- há 1 dia
This film interweaves the personal accounts of polio survivors with the story of an ardent crusader who tirelessly fought on their behalf while scientists raced to eradicate this dreaded disease.
Categoria
📚
AprendizadoTranscrição
00:16The summer of 1950 started like most summers in the small town of Wythville, Virginia.
00:24School let out, the town pools opened, and kids flocked to the soda fountain on Main Street.
00:34Almost 40% of the town's 5,500 residents were under the age of 18.
00:42Wythville was more or less a lazy type, laid-back town. Everyone knew everyone.
00:51It got really hot in the summertime, and we would go swimming. We were happy-go-lucky kids.
01:06I had a pair of my grandfather's rubber boots on, and I was wading in the creek.
01:10And when I went to get out, I felt like something pulled in my leg.
01:17I went home, and hadn't been home too long until I started running a temperature,
01:23and was real nauseous, and just kept going higher and higher.
01:29I was outside playing. I just didn't feel right.
01:34By the time I got inside the house to my mother, I told her I was sick.
01:40I had a headache. I was so dizzy. And after that, I just passed out.
01:48The doctor came to do a spinal tap on my brother, and he screamed.
01:54And my mother ran downstairs with a bed pillow, went out in the backyard and covered her head with a
02:00pillow,
02:00and laid there and screamed.
02:06We only had two ambulance services in Withfield.
02:09One would come in to the clinic with a suspected case, while the other one would be coming out of
02:14the clinic
02:15and leaving for either Roanoke or Richmond.
02:18In, out, in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out.
02:24Mr. Williams' tote board was right across the street from where I was, and it was always visible.
02:32And every once in a while, we'd go to the front door and look out,
02:35and every time another one came in with diagnosis, well, they changed the count.
02:54Daddy and Mama took everything Sonny owned, all of his clothes, his bed, his chest of drawers,
03:00and he had a fabulous comic book collection.
03:04And they took everything out to the middle of the garden, and they just made a pile and burned everything
03:11in.
03:13They were told to do that so that we would not get it.
03:17Polio was hitting Withfield hard, harder that year than any place in the country.
03:25It became more and more evident that we were really in trouble.
03:30And without knowing what to do, or how to stop it, or how to get away from it, we were
03:38just stuck with it.
03:41You just couldn't pick up everybody and leave.
03:43And you couldn't set the whole town on fire.
03:46So it was almost, not hopeless, but it was getting pretty close that way.
04:06Since the turn of the 20th century, polio, also known as infantile paralysis, had become an increasingly menacing fact of
04:16American life.
04:19Highly contagious, the polio virus tended to strike during the summer.
04:25It was very reliable.
04:27Come June, July, you began to see cases of polio, and they continued on through September.
04:36The symptoms ranged from a mild headache and nausea to muscle weakness, paralysis, or death.
04:48One never knew how it would go.
04:51Would it pass through the body and the person would get up out of bed a few days later just
04:56fine?
04:57Would there be one leg damaged with both arms?
05:04The paralytic effects would last for life.
05:08And you didn't have to look very far to see people who had been crippled with polio, and crippled in
05:16terrible ways.
05:19In 1921, the disease struck an especially prominent citizen, just as his political star was on the rise.
05:30Polio usually targeted children, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 39.
05:37After contracting a sudden fever and chills, he lost the use of both his legs.
05:44FDR was an enormous landmark in the whole history of polio.
05:50The fact that he came down with polio changed the course of the disease in this country.
05:59Roosevelt worked to restore both his body and his career.
06:06He bought a remote Georgia resort, whose spring-fed baths were reputed to have healing powers,
06:13and turned it into the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation,
06:17committed to rehabilitating polio patients from around the country.
06:25In 1928, a still-paralyzed but vital FDR fought his way back onto the national political stage.
06:36To keep the fight against polio alive, Roosevelt turned to his law partner, Basil O'Connor,
06:43a man who knew little about polio, but a great deal about power and persuasion.
06:49I was never a public do-gooder, O'Connor declared, and had no aspirations of that kind.
06:58Short-tempered and relentless, he was a working-class Irishman,
07:02who had to dig and fight for everything he had achieved.
07:07Basil O'Connor has no interest in being the head of the Warm Springs Foundation.
