What if DDT was to blame for polio?

Dear Editor,

What would the head of a large company do after discovering it had crippled many people in the surrounding area? Well, Chisso Corp, decided to deny it all, and continue business as usual.

Ultimately, there were too many victims, and the connection between Chisso’s dumping of mercury waste and the effects on those consuming poisoned fish could no longer be denied. The Japanese government paid out $700,000 to each victim.

Twenty-two years later, Chisso was forced to pay several tens of thousands of dollars, plus medical costs, to some 50,000 others injured.

What would our nation and its businesses do if the damages were not in one village, but nationwide?

Author Jim West’s book, “DDT/Polio – Virology vs. Toxicology,” building on Dr. Morton S. Biskind’s 1950s research and testimony connecting DDT and polio, certainly makes one wonder.

In the 1950s, paralysis said to be caused by a polio virus hit 10,000 people a year.

West notes that the reduction in polio cases predates widespread polio vaccination, and seems to parallel the reduction in DDT production.

A number of studies have established that DDT is a neurotoxin. Adverse effects on animals, like those in Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” along with “potential human health risks” caused the EPA in 1972 to finally cancel the use of DDT here.

If most polio was DDT-caused, rather than virus-caused, the 15 manufacturers, like Chisso, would have been on the hook for billions in damages. Lucky that a virus took the blame.

Frank Stoppenbach

Red Hook, N.Y.