Posted: 09 May 2020 12:00 AM PDT

When he was 9 years old, Harry Truman contracted diphtheria. His brother, Vivian, was also diagnosed with it. But while Vivian recovered quickly, Harry "took a dramatic turn for the worse," in the words of David McCullough, author of "Truman."

His arms and legs were paralyzed, and his mother wheeled him around in a carriage. He was sick for months until "abruptly, miraculously he recovered…." With the exception of his childhood bout with diphtheria, Harry Truman was healthy for most of his life. He was physically fit; walking was his favorite exercise.

And as president, Harry Truman was concerned about the health needs of the nation. He championed a national health insurance program, and he advocated for the Universal Military Training program, which trained young men for service in the military and industries in the event of a national emergency. His interest in the program arose in part from his wish to keep Americans healthy; he was well aware that many Americans had been declared physically unfit for service during World War II.

Another public health concern that impacted Truman's presidency was the polio epidemic, which originated during the early 20th century. Its most famous victim was Truman's immediate predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt. Historian Dave Welky has recently written that President Roosevelt was the person "most responsible for elevating polio into a national concern." (See https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174983.)

Poliomyelitis, or polio, is a highly contagious viral infection. It was also called infantile paralysis, although adults also were affected. The number of polio cases peaked in the U.S. at over 57,800 with 3,145 deaths in 1952, the last full year of the Truman administration. Survivors often were wheelchair-bound, used crutches, or breathed using "iron lungs," a type of respirator.

For decades, polio caused widespread fear, especially during the summer "polio season," when infections seemed to peak. People refused to go to swimming pools and movie theaters, which often closed for the summer. (See https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-deadly-polio-epidemic-and-why-it-matters-for-coronavirus.) Some quickly recovered, but others were impacted for life. Some victims were asymptomatic, while others suffered mild or severe symptoms. Only about 1-2% of polio victims actually experienced paralysis, and only a subset of these victims became permanently paralyzed. (See https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-polio-poliomyelitis.)

As he was in so many other ways, Truman was globally-minded in his approach to solving the polio problem in the United States. In a radio address to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1948, he said, "For the first time in medical history, authorities on infantile paralysis from every part of the world will meet in New York next summer to exchange and discuss information about polio. Our Department of State has already invited representatives from more than 60 nations to participate in this international conference being sponsored by the National Foundation."

He also noted that "When cases of infantile paralysis were reported among our occupation troops in Germany last year, your National Foundation went into action immediately. A complete unit of doctors, nurses, and technicians especially trained in the treatment of polio, was ready within a few hours to fly to the aid of our American soldiers."

In 1950, Earl McGrath, commissioner of education, issued a leaflet, "A Message about Polio," for distribution through schools. The following year, McGrath issued a statement that in the event of polio, "intelligent action based on reliable information is of vital importance." Teachers played a "leading role" in bringing that knowledge to children and their parents.

The First Family also took an active interest in the fight against polio. Bess Truman visited children with polio in hospitals, and in 1948, Margaret Truman helped launch a March of Dimes fundraising campaign against polio.

In 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk developed a polio vaccine. Dr. Albert Sabin developed his own vaccine a few years later. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no cases of polio have originated in the United States since 1979. The last time travelers with polio brought the disease into the U.S. was in 1993. (See https://www.cdc.gov/polio/what-is-polio/polio-us.html.)

Sam Rushay is the supervisory archivist of the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence.

Coronavirus: Bad, but not the worst ever | Opinion - Dearborn Press and Guide

Posted: 28 May 2020 08:00 AM PDT

In one of her TV spots, where she admonishes us to stay home to avoid spreading coronavirus, Governor Gretchen Whitmer calls the illness the worst health crisis of our lifetimes.

She doesn't remember polio. Why would she? She wasn't born until 1971, a decade after polio vaccines became widely used.

Click here and then look to the right side for the sign up to the morning newsletter for The News Herald, and you can get the top headlines de…

The history of polio, aka infantile paralysis, aka poliomyelitis, is long. Epidemics of the disease aren't recorded until the late 1800's; but cases are felt to have occurred in ancient Egypt, due to conclusions drawn from stone carvings.

The first specific mention of a paralytic disease striking children was found in a medical textbook published in 1789 by Michael Underwood, a British pediatrician.

Experts theorize the infection was common in early times before we had the closed sewers and other sanitation improvements developed in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. As sanitation improved, the natural immunity generated by constant exposure became diminished.

One of the first multiple-patient outbreaks occurred in Norway in 1868 followed by one in Sweden in 1881. The first outbreak in the United States happened in Vermont in 1894. Our World War II president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been stricken by polio in the 1920s while still a young man. He carried its effects until he died in 1945.

By the 1940s polio had become an annual American terror in late summer and early fall. Children were kept out of movie theaters and swimming pools. September school starting was delayed during several years of my childhood.

In 1943, when my family moved from Buffalo, New York, to Detroit, one of the major polio treatment centers in the nation was Detroit's Herman Kiefer Hospital. When it was built on Hamilton Avenue in 1893 as a clinic for such contagious diseases as measles, tuberculosis and smallpox, it was far from the city center.

But, in 1943, when I was a six-year-old first grader, it was only a block from my school; and I had to pass it four times a day.

My mother told me about the children in Herman Kiefer who had polio and had to spend their lives in iron lungs because their breathing muscles were paralyzed. I knew polio was catching, so I ran at top speed past the old brick structure four times a day to escape the disease.

I'm fortunate I never caught polio. But one of my Melvindale High School friends did. He never fully recovered. And a boy in my Sunday school class died after being sick for a week.