07:13But he is so loyal to Franklin Roosevelt, and he really believes the only way to ensure FDR's political career
07:22is to take over this institution that is so close to FDR's heart.
07:28With Roosevelt now in the White House, O'Connor worked tirelessly to keep the organization afloat.
07:38America was experiencing the worst economic depression in its history.
07:44Charities' traditional source of funding, donations from the rich, had completely dried up.
07:52Worse still, the number of cases of polio continued to rise.
07:58What made polio so questionable, what made it so hard for people to get a grip on,
08:07was that at the very time America was becoming a cleaner, more antiseptic society,
08:13the polio rates were going up dramatically.
08:18In time, scientists would unlock some of polio's mysteries.
08:23They would learn the virus entered the body through the mouth,
08:28that it passed from person to person through contaminated water, food, or physical contact.
08:36They would come to understand that modern sanitation actually helped explain the prevalence of the disease.
08:44Infants in clean environments were less likely to be exposed to the virus and develop lifelong immunity.
08:53Before improvements in sanitation, all children were born with antibodies against polio.
08:59When we had improved sanitation, children started to become exposed to polio later and later in life,
09:05at a time when those antibodies they had received from their mother had already disappeared.
09:09And that's why you saw an emergence of the disease.
09:14In 1938, O'Connor didn't know much about the science of polio.
09:20What he did know was that polio patients depended on private charities like his, not the government, for help.
09:29Without a new way to raise money, his foundation could offer little more than hope.
09:35It was time, he decided, to try something bold.
09:42The only way to fight infantile paralysis is with money.
09:46And so I'm asking you tonight to send a dime to President Roosevelt at the White House.
09:54And listing celebrities to the cause, O'Connor made an unprecedented appeal to the American public.
10:03Judy, when I spend a dime on myself for some little luxury like this, I always think about those unfortunate
10:07kids and how far just a dime will go toward helping.
10:10Gee, Mickey, we don't know how lucky we are and how much we have to be thankful for with our
10:15health and our happiness.
10:16Judy, and that's why we should...
10:17The campaign was dubbed the March of Dimes.
10:21Can I put a dime in your envelope?
10:22Oh, you know that you can.
10:25And that's what every good American should do.
10:27Join the March of Dimes.
10:29Send yours to President Franklin Roosevelt and the White House.
10:35O'Connor waited anxiously to see if his gamble would pay off.
11:00The March of Dimes campaign exceeded all expectations, raising $1.8 million, a staggering sum.
11:12What O'Connor realized was that this was a fundraising gold mine.
11:19This turns fundraising on its head.
11:22You no longer want big donations from the few.
11:27You want small donations from the millions.
11:31No one is too poor to give a dime to help a kid walk again.
11:41O'Connor pledged to provide care for every polio patient in America.
11:46To pay for doctors, nurses, and the most up-to-date rehabilitation.
11:55He would even invest in scientific research aimed at stopping polio forever.
12:02Basil O'Connor was no scientist, but he was a great administrator.
12:06He knew how to organize.
12:08He knew how to centralize.
12:10He knew how to focus.
12:14Every summer, more and more children were infected with polio.
12:20O'Connor understood that he was in a race against time.
12:38I was very active and outgoing and grew up in a time and a place when kids had lots of
12:44independence and minimal supervision.
12:47Just a few inflexible rules like be home for dinner.
12:53I was 13 and I was just starting to lean out and get kind of fast on the tennis court.
13:01And I was pretty happy with the way things were going.
13:06Larry Becker grew up in Hastings, Nebraska.
13:09He was a boy scout, delivered newspapers, and played trumpet in the school band.
13:19My legs gave out as I was peddling my ice cream cart home for lunch.
13:40Larry became delirious with fever as the polio virus penetrated his central nervous system, infecting and destroying the nerve fibers
13:50that controlled his muscles.
13:54It's like every muscle in your body is extremely sore.
14:05It's very sensitive to the touch and just aches.
14:13I lost not only my leg muscles, but I lost also neck muscles and most importantly the diaphragm.
14:22I began to have trouble breathing.
14:28And I remember the last straw for me was when I lost the use of my biceps.
14:37I was afraid of, not so much of pain, but of loss of control.
14:48My parents were in and out of the room.
14:52They were being given very bad news.
14:55There wasn't much hope that I was going to survive.
