Believe it or not, there are even a few people still alive who have been on a ventilator for most of their lives due to contracting polio in the 1950’s. At least now, the modern positive pressure systems are more portable than the old iron lungs. Some of the patients only need them while they are sleeping because there are techniques for breathing with minimal diphram movement which they learn to consciously do.

Not a whole lot of people left with severe problems from polio, though. A few more years, there won’t be any.

It was not until the development and distribution of the vaccine against polio that people could have a secure sense of hope that they would not fall victim to this paralyzing disease. Once this vaccine proved to be an effective cure, polio was basically wiped out. Those of you lucky enough to live in a time when vaccination is readily available never knew the terror that permeated the lives of so many just a few decades ago.

One of the leading fund raising groups of that era that pushed for and helped pay for trials of the Salk vaccine was the Mother’s March of Dimes (later shortened to The March of Dimes) where mothers all over North America when door to door collecting dimes (my own mom was one of them) and did much to keep the polio threat on the various governments front burner. It must make them want to puke to see what their granddaughters are doing now.

Vaccine doubters and AIDS deniers and similar types are in a bad science league of there own. A “psychic” parting an idiot from their money is one thing but this is totally another. especially in the case of diseases like whooping cough which can be fatal in children too young to vaccinate, but is contracted from those who are old enough, but are not vaccinated. A parent who would vaccinate there child might have to live through their newborn baby struggle and die of a horrible disease that someone else could have prevented. It’s been demonstrated with diseases like polio and small pox that we can eradicate diseases if we all work together.

I guess education and accurate information is the only way to convince people. Good on you Dr Buzz0 for bringing up such an important and disturbing issue. I’ll be sure to renew my efforts to convince doubters that vaccination is the way to go and I hope everyone else will be doing the same.

cheers.

        Luke said:

Today, it’s mumps and measles. Tomorrow, it could be, say, polio. Hopefully we never see it come to that.

Perhaps it’s just that fewer and fewer people alive these days have ever seen what polio or smallpox do to a person – they’ve never had to see it. Why? Thanks to vaccination. If people had seen smallpox or polio, then maybe they’d have a little more respect for the fact that vaccines represent one of the single greatest triumphs of science-based public health that humanity has ever known.

There are a number of people and groups out there who actually claim that vaccines just plain don’t work at all and are only for making money and hurting children (some kind of plot or something to destroy the next generation so that whoever in charge can retain power or whatever).

They support this by showing that diseases like polio showed a decline even before the vaccine came into use since their high in the mid 1800’s and then through a dramatic reduction in the early 20th century. They claim that it was better sanitation that stopped them.

They’re partially right in one sense, because the initial drop did occur primarily due to sanitation and also due to quarantines. Remember that before germ theory, preventing disease was entirely in the dark ages with no understanding of transmission, so the reduction before the vaccines came out was due to preventative measures like quarantines, better sanitation, a better understanding of how to handle sick individuals and the things they came into contact with, disinfectant etc.

But of course, sanitation, disinfection, quarantines and that kind of thing can only get you so far. Smallpox has not been reported in decades and polio has been eradicated from much of the world. You could never do that without vaccinations.

Perhaps it’s just that fewer and fewer people alive these days have ever seen what polio or smallpox do to a person – they’ve never had to see it. Why? Thanks to vaccination. If people had seen smallpox or polio, then maybe they’d have a little more respect for the fact that vaccines represent one of the single greatest triumphs of science-based public health that humanity has ever known.

        Gordon said:

True, but also consider that many parents feel the same way when their kid is diagnosed with autism or something and they blame themselves for vaccinating them.

I know this is not the cause of it, and all the data indicates it’s hereditary and not anyone’s fault for doing or not doing something.

But there are people who have made it their life’s mission to convince every parent of an autistic child that vaccination is why and recruit them to stop other parents from giving vaccines.

I don’t think so. I suspect that they are desperately trying to lay blame on someone else. That’s a big difference from knowing that you did/or didn’t do something, as an act of will that damaged your child.

I know exactly how I would feel if I had did that to one of my kids.