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Vaccines may be a national discussion, but it
has local implications in our Livonia hometown
This time of year brings my mother and her living a lifetime
with polio to the forefront of my thoughts
Polio vaccines do not cause autism. They cause adulthood.
Earlier this year, a healthy 20-year-old from New York state, presented to an emergency room with sudden leg paralysis. His diagnosis of polio surprised the medical community as the United States has been declared free of polio since 1979.
However, in recent months, poliovirus has been detected in wastewater samples from New York, London, and Israel. Furthermore, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently added the U.S. to the list of countries where the virus is actively circulating. This raises the question: why is this debilitating and potentially deadly disease reemerging?
This begs another question about why in the world is there even a discussion about eliminating the polio vaccine on the agenda for the incoming administration with an attorney for RFK seeking a ruling to have the FDA revoke approval of the lifesaving polio vaccine for children.
This typewriter remembers the struggle of my mother, I am pictured here with the leg brace that enabled her to live and move around for her 89 years and she is pictured above right, who at the age of 3 was diagnosed with polio and spent much of her early childhood years attending a school not in her hometown but rather a school with other children afflicted with polio.
Former City Treasurer Bob Bishop, pictured above middle, had polio. Former Northville City Councilwoman Nancy Darga, pictured above left, has polio. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who lives with polio, says “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures (for polio) are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous. The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives."
Three well-known local survivors of polio. Nationally add McConnell, Alan Alda, Mia Farrow, and Francis Ford Coppola. How many others do you know of?
I remember well standing in line in elementary school with other children as we took the Salk vaccine, announced by Jonas Salk, on March 26, 1953, that he had successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio. In 1952—an epidemic year for polio—there were 58,000 new cases reported in the United States, and more than 3,000 died from the disease.
There can be no step moving backward in the science of eliminating polio. This vaccine does not cause autism it causes adults. And I want my grandchildren to grow into adulthood and enjoy many more Christmas celebrations.
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