...but polio may not be a virus...

In The Ecologist this month there is a long article linking Polio to DDT and other toxic pesticides, rather than to a virus.

It makes me grateful all over again to my parents. My dad was a Food Reform type, which is why I grew up as a vegetarian (even though it was my mother who actually did all the work of upbringing).

I was also allowed to not drink cow’s milk (long before the fashion for food allergy explanations of illness – lacto intolerance, etc) even though it was ‘compulsory’ in schools. No doubt the government was continuing with its plan to keep the population healthy (started during WW11) and not just promoting dairy farming for profit fnord; I was also allowed to not have any of the inoculations ‘against’ polio (see above), whooping cough, and so on. It does seem now that they were either ineffective or positively likely to give you polio, etc. I never understood the hysteria this generated. I remember people calling it ‘irresponsible’ to not inoculate children. My only counter used to be “well, if all your own children have been inoculated I am the only one who can end up ill”.
Nowadays the counter to that is not that my parents were putting me at risk; or that they were putting other people’s children at risk; it would be to do with the cost of looking after me if I did fall ill.

But hey - I am lucky I didn't get polio on my fruitarian diet - given that it was fruit they were most intensively spraying...

Here's a starting point

And this one says that being breastfed helped me; as did not having my tonsils out....