Thank You Dr. Salk

Yesterday, Google had a banner up saying "Thank you - Dr. Salk". I wonder how many people viewing it even knew who Dr. Salk was. It would have been his 100th birthday. Dr. Salk helped to create the vaccine for polio. Every summer, parents lived in fear that this year polio would strike their young and vibrant child and they would have to watch their child become forever crippled  - or worse.

As a child, I knew about the iron lung machines that children had to be in to be able to breathe. If they were lucky, they could graduate from the machine, but have to wear steel braces to hold up their withered legs. I knew children at school who were permanently disfigured by the disease.

 And then - everything changed. Dr. Salk and his team created a vaccine that prevented children from contracting the disease. Originally, it was given by injection, but was soon improved so that a drop or two on a sugar cube would do the trick.

I remember our whole family going to Northwest Junior High School -not the current school, and waited in line for hours to get our vaccination. There was no going to the doctor. This was a public free distribution of the vaccine to anyone who wanted it - and everyone wanted it. I was only in 3rd or 4th grade at the time, but I still can feel the relief I felt at knowing that Poliomyelitis was not going to get me. I am sure that part of that was sensing the relief my parents felt knowing that now all of their children were safe from the dreaded disease.

Our next door neighbor wanted to be a policeman or a fireman when he grew up. Steve grew up with one leg withered and shorter than the other. The polio case had been mild. He was one of the lucky ones, but he never realized his dream. It was cut short by an unseen killer that could now be prevented by a sugar cube.

There has not been a case of polio in the United States in over thirty years. My grandchildren will probably never even hear the name of the disease. The same could be said for countless other diseases we knew as children - measles - mumps - rubella- chicken pox - diphtheria - pneumonia -shingles. It will likely be the same for Ebola in the future.

I cannot understand the people who believe that vaccines are a bad thing now and refuse to get their kids vaccinated. It is as if now that we need not fear these diseases, we now have to come up with something else to fear - even if that is the very thing that made our current blessed lives possible.

I, for one, am not willing to go back to those fearful days.

Thank you, Dr. Salk