It is fascinating to look at how polio provocation, which some experts contested simply did not exist, migrated from being a theory to a clinical model.
-Dr Stephen Mawdsley
In 1980, public health researchers working in West Africa detected a startling trend among children diagnosed with paralytic polio. Some of the children had become paralyzed in a limb that had recently been the site of an inoculation against a common paediatric illness, such as diphtheria and whooping cough. Studies emerging from India seemed to corroborate a similar association between diagnosis of polio and recent immunisation.
These reports reignited a debate known as the theory of polio provocation that has waxed and waned since the early 1900s – and, at times, shaped immunisation policy. The theory of polio provocation argued that paralytic polio can be provoked by medical interventions, such as injections or tonsillectomy. The controversy that surrounded the debate forced medical professionals into the uncomfortable position of considering whether programmes and practices intended to prevent some illnesses might be also causing another.
In a blog published by Oxford Journals, Cambridge University historian Dr Stephen Mawdsley looks at the ways in which the theory of polio provocation was debated in the US and beyond throughout the 20th century.
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Image: A Clinical Center physician prepares an injection for a young patient
Credit: History of Medicine (NLM)
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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