Hypography Science Forums: lemit - Viewing Profile - Hypography Science Forums

I thought the main problem with the gyre island was that it was growing faster than it could be collected. Have they taken care of that problem, or is it just that people are thinking about what to do with all the stuff once they have?

Thanks.

--lemit

Welcome! Feel free to participate as often as you want.

What kinds of things are you interested in?

--lemit

Hiiii back! Welcome!

What attracted you to this site?

--lemit

mynah said:

If I remember this documentary (WGBH American Experience . The Polio Crusade | PBS) correctly, the development of the Salk vaccine was pushed forward in spite of concerns about its safety. We all became subjects in a national experiment. I remember the palpable sense of hope when Salk's vaccine was announced. Finally we could have our summers back.

When I was four years old, in September, 1950--the worst year of the polio epidemic--I fell off a horse I was riding on my aunt and uncle's farm just northwest of Des Moines, Iowa, breaking my arm just above the elbow. I was taken to Iowa Lutheran Hospital, where all the attending physicians were at a football game and a very raw resident set my arm incorrectly. My arm had to be re-broken and re-set. I was in Iowa Lutheran three weeks. My father and brothers went back to our farm just across the border in Missouri, while my mother stayed with relatives about a mile across the Des Moines River from the hospital. Every day she walked to the hospital and was allowed to visit me for an hour at the six-bed pediatric room where I remained in traction the whole of my stay. But she was not allowed to enter the room. She could stand in the doorway, some 20 feet from my bed, and we could shout at each other over the afternoon hospital noise. But we could not touch. I had always been very close to my mother, and was in agony at that forced separation.

That separation is how people responded to the fear polio created in 1950. It killed. It crippled for life. Nobody knew exactly how it was transmitted and when or where it might strike. Polio was a pervasive threat in a world that was thought to have been saved by winning World War II. By 1955, when the Salk vaccine became available, we were all so buoyed by a collective sense of hope and relief that we happily ignored the risks and lined up for our shots.

--lemit

Unfortunately, poliomyelitis is still a threat to world health. The Wikipedia page on it explains that it is an easily transmitted enterovirus, and around 90% of those infected are asymptomatic. In other words, as was the case with me, babies could be put together to play and slobber on each other with no realization until much later that something had gone wrong.

The disease is still active in unstable parts of the world. If we do not continue to immunize as if it were everywhere in the world, it will be everywhere in the world soon enough.

Another problem, as I've mentioned here before and as is again applicable to my case, the less symptomatic infants are with poliomyelitis, the more symptomatic middle-aged adults are with post-polio.

For those of you who'd like to read more, the following brief, inadequate online resource list is only a start, but it is after all what Hypography is supposed to be about.

General:
Poliomyelitis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Post-polio syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What is Post Polio
Post-Polio Syndrome Glossary of Terms with Definitions on MedicineNet.com
https://health.googl...f/Poliomyelitis
Post Polio Syndrome

Post-polio and Surgery:
PPS & Surgery by Richard L. Bruno, Ph.D.
http://www.gbppa.org/surgery.html

Bibliographies:
Post-Polio Syndrome, Recently Published Medical Articles

Organizations:
Welcome to PHI's official website
IPPSO - International Post Polio Support Organization
http://www.postpolio.org/


This is obviously just stuff off the top of my head. I’ll do some research and ask my post-polio therapist for more sources, and I'll update this list from time to time. I’d appreciate help from any interested Hypographers out there.

Thanks.

--lemit