15:12You've never seen me, but I'm sure you've seen my shadow.
15:17I'm never invited, but I've been an invisible guest in practically every kind at home.
15:25This is what I've been looking for.
15:31To keep up the fundraising momentum, O'Connor shifted tactics.
15:37As you probably know, I'm very fond of children, especially little children.
15:45I have no prejudices.
15:48I'm quite impartial.
15:53The March of Dimes new message was a frightening one.
15:58Polio could strike anyone, anytime.
16:02You went to a movie, and there was a little short subject about polio.
16:12Memorial Hospital, please.
16:16Infantile paralysis.
16:18Hello.
16:19And they would pass a cup row by row.
16:22Something to put whatever change you had in it.
16:26Polio was brought home every day to families all over the United States.
16:34In New York, the March of Dimes campaign is inspired by Basil O'Connor,
16:38Jimmy Durante, Larry, and Bear Impeliteri.
16:41During the past few years, the polio epidemic has been on the increase and continues as a match.
16:47Fight polio tonight with your porch lights at 7.
16:51The campaign worked.
16:53The March of Dimes grew to 3,000 local chapters, creating a network that reached millions and raised millions.
17:03By the late 1940s, as much as $22 million per year.
17:15But O'Connor's campaign told only part of the story.
17:20While polio could be devastating, the chances of contracting an acute case were quite small.
17:27Of being paralyzed, smaller still.
17:31Of dying from polio, extremely remote.
17:35Many more Americans died from car accidents or tuberculosis.
17:45What the March of Dimes did was to turn an awful but relatively uncommon disease into our national disease and
17:55our national crusade.
17:57Basil O'Connor's feeling was, we've got to raise money for this.
18:01The best way you raise money was basically to scare the hell out of the American public.
18:06It's hard to imagine today, I think, how pervasive the fear was and how embedded in the American psyche.
18:23The fear overwhelmed common sense.
18:27Every summer, in Wytheville and hundreds of towns across the country, people took extraordinary measures to avoid polio.
18:37They even sprayed the pesticide DDT, despite the fact scientists had proved flies did not spread the virus.
18:51Not knowing which way to turn, what's causing it.
18:55People looked for all sorts of places to put to blame.
19:00Some of them are ludicrous and some of them weren't.
19:05Daddy said people just rolled up their car windows and put bandanas around their faces and zoomed through our town.
19:13We didn't go on Main Street.
19:16We didn't go anywhere near town during the polio epidemic.
19:27For the longest time, no one would bother to call, come, or get anywhere near our house.
19:35They were afraid.
19:36They didn't want to catch polio.
19:40They didn't want my mother and daddy to come in some of the stores.
19:45They just didn't want them around.
19:53People did as little as possible, isolated themselves, and just prayed they wouldn't get it.
20:10In 1949, O'Connor took the campaign against polio to a new level.
20:18For more than a decade, scientists funded by the March of Dimes had focused on developing the only viable solution
20:26to stop polio, a vaccine.
20:29Now, O'Connor declared, the long-awaited miracle was in sight.
20:36His message raised hopes and dimes from an anxious public.
20:43But within the scientific community, there was a very different reaction.
20:48A vaccine, most researchers believed, was still years away, if it worked at all.
21:11We lived in this little housing development in Phoenix.
21:17It was young families everywhere, and the population was just booming.
21:26Couples, just like my family, father back from the war, mother had had a career and let it go to
21:33have children.
21:36I was four years old, my brother was six, my parents were 28.
21:39Life was pretty simple, pretty happy.
21:46And then one day, my mother came down with a backache.
21:55And the doctor examined her, and my father remembers the doctor saying,
22:01I think she has polio, but don't worry, it doesn't look like a serious case,
22:07but we have to put her in the contagious ward, where she'll be isolated.
22:14And things only got much, much worse from there.
22:19She survived that night, but she was paralyzed from the neck down.
22:25I have no memory of her going away.
22:30She disappeared overnight.
22:32We went to bed one night, and our mother was in the next room.
22:36We woke up the next morning, and she was gone.
22:55In 1951, two years after his promise of an imminent polio vaccine,
23:01O'Connor had little to show.
23:08Then, in September, traveling home from a conference in Europe,
23:12he met a scientist as driven and impatient as O'Connor himself.
