Vaccines make children sick, you don't say?

As World Health Organization representative Elizabeth Hoff reports,

"As of 18 August 2017, 33 children under the age of five have been paralyzed. The detection of the circulating vaccine derived polio virus type 2 (cVDPV2) cases demonstrates that disease surveillance systems are functional in Syria. Our priority now is to achieve the highest possible polio immunization coverage to stop the circulation of virus."
 

Thirty-three children paralyzed by the vaccine that was supposed to protect them — and the UN's response is to just keep doling out more vaccines? Sadly, that's par for the course. Obviously, bad medicine is never the problem — there's just not enough bad medicine, that's all.

Fran Equiza, a UNICEF representative commented, "No child should have to live with devastating effects of polio." And yet, this is the second outbreak of polio to strike Syria since the conflict first took roots in 2011.

Earlier this summer, NPR reported on this very phenomenon, wherein mutant strains from the polio vaccine caused more paralysis than wild polio. Could it really be that a lab-altered version of a virus is more dangerous than the one found in nature? Absolutely.

As Jason Beaubien reports, as of June 2017, there were more cases of child paralysis caused by the polio vaccine than the actual, wild-caught disease itself. At the time of his reporting, just six cases of "wild" polio, which is naturally occurring in the environment, had been reported worldwide.