*More info on name changes. Plus some more info for those that are interested.*
The history of polio has been distorted.
The first thing anyone says when you discuss not giving vaccines is 'do you want her to get polio?' Obviously not, although 'getting' polio and being paralyzed are two completely different things, given that 95% of polio cases are asymptomatic. Furthermore, polio has been consistently reclassified over the last 50 years so that many diseases we called polio at one time are no longer called that. This reclassification is not just an American trait, though.
In India in 2012, they celebrated a whole year going by without a polio death. Great news, hey! But have you heard of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis? A new study revealed that rates of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) have increased 1200% since the oral polio vaccine was introduced a decade ago. Bear in mind NPAFP is "clinically indistinguishable" from wild polio. Clinically. Indistinguishable. We may have eliminated a virus, but we have not eliminated paralysis, which, after all, should have been the goal of the program.
So, has polio been "eradicated" or reclassified?
Also, you most likely source of getting polio in America in the last 60 years was actually from a polio vaccine. In 1955, in what is now referred to as the 'Cutter Incident', 120,000 people were mistakenly vaccinated with live polio. Whoops!
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/8-m...c7bec-86914577