5 ms·
For those here who've never encountered polio or know survivors of it, it's one of the scariest diseases imaginable. My father's generation was one of the last
by bane 8y ago
For those here who've never encountered polio or know survivors of it, it's one of the scariest diseases imaginable. My father's generation was one of the last to commonly grow up with it, and medicine was entirely unable to provide much support to sufferers of the virus. I know he grew up in a large family, and I also know that 2 or maybe 3 uncles and aunts of mine were killed in childhood from it.
One of my uncles also had it and survived, but was crippled for the rest of his life. He was able to get around okay with braces and a cane until his mid-50s. And then the trauma from the disease finally caught up to him and he spent the rest of his life as a paraplegic with breathing troubles that finally killed him in his early 70s.
My father may have caught it, but was able to fight it off. He also has Guillain-Barré syndrome and attributes it to that period.
Medicine was so unable to cope with the volume and severity of the patients during the 30s and 40s that "alternative" remedies came into full fashion. In 1949, a researcher named Fred R. Klenner claimed to have found that high doses of vitamin-C could ward off the virus. As a result households stricken with polio often found themselves stuffed to the gills with donations of fruits, vegetables and strangely goats as it was believed that goat milk had high doses of the vitamin.
Salk's discovery of the vaccine, the trials around it and the mass global uptake afterwards have almost rendered the virus extinct. But it could almost never happen today.
- r00fus 8y agoThe anti-vaxxers are either completely oblivious to the treacherous possibility that was life before polio vaccine or willfully ignorant. Either is dangerous for the body public.
- praneshp 8y ago> . In 1949, a researcher named Fred R. Klenner claimed to have found that high doses of vitamin-C could ward off the virus. This was referenced in an episode of the tv show House > the mass global uptake afterwards have almost rendered the virus extinct. This is one of the things India (and from what I've heard, Pakistan) did really well. Every year around vaccination time (there used to be two doses taken around a month apart) there used to be almost propaganda like mass advertisements, camps, etc. When I was a kid I knew of a handful of older people that had polio; a kid born today is unlikely to meet someone with polio. Unfortunately, a very small minority is trying to argue that polio vaccination is a conspiracy by [pharma companies | government | rich people] :(
- CamperBob2 8y agoUnfortunately, a very small minority is trying to argue that polio vaccination is a conspiracy by [pharma companies | government | rich people] :( Not without some justification: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci... This CIA-backed program should have been seen (and prosecuted) as a crime against humanity, but for some reason, it wasn't.
- emodendroket 8y agoYeah, that seemed like an action with obvious and really unfortunate consequences.
- krapp 8y agoBut the anti-vaccination movement is arguing that real vaccinations are a conspiracy - the post you linked is about CIA agents infiltrating a vaccination program in order to attempt to verify Bin Laden DNA in a local population. I've read several articles about this incident and none of them claim the vaccines themselves were tampered with, or poisoned, so it seems neither the article or the operation described support the premise held by anti-vaxxers that vaccinations either don't work or are actively and intentionally harmful.
- Taniwha 8y agoThe antivaccination weirdos never got to see my grandmother (in NZ, a western country) walk in a leg brace her entire life, they are dangerous, we don't shame them enough
- wavefunction 8y agoI have encountered a few folks older than me whose bodies were unfortunately twisted by polio. It didn't stop them but it did present a significant and unfortunate impediment. Vaccinate your children.