U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Olympian Wilma Rudolph, actors Donald Sutherland and Alan Alda, golf legend Jack Nicklaus, NFL Head Coach Bud Grant, New York City Ballet principal dancer Tanaquil Le Clercq, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and Israeli American violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman. What do these notable Americans all have in common?
They all contracted poliomyelitis before the development of vaccines but survived. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that over 12 million people have been touched by polio with over 300,000 polio survivors in the U.S.
But thanks to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) – a public-private partnership led by national governments with six core partners including the CDC, WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the international vaccine alliance GAVI, and Rotary International – polio has been eradicated in 99.9 percent of the planet since this effort began in 1979 through vaccinations.
With 200-plus countries involved, GPEI has raised $17 billion and deployed over 20 million volunteers to accomplish the vaccination of over 2.5 billion global children. Polio is now endemic only in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan with
Rotary International has been a force for good in Mississippi in communities large and small for decades. The mission of Rotary International? “We provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through our fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders.”
Rotarians celebrated their work in helping eradicate polio this week in Jackson. Rotarians have raised $2.1 billion in donations from members toward the effort yet the fight continues.
As outlined in the international health journal Nature in August: “Fears that eradication was falling out of reach increased again in 2021, when wild poliovirus broke containment lines and emerged in eastern Africa. One case in Malawi in 2021 and eight cases in Mozambique in 2022 were found to be genetically linked with a 2019 Pakistan strain, which had been circulating undetected in Africa for two years.”
So, with victory in sight, Mississippi Rotarians remain in that fight. As one of those Rotarians, I am of an age to remember when polio was a present danger here. A girl in the rural church I attended was partially paralyzed and dependent on braces and crutches from polio.
But no person comes to my mind when I think of polio more than one of the most brilliant and accomplished Mississippians I’ve known who contracted polio but refused to be either bound or limited by the disease – the late Dr. Arthur Clifton Guyton. He was a genius and a marvel.
Born in 1919 to William “Billy” Guyton and wife Kate Smallwood Guyton, Arthur was the beneficiary of a strong gene pool. His father was dean of the University of Mississippi Medical School and his mother was a mathematician and physics teacher who spent five years before her marriage as a missionary in China.
As a youth, he played chess and talked in depth with Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner. His progression from top student in his Ole Miss class to a distinguished tenure at Harvard Medical School to a surgical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston was swift and sure.
He served his country in World War II in the Navy. He contracted polio in 1946, the final year of his surgical residency. He was paralyzed in his right leg, left arm and both shoulders – and as the brilliant medical student he was, Guyton knew his dreams of a career as a surgeon were over.
But Dr. Guyton never quit. He became a globally renowned physiologist, cardiovascular system researcher, medical teacher and expert on blood pressure. He authored 40 books, including his Textbook of Medical Physiology – the world’s most widely used book of its kind. He and his wife, Ruth, raised 10 children – all of whom became doctors – in a home they built themselves.
Dr. Guyton was killed in a car accident at age 83 in 2003, still independent and still serving his fellow man. He was no one’s “victim” of polio.
But what might Arthur Guyton have accomplished without the burden of polio? That is why Rotarians worldwide keep working to eradicate polio.
27 comments:
Enough of this liberal nonsense! Fighting polio is woke!
Imagine a more inexpensive cure without Bill Gates pushing vaccines he invested in, so he can profit from it.
Would be crazy if that was to exist and had trials to back it up.
That will never happen though.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/Levy%20Vitamin%20C%20Therapy%20Manila%202017.pdf
October 25, 2023 at 9:33 AM, ??????
The most ironic example of why anti-vaxxers have no case, is that of George Washington. Yes, the first President and "Father" of our Country forced every single one of his troops to get the smallpox vaccination.
Unlike today, there was far less research about how "safe" it might be. And, yes, people got mild symptoms and there was " discomfort". But, they stopped dying from it or unlike the few who survived, scarred for life.
