Polio was a medical oddity that baffled researchers for years. It was first recorded in 1835 and grew steadily more prevalent. It took a long time to learn that the virus was transmitted by fecal matter and secretions of the nose and throat. It entered the victim orally, established itself in the intestines, and then traveled to the brain or spinal cord.[13]

At the start of the 20th century, during the 1914 and 1919 polio epidemics in the U.S., physicians and nurses made house-to-house searches to identify all infected persons. Children suspected of being infected were taken to hospitals and the child's family was quarantined until they were no longer potentially infectious, even if it meant they could not go to their child's funeral if the child died in the hospital.[14]

There are many famous polio victims, most of whom were able to overcome their disabilities, while others were less fortunate: Itzhak Perlman, one of the world's finest violinists, was permanently disabled at age four, and still plays sitting down; actor Donald Sutherland; writer Arthur C. Clarke; writer Robert Anton Wilson; actress Mia Farrow;[15] singer-musician Neil Young; Olympic dressage rider Lis Hartel; actor Alan Alda; musician David Sanborn; singer Dinah Shore; singer Joni Mitchell; former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas; director Francis Ford Coppola; nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer; actor Lionel Barrymore;[16] and Congressman James H. Scheuer.[17]

As the fear of polio increased each year, funds to combat it increased from $1.8 million to $67 million by 1955. Research continued during those years, but, writes O'Neill, "everything scientists believed about polio at first was wrong, leading them down many blind alleys... furthermore, most researchers were experimenting with highly dangerous live vaccines. In one test six children were killed and three left crippled."[13]

"This was the situation when young Jonas Salk, a medical doctor in charge of a virology laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, decided to use the safer killed virus", writes O'Neill. Despite a general lack of enthusiasm for this approach, O'Connor backed Salk handsomely. After successful tests on laboratory animals, it next had to be tested on human beings. "Who would take the risk?" author Dennis Denenberg asked. "Dr. Jonas Salk did ... along with his wife and children, who also allowed themselves to be human guinea pigs."[19] In November, 1953, at a conference in New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he said, "I will be personally responsible for the vaccine." He announced that his wife and three sons had been among the first volunteers to be inoculated with his vaccine.[20]

[link to en.wikipedia.org]


Maybe, if the heads of the pharm. companies and their families did like jonas and his family and tested the drugs they want to give us themselves, we could feel more secure in taking them. I think that is a fair demand and should be entered into law immediately.

If this group of posters had been around during the polio epidemic__ I guess polio would still be around.....