23:20Jonas Salk was a 36-year-old researcher at the University of Pittsburgh.
23:26He was somebody who had great confidence in himself.
23:32Ambitious is too mild a word.
23:35He was super ambitious.
23:40He was very aggressive on what he was doing.
23:43When I first met him, he looked very intense, and he remained that way.
23:47I mean, never changed.
23:48A real intensive personality.
23:53O'Connor and Salk hit it off right away.
23:57Their personalities just meshed.
24:00Both shared big dreams.
24:04They shared big goals, and they saw in each other someone who was complimentary.
24:11Salk's big goals included plans for an unorthodox polio vaccine.
24:20Up until now, leading-edge polio researchers had focused on making a vaccine from a live virus.
24:28Like the vaccines for yellow fever and smallpox.
24:31A complex and time-consuming process.
24:36Live virus vaccines were the gold standard of virus vaccines.
24:42The whole scientific community of experts said that the only vaccine that would work for polio would be a live
24:53vaccine.
24:56Jonas Salk disagreed.
24:59His experience developing a flu vaccine told him that a killed virus vaccine was both possible and faster to produce.
25:11Salk had been trained to believe with influenza and other viruses that if you took the virus and you killed
25:19it and injected it into someone's arm, you could trick the body's immune system into believing that an invader had
25:27come and the body would produce strong and lasting antibody protection.
25:34Proponents of the live virus vaccine dismissed Salk's ideas as ill-conceived scientific heresy.
25:44Most notably, Albert Sabin.
25:48Dr. Sabin had already established a reputation as a sound and imaginative, innovative investigator.
25:58He was a little bit bombastic.
26:00He was a little bit intolerant of other people's ideas.
26:04He was always convinced that his own were correct.
26:07And most of the time he was right.
26:11Albert Sabin had been working for a number of years on his live virus vaccine.
26:19Sabin believed that his vaccine was the perfect polio vaccine.
26:24He also knew that it would take longer to develop and the constant conflict he had with Basil O'Connor
26:33was over time.
26:35I need the time to perfect my vaccine.
26:39Basil O'Connor wanted everything done now.
26:42Albert Sabin simply believed that science went by its own clock and that the March of Dimes should wait until
26:52his vaccine was ready.
26:57Salk was a mere kitchen chemist, Sabin would say, whose hasty work posed a lurking danger to human health.
27:07But Basil O'Connor didn't listen.
27:11Salk's lab would become a leading recipient of March of Dimes support.
27:17What made Basil O'Connor so strong about Jonas Salk was that O'Connor finally believed he had met a
27:27scientist who understood that kids were dying every day and that speed was important.
27:37Jonas Salk was swimming against the current.
27:42He was a young whippersnapper who came out of nowhere and suddenly is taking on this responsibility and not only
27:52that, but getting the support of Basil O'Connor because Jonas convinced Basil O'Connor that we were going to
27:58do it.
28:10At his lab at the University of Pittsburgh, Salk's race to find a polio vaccine took off.
28:22Dr. Salk's laboratory was like a factory in that he had a large number of people,
28:28they were all doing what he dictated they do.
28:33In contrast, many laboratories were more interested in expanding scientific perspective and not necessarily as goal-driven.
28:46The pressure he put on his staff was unrelenting.
28:51Salk thought big, one colleague observed.
28:55He wanted to leap, not crawl.
29:01This was a heavily, heavily financed, expensive project.
29:07We used thousands of monkeys.
29:11We had resources beyond those that any of the other researchers had.
29:18He almost immediately could see that his killed virus vaccine, at least in animals, was very, very successful.
29:26His tests with monkeys were extraordinary.
29:29They had high antibody levels.
29:32None of them seemed to get polio.
29:34He knew he was on the track of something very important.
29:42With the success of his trials on monkeys, Salk pressed for the next necessary but risky step, to test his
29:51vaccine in humans.
29:54O'Connor eagerly agreed.
29:57But Sabin issued a warning.
30:00Salk was moving too quickly.
30:02His plan posed a serious threat to innocent lives.
30:08O'Connor ignored Sabin's objections.
30:12Salk's human trials would proceed as planned.
30:20On July 2nd, 1952, assisted by the staff at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children, Jonas Salk injected
30:3043 children with his killed virus vaccine.