Small pox was eliminated from our lives eventually. Indeed, all of us were forced to get small pox vaccinations and polio vaccinations.
My grandchildren didn't suffer even ONE of these childhood illnesses because their parents are smart enough not to take advice from even doctors if they are speaking " out of specialty" and if it's been decades since they got out of med school. Some of these same doctors would have a fit if some ophthalmologist or GP or OB-GYN tried to advise them in cardiology or anesthesiology or dermatology or orthopedics or gastroenterology to name a few. But doctors in all of these) some even long retired) think they know more about virology and pharmacology than those who've spent their lives studying and keeping up to date and working in those specialities.
My children didn't have measles or mumps. And, polio left a few in my class who got polio just before the rest of us were given it in school. None of the children in my children's generation or grandchildren's have needed to worry. But,now we face polio again .Unlike the polio outbreaks before the vaccine when so many died in iron lung machines or were crippled for life and families had to be quarantined as did all who were exposed, you antivaxxers will let it spread.
Here's a hint on how bad some of these things will get. In a town of 30000, we had a polio hospital...just for polio in our town. It was one huge room ( think large basketball arena with no seat) that was surrounded a wall with large glass windows so that relatives could see the children in iron lungs who had a mirror above their faces. I saw my friend there before she died. The hospital had boxes for those children like me to say goodbye to their friends and siblings, the dying to see their siblings and friends.) And in my cousins small community no one got sick or exposed ever because they were pretty isolated and were too young to "go to town" with their parents or easily kept away from places where there was an outbreak.
For decades we were the healthiest nation with the best longevity BECAUSE we were required to have vaccinations in school, medicine was still a profession and not a business and wasn't at the mercy of insurance companies and every idiot with a podcast. We had health departments who actually could force the contagious with TB and yellow fever etc to quarantine.
We had the silly notion that the poorly educated or anxiety ridden in our society didn't have the right to make the rest of us suffer from their fears and lack of knowledge.
@11:23
I will destroy your absolutely trash argument.
The continental army didn’t get their vaccine from some globalist pharmaceutical company that is admittedly focused more on profiting from diseases “management” instead of producing actual cures.
12:08 for the win!
Good lawd someone call an ambulance because 11:23 needs to be rushed to the BURN UNIT!
@12:08
What the heck is a "globalist" pharmaceutical company? Asking for the sane folks reading the comments.
Thanks.
He means Pfizer
12:08
The article itself disproves your "profiting from diseases" management comment. The polio vaccine that nearly eliminated polio. If there was a massive conspiracy to "manage" it and turn a profit, they would have just invested in iron lung and leg brace companies. Check your medicine cabinet, you may have missed a pharmaceutical or two this morning.
calling someone or something globelist is a old school new world order conspiracy theory thing
October 25, 2023 at 11:23 AM, for the sake of clarity, are you equating COVID-19 with TB, and yellow fever?
Actually KF, it could be Pfizer, GSK, or any number global of pharmacorps who gave up on creating actual cures long ago.
I challenge anyone to list any real cures any of them have developed since 2000.
12:08 - your attempt to "destroy" the reasoned argument and story of 11:23 failed.
Abssolutely failed.
You focus on what you consider the 'why" - not the result.
11:23 pointed to the results - which when fighting a killer disease like smallpox, or polio, or mumps, or whatever - is the issue.
Especially when your claim to know the 'why' - and consider your analysis of the 'why' as absolute is 1) faulty in its basis as to being anything other than your opinion, and more importantly 2) not dealing with the 'what'. The results. Which was the story that was being related.
When you want to come back and argue that Washington making his soldiers take the smallpox vacinne didn't accomplish what was claimed - do so.
In the meantime, shut the f**k up.
@1:19
We are not talking about Jonas Salk and 70 years ago.
Talking about TODAY.
You people constantly draw parallels between the polio vaccine and HPV, Covid-19, etc but they are apples and oranges.
