[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published January 2, 2025] ©2025
I’ve written about polio several times before, but as one who was afflicted with his devastating disease in August of 1955, I can’t express my horror that there is any conversation going on regarding the limitation of the vaccine in the new administration.
Poliomyelitis, a warm weather virus especially targeting children, was the second greatest fear in post-WWII America after nuclear war. In the 1952 outbreak, 57,628 cases were reported, 3,145 died, and 21,269 experienced paralysis.
Actually, the people I wish could be writing this column are my poor parents who suddenly found all three of their children suffering from polio after a trip to the family homestead in Ohio to say goodbye to my dying grandfather. There was a polio outbreak there at the time which they were unaware of. But even if they had been, the home was in a rural area well away from other homes. Nobody really knew for sure how polio was transmitted.
It is highly likely that we kids contracted it spending our days cooling off from the oppressive summer heat in the creek behind the house in Ohio. Sewage in that era fed into the creek and (unknown at the time) polio is frequently caused by fecal contamination. My parents later learned there had been cases of polio upstream.
Upon return from that trip, all three of us became seriously ill, the dread polio diagnosis clinched by a painful spinal tap. There had been no cases of polio in our area, and wishing to keep it that way, the local Board of Health quickly quarantined us.
Probably we kids recovered better than our poor terrified parents. The little boy in the polio ward bed next to my sister’s was suddenly, the next day, in an iron lung, a behemoth prison of a ventilator of the era used when the polio had impacted the respiratory muscles causing respiratory paralysis. My poor mother couldn’t stop crying.
If you look at photos from that area, you see whole rooms of people – particularly children – imprisoned in iron lungs. Fortunately, the iron lung has long since been replaced with modern non-invasive ventilators. But still, we’re talking ventilators.
Ironically, when we contracted polio in August, 1955, it was four months after Jonas Salk’s triumphant announcement of a successful vaccine. But vaccinating a whole country is not a quick process any more than it was for the Covid vaccine. The vast majority of Americans couldn’t line up fast enough to get the vaccine for their kids in the mid-1950’s.
While polio particularly targeted children, adults could contract the virus as well. When teens and young adults remained woefully under-vaccinated, Elvis Presley agreed to be vaccinated on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 after which vaccination rates in those age groups sky rocketed. Never underestimate a celebrity endorsement.
For a long time afterwards, none of the neighbors wanted their kids to play at our house. As noted, it wasn’t clear at that time how polio was transmitted (even bananas and mosquitos were suspect), and no one was taking any chances.
Vaccine naysayers aren’t new. Even in the early 50’s, the vaccine had a vocal opponent in the form of a cosmetics magnate, Duon H. Miller, who made his fortune on a first-ever cream shampoo called Vita-fluff. Mr. Miller was convinced the vaccine was dangerous, and more to the point, that polio could be prevented by avoiding soft drink consumption. He wasn’t too keen on bleached flour either.
As far as Duon H. Miller was concerned, polio was not an infectious disease (it’s a highly contagious virus) but a state of malnutrition. Ironically, he wasn’t totally wrong about the perils of a high sugar, refined food diet. It just wasn’t applicable to polio.
There was no internet then so he was forced to use the U.S. Postal Service to get the word out, ultimately getting shut down by the federal government. But he still railed against sugar, “processed bread,” and even pasteurized milk for years to come. Is the “pasteurized milk” thing sounding familiar?
Not surprisingly, I can’t be civil to anti-vaxxers. Not even minimally polite. I think they are ignorant idiots.
I wish every parent who doesn’t vaccinate their child could time travel back to the 1950s to see how children suffered from now-preventable diseases. I don’t remember mumps, measles, chicken pox and rubella being any picnic either.
No child should ever have polio again. The vaccine, exhaustively tested for safety, is 99-100% effective. It is not a coincidence that there have been no more polio outbreaks in this country since the advent of the vaccine.
So here’s a message from my parents who are screaming from their graves: GET YOUR CHILD VACCINATED AGAINST POLIO! AND EVERYTHING ELSE TOO!!!
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