First person testimony opinion supports vaccines safety and effectiveness

What is Polio? Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a paralyzing and potentially deadly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus spreads from person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can then attack the nervous system.

Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. Our goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.

As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, The Rotary International efforts with the Gates Foundation have reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent, since the first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines, in 1979.

This echo opinion letter by Valerie Plaine was published in the The Haverhill-Gazette, a Massachusetts newspaper:

I am a polio survivor. I think about that from time to time but have never dwelled on it during my lifetime.

I was lucky compared to many. When I was very young, I had to wear a brace on my left leg and I was seen regularly at Boston Children’s Hospital. In the 1950s, when I was in the second grade, I had a muscle transplant at Children’s Hospital, where I had the top three surgeons, Dr. Green, Dr. Grice, and Dr. Trott. 

People are often surprised to hear that muscle transplants were performed in the 1950s, but I believe that these physicians were pioneers, long since forgotten.

I missed 60 days of school that year as I wore a full-length cast on my leg for quite some time. By third grade, even though my leg was still somewhat weak, I no longer had to wear the brace. I was followed by Children’s Hospital until I was 16. My parents would take turns getting time off from work to take me in for my appointments to see doctors and physical therapists.

I remember fondly some of my trips to the hospital ended with excursions to Filene’s Basement with my mother, and to high school basketball tournaments at the Garden with my father. 

I played sports throughout school and was always quite active. I went to college and graduate school where I earned an MBA. I went on to become a licensed certified social worker and then a licensed nursing home administrator.

There are still millions of polio survivors in the United States and around the world. But I am not writing about us today. I am writing about the near eradication of polio, a virus that particularly struck infants and adolescents.

The polio virus was very contagious and was a crippling and a killing disease that attacked the central nervous system, sometimes causing paralysis, with the most serious cases requiring what was called the “iron lung” to breathe.

This was a feared disease, with parents guarding their children, and making efforts to keep them from areas where they thought they might “catch it”.

History tells us about Dr. Jonas Salk and the brave parents and children of the 1950s. Many of you not yet born in the 1950s, ‘60s or ‘70s may not even know Jonas Salk. He was a hero, a real-life hero. In the early 1950s he developed a polio vaccine from inactivated poliovirus. It was tested for more than two-and-a-half years and during that time, in 1953, he vaccinated his own children. In 1954, his vaccine was tested on more than 1.5 million children.

I believe that the parents of the 1950s courageously brought their children to be vaccinated against the dreaded polio virus. They knew they had to do it to protect them. I do not remember, nor ever heard of stories of any parents refusing to have their children vaccinated, and we, as children (yes, even those of us who had already had polio), dutifully lined up to be vaccinated.

I remember clearly a boy who fainted right in front of me after having just received his shot. That gave me pause for a second or two, and then I stepped right up with a little hesitation and took my turn.

I have been thinking about this more these days because polio has all but been eradicated from the world*. 

Do you know how many people’s lives have been saved, or how many children have been spared from the muscle wasting disease? I am sure some statistician has already figured it all out. Dr. Salk’s vaccine prevented not only the children of his time, but future generations from having to deal with that virus and its effects.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Salk and other physician researchers of his day, and the millions who bravely lined up for the vaccine, in the U.S. and throughout the world. Because there is no cure for polio. The polio vaccine is what put an end to polio.

Yes, let me repeat that: the vaccine put an end to polio, a crippling disease that was a virus.

I know it was a different time then, but there was no discussion about “my body, my choice”; “I know what’s best for me”; “they developed the vaccine too fast”; or other such statements that have been made in today’s world about the coronavirus.

Vaccines are safe and effective. Researchers have worked on vaccines for a few hundred years.

Receiving the COVID-19 vaccine has nothing to do with your own personal right not to take the vaccine. There really should be no question about taking it. Taking the vaccine is about protecting you, your children, your parents, your friends and neighbors.

But it is also more than that. Taking the vaccine is for the common good, for humanity. This really is a responsibility that we all share.

Since 1988, The World Health Organization has had a goal to eradicate polio and that goal continues today, with efforts to reach the most remote areas. The eradication of COVID-19 should be a goal for all of us. We have the means to do it. How fortunate we are!

The ongoing history of the near eradication of polio is inspiring. When history is written about our time, what will it say about us?

Valerie Splaine is a recently retired licensed nursing home administrator and a resident of Danvers.

Dr. Jonas Salk "The People's Scientist"

Jonas Edward Salk (1914-1995) was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine.