlling the mosquito population on the military bases in the PI.  The locals, being used to the irritating little bugs had other more effective means of dealing with them so had no need to have their villages sprayed with pesticides.  All military bases in the PI had this outbreak each of them isolated from the other bases by miles and miles with villages in between.  If this outbreak were truly a virus, logic would suggest that the villages in and around the American bases would have suffered outbreaks of their own as well. OK, so if the locals were on the bases why didn't they also suffer from the 'exposure' the Americans did?  Quite simply because the DDT was sprayed over the residential areas or base housing where the locals were not allowed and where the outbreaks were most prominent.

 Meanwhile stateside, DDT was being used everywhere on everything from grass to crops.  While the polio virus got blamed for this outbreak DDT slowly found itself banned and off the market and quietly disappeared from use.  Coincidentally where DDT was banned polio miraculously ceased to exist. This correlation may also have been the reason that many if not all of the individuals afflicted with polio did not have the virus present in their system..while they suffered the disease supposedly caused by a virus.

 This is a question that needs to be investigated more deeply.  Why did polio disappear only after DDT was banned? Why did most of not all polio victims lack the presence of the actual virus in spite of suffering from Polio?  Also, why is it that polio is on the rise in non developed countries? Is it possible that DDT has found its way back into the market place in unregulated markets?

 It is a curious question that I'd like you to ponder.

 Dr. B