What is polio?

One of the first and most important uses at the time for the HeLa cells was in the vaccination against polio. We hear little about this disease now with most cases happening in other parts of the world. In fact, a new strain was just found in China and Pakistan; not here in the US. But it was not always that way.

If you’re under sixty, you probably know very little about polio. Feared by many Americans, polio was once considered the most dreaded childhood disease.

We know that FDR had polio. We’ve seen pictures of him in a wheelchair. But did you know that director Francis Ford Coppola, musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, and actor Alan Alda had polio? Or that’s it’s been around so long that the fourth Roman Emperor Claudius also had polio?

In a nutshell, polio is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route. Ninety-five percent of the time, the disease left no marks. But for some, polio caused paralysis and sometimes death. Folks whose paralysis impeded their ability to breathe had to be put in an iron lung.

While we now know that polio was around thousands of years ago, it was not until the late 1880s when there were major epidemics. Sometimes it affected many members of one community.

Philip Roth’s novel, Nemesis, chronicles a working class Jewish community in Newark during World War II where many young children contracted polio and died.

While his book is fiction, it accurately portrays the fear of polio with parents warning their kids, “don’t do this, don’t do that.” Heath official warned children that summer fun could result in death.

There were concerns about swimming pools, or anywhere groups of children congregated. Parents were told to keep their children bathed and well rested, schools were closed, and when it struck a community, movie theatres were shut down.

In the book, wealthy children were sent to camp thinking it would keep them safe.The less affluent kids had programs led by the recreation director. But neither group is immune from it, and neither are the adults.

"People may have some fear of immunizations today," says Dr. Clyde Culbertson, professor emeritus at the I.U. School of Medicine, who was director of biological research at Eli Lilly and Company between 1949 and 1964. "But this fear is incomparable to the fear of people when polio is striking thousands indiscriminately. During the 1940s and '50s, townspeople were even trying to cordon off their towns to outsiders.

Here are some basic facts:

• Polio is a viral disease which may affect the spinal cord causing muscle weakness and paralysis. The polio virus enters the body through the mouth, usually from hands contaminated with the stool of an infected person. Polio is more common in infants and young children and occurs under conditions of poor hygiene. Paralysis is more common and more severe when infection occurs in older individuals.
• The number of cases of polio decreased dramatically in the United States following the introduction of the polio vaccine in 1955 and the development of a national vaccination program. The last cases of naturally occurring polio in the United States were in 1979. Most of the world's population resides in areas considered free of wild polio virus circulation. Travelers to countries where polio cases still occur should know they are immune or be fully immunized. In 2008, these areas include Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Eastern Mediterranean.
• Polio is spread when the stool of an infected person is introduced into the mouth of another person through contaminated water or food (fecal-oral transmission). Oral-oral transmission by way of an infected person's saliva may account for some cases.
• Up to 95 percent of people infected with polio have no symptoms. However, infected persons without symptoms can still spread the virus and cause others to develop polio. About four to five percent of infected people have minor symptoms such as fever, muscle weakness, headache, nausea and vomiting. One to two percent of infected persons develop severe muscle pain and stiffness in the neck and back. Less than one percent of polio cases result in paralysis.

Some of the fears experienced by people in the 1940s and 1950s may sound familiar. In the early 1980s, the threat of AIDS caused major overreactions. In 2003, SARS was thought to be lurking in anyone with a cough.

But these were overreactions and myths. While not every prevention method kept polio away (and in some cases was the wrong reaction), living with this fear was real and the danger to children was real.

The polio vaccine was and is still considered a major medical breakthrough. HeLa cells allowed Jonas Salk to develop it.

That’s pretty amazing.