Coronavirus is bad. But it's not the worst thing ever.

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Peter Salk is eager for a COVID-19 vaccine - La Jolla Light

Posted: 28 May 2020 07:53 AM PDT

He lives in La Jolla Village, near a cove that normally is crowded with sunbathers.

Peter Salk's favorite stores and restaurants also are nearby. Many are beginning to reopen now that restrictions caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic are being loosened.

But after two months of hunkering down at home, the 76-year-old Salk says it may still be awhile before he ventures beyond his front porch.

"I'm not ready to run the risk of getting infected," said Salk, a biomedical researcher who spent years working with his father, Jonas Salk, who developed the first successful vaccine against the deadly polio virus.

"It seems clear that as we loosen up, the disease can come back."

Many people share Salk's concerns, especially older people. The COVID-19 death rate is particularly high among those 70 or older.

Salk's thoughts about the threat carry weight because of his family name, as well as his deep understanding of communicable diseases and the promise and peril of vaccines. In 1953, at age 9, he became among the first wave of people to be inoculated with his father's experimental vaccine.

His message has special meaning among people old enough to remember the era when polio paralyzed and killed thousands of people in what seemed like a random way. Children were hit the hardest. It wasn't unusual for parents to take their child out of school at the mere suggestion that another student had the virus, which is spread when people come into contact with an infected person's stool. Polio also can be transmitted through the droplets in a sneeze or a cough from someone who is infected.

In the 1940s and '50s, polio was the most feared disease in the country. Public places such as swimming pools and movie theaters were shut down when outbreaks occurred.

Things didn't begin to change until 1955, when Jonas Salk's vaccine was deemed safe and effective after seven years of research, development and testing. By 1961, the incidence of polio cases in the United States had dropped by 97 percent.

Jonas Salk moved on to La Jolla, where he founded a biomedical research institute that bears his name. Peter Salk, who earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins University, later joined the Salk Institute, where he studied everything from cancer to immunotherapy, multiple sclerosis and HIV/AIDS.

He still keeps close watch on diseases and was alarmed when news about the coronavirus first began to circulate.

"I was dumbstruck when this all came about," Peter Salk said during an interview on Zoom. "I'm 76, I have had some lung issues, and suddenly here's this virus that overloads and overwhelms hospitals.

"I thought that if I got this infection, or my wife, Ellen, did, we might not be able to get a hospital bed. Or if we needed it, we wouldn't be able to get a ventilator.

"I was scared. I felt like the disease was lurking everywhere. I took hand sanitizer around with me. I was paranoid that I might touch something that was contaminated with the virus."

Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an order March 19 that Californians stay home unless for essential activities.

"That was such a relief to me," Salk said. "I haven't left home since then."

His 2003 Honda Civic sits outside. The battery is dead from lack of use.

Salk took another step to potentially protect his own health, obtaining the anti-malarial drug hydroxycholorquine. He obtained it long before President Trump cited the drug as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

Trump's remarks caused an uproar because scientists have yet to determine whether the drug can be effectively used against the virus.

"I looked at the original studies and got the impression that the drug might be useful," Salk said. "But it was clear that it would have to be used carefully because of side effects that could cause dangerous abnormal heart rhythms.

"More recent reports have suggested that hydroxychloroquine may not, in fact, be effective in the context of severe coronavirus disease. Whether it might be useful shortly after exposure isn't clear to me.

"I might still consider taking it, with careful monitoring."

In the meantime, scientists around the world are feverishly trying to develop a vaccine against the virus.

Salk is circumspect on the matter, saying, "I do my best to keep an open mind about new vaccines. I am predisposed to think that they are likely to be both safe and effective. My perception has been that, for the most part, when problems have shown up they have been handled appropriately ...

"It's important not to try to go too quickly, despite the pressing need for having a vaccine as soon as possible. I have read, for example, that some of the vaccine programs may be skipping animal studies and going straight into humans. You lose an opportunity to see how the vaccine will work in people."

Salk says he didn't bother getting flu shots as a young adult, "despite the fact that my father had played a major role in developing the first influenza vaccine in the early 1940s."

"It must have driven him crazy that I held back. ... But then a family member came down with influenza and was horribly sick. That changed my attitude, and I have gotten flu shots ever since."

Salk is eager to see a safe vaccine emerge soon. He feels very unsettled about what's occurring now.

"First of all, we don't yet know the natural history of the disease as it occurs through seasons in the year," Salk said. "Other coronaviruses exhibit seasonality. Maybe we'll get lucky for the moment and the novel coronavirus will tend to spread less in the spring and summer than in winter. But we don't know.

"In any case, the chances of the disease flaring up again, sooner or later, are real, particularly with the loosening up of social distancing restrictions."

But he understands people's need for good news.

"People were afraid of polio. It affected them for years," Salk said. "It could be measured in the extraordinary relief that came when the vaccine was found to be safe and effective. There was jubilation. Finally, we had a vaccine in hand so that we did not have to live in a constant state of fear."

He's not sure that people's anxiety will immediately subside when a vaccine is approved for the coronavirus.

"It will depend on what this vaccine looks like," Salk said. "Will it be really successful? Will it be available? Who's going to get it? How many people are actually going to want it?

"We're living in a time where there's already distrust of vaccines in a significant portion of the population. I have concerns about this."

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Sam Rushay: Polio’s ravaging effects were felt for decades - Blue Springs Examiner

Sam Rushay: Polio’s ravaging effects were felt for decades - Blue Springs Examiner

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