Today instead of curing a disease they create expensive disease management products that keep the sufferers alive and the insurance companies and governments paying.
And the medical professionals need you to follow up every 3-6 months to renew your prescriptions.
I know a lot of Rotarians that have the best of intentions...
The WHO admitted in 2020 that the vaccine was causing polio outbreaks:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/polio-vaccine-causing-polio-outbreaks-in-africa-who-admits/
You selfish misinformed anti-vaxxers make me sick. Probably literally!!!
1:53 dont hold your breath. Nobody can produce such a list. And it is telling.
Polio has a vaccine
HPV has a vaccine
Covid-19 has traditional and MRNA vaccines
Your examples seem awfully apples to apples to me. Specifically, what are you referring to? Lord knows there's enough diseases and ailments out there to keep these companies in business forever. And if they start loosing money when generics come on the market, they'll do what they do now and throw some Tylenol in the mix and file a new patent.
Which polio vaccine? The Salk vaccine or the Sabin vaccine? Which one worked? Why did they need two of them?
childrenshealthdefense.org is an antivaxxer special interest group, not a legitimate source for anything. that story doesn't show up on any real news site, mainstream or otherwise. at this point its three year old click bait
if it had been true, it would have been sensationalized and splashed across every form of media by every outlet so they could make money selling ads, subscriptions, etc. since it wasn't true, no one published it because it belongs right next to headlines in the checkout lines about "I had Elvis's alien baby".
@2:00 PM
The consensus is that your rambling tl:dr microblog post got BTFO by a very short and concise point.
The original Salk polio vaccine =/= the Covid-19 experimental mRNA therapy, or any of the dangerous garbage being forced into kids by law.
4:29 PM - I guess you don't read 'Science' magazine, or maybe you think it is "not a legitimate source for anything. that story doesn't show up on any real news site, mainstream or otherwise", according to you.
The above childrenshealthdefense.org story is based in part on this story in 'Science' magazine. ( https://www.science.org/content/article/surging-cases-have-dashed-all-hope-polio-might-be-eradicated-2019 )
I trust 'Science'. It is one of the best science magazines ever.
Before I quote the 'Science' article cited in the childrenshealthdefense.org article, it should be noted that the abbreviation "OPV" stands for "Oral Polio Vaccine".
According to the 'Science' article, "To prevent outbreaks of vaccine-derived virus, WHO has declared that once the wild virus is gone, countries must stop all use of OPV. As a first step, in April 2016 all countries switched from the trivalent version of OPV—which covers all three types of polio virus—to a bivalent one, which lacks the type 2 component. (Wild type 2 virus is the only one that has been eradicated.)".
See, the vaccine is causing polio outbreaks itself and WHO has to come up with a different approach.
You owe 2:30 PM an apology, but I doubt you have the character to do so.
It is bizarre to me that the most adamant defenders of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were the original "COVID vaccine deniers" when, during the 2020 presidential election, they were pushing people not to take it because it had been developed by the Trump administration and therefore could not be considered safe.
Now they call people "COVID vaccine deniers" if they are reluctant to take a vaccine that did not go through the regular trials and medical reviews of every other vaccine.
Weird.
Glad to see all of my anti-vax, anti-science, anti-book, anti-learning, anti-woke brothers and sisters are all here in one place, which makes this forum a convenient place to ask: Who are we going to get sick today and with what entirely preventable disease?
My right to do my own research outweighs your immunocompromised kid’s or grandmother’s right to keep living, am I right, or am I right?
Before 1965, cures were created to fight or avoid diseases. Now diseases are created to sell cures.
That also applies to the military industrial complex: Weapons used to be created to fight or avoid wars. Now, wars are created to sell weapons.
October 25, 2023 at 7:58 PM, I would like to say you are spot on with your post, especially the last line.
@4:00 AM
You are correct. It is called Natural Selection and the world doesn’t have to take experimental therapies which have proven to do NOTHING simply because your snowflake is a genetic dead-end.
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