Author:
Leo Kerr
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Date Posted: 21:12:48 07/19/15 Sun
Ten years ago, we had an exhibit on Polio, the 50th of the Salk vaccine, and the related..
I don't recall for certain knowing anyone who had directly contracted polio or not, so the exhibit was a bit of an eye-opener for me. Not just about polio, but, to put a fancy name on it, disease pathology (if I'm not using the word wrong.) That it (and others!) was "a disease of sanitation" -- as modern plumbing and sanitation improved, we, as a people, began to lose the natural resistance passed from mother to infant, afforded to us by the constant low-level exposure to polio, and the antibody transference via mother's milk.
So, I realize as I type this, not just sanitation, but 'convenience,' as milk-formula wouldn't have it.
Interesting and curious as to how some of these "little things" that people didn't know about -- because it was back so far in the cultural history -- came around to bite us through "the Wonders of Modern Science"!
Hopefully, it does make people wonder: if I fix X, what Y will I break? I know there was a guy who wrote a series of columns called "Connections" that tried to do grand, full-circle sorts of connect the dots.. sometimes discredited, or at least some imitators were discredited. But still..
Polio. And I have to admit that when I saw the title "Forgotten Killer" I wondered how Cody was being connected like that!
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