30:37The idea of going into institutions where there were children who were damaged by various diseases and using or exploiting
30:47them as subjects for these studies was not regarded in the same way it is today.
30:55There was no real sense of what we would call informed consent.
31:00If you wanted to test, as Jonas Salk did, you went to the director of an orphanage, or what was
31:06called a home for the feeble-minded, and you tested.
31:11A few weeks after the Watson tests, Salk injected children at the Polk State School for the retarded and feeble
31:19-minded.
31:21Then he administered the vaccine to his family and received a shot himself.
31:29No one got polio.
31:32Blood tests showed that like his lab monkeys, his human subjects had elevated levels of polio-fighting antibodies.
31:42A vaccine, Salk believed, was within reach.
31:561952 saw the outbreak of America's worst polio epidemic.
32:04More and more older children and adults were contracting the disease.
32:09The older you were, the greater the risk of paralysis or death.
32:18Hospital wards were crowded with machines that helped paralyzed patients breathe.
32:25They were called iron lungs.
32:45My father came in to explain to me that they wanted to put me in the iron lung.
32:54And simultaneously one was moved into my room.
32:58It's a huge piece of equipment and it looked scary and I didn't know what it meant.
33:09Your head is disconnected from your body.
33:11You can't see your body.
33:15And in my case I couldn't move anything at first.
33:18And I was very uncomfortable because of the pain in my muscles.
33:27You have to get used to the fact that you don't control your respiration rate.
33:35And when you're first put in, at least it was the case for me,
33:39since I was struggling so much to breathe, I just relaxed right into it.
33:48The development of the iron lung was a great scientific advancement in medical care.
33:55It saved plenty of lives.
33:59Certainly saved my mother's life.
34:01But it also was its own terrible existence.
34:08My mother was flat on her back, being breathed by a machine,
34:15tended by people through little portholes on the side of the machine,
34:22seeing nothing of the world except what she could see through a mirror above her face.
34:32What happens to your mind?
34:35Day after day, night after night?
34:48For most, the iron lung was a temporary measure
34:52to help them survive during the most acute phase of the disease.
34:57For others, it was permanent.
35:02Hello there. This is a wonderful day for me.
35:07Five minutes out of my iron lung.
35:10Five minutes out of my new prison.
35:15My kind and friendly prison.
35:22The first time I got out of the iron lung,
35:25I saw the doctor cry because of the difficulties I was having on the bed.
35:35That was a shock.
35:37And that soon turned into a kind of self-disgust, I think, or shame,
35:45which I didn't articulate.
35:47But, um, I just wanted to hide.
35:52I was 13 years old.
35:54I thought I was immortal.
35:57I don't ever remember being afraid that I would die.
36:02I was afraid I wouldn't get better.
36:07Surveys showed that apart from the atomic bomb,
36:11Americans' greatest fear was polio.
36:19People had put up with polio for a really long time,
36:23and they wanted it over.
36:25They wanted it done with.
36:29The American public wanted that vaccine.
36:51On November 16th, 1953, Basil O'Connor made a stunning announcement.
36:57The March of Dimes would finance, plan, and coordinate an unprecedented human experiment,
37:05testing Salk's vaccine on hundreds of thousands of school children.
37:12Reaction from within the scientific community was scathing.
37:17Injecting Salk's vaccine, Albert Sabin warned, might cause polio, not prevent it.
37:25Sabin was very aggressive, and he could be very abrasive.
37:30He was trying everything to postpone the field trial,
37:34to downgrade the Salk vaccine.
37:38He said, this vaccine isn't ready to be tested.
37:41We should wait five more years.
37:43We should wait ten more years.
37:47O'Connor refused to wait.
37:49With another polio season looming,
37:52he would let nothing stop the trials.
37:56This is one of the most important projects in medical history,
37:59he wrote to parents across the country.
38:03We feel sure you'll want your child to take part.
38:09As a parent today,
38:11it's unimaginable that I would be one of those people
38:15pushing my child to the front of the line saying,
38:18you know, put the polio vaccine in my child first,
38:21and let's see if it works.
38:25You are asking the parents of America to line up their kids
38:30for a vaccine that no one is sure how well it works,
38:35and no one is certain that it is perfectly safe.
38:40It has really not been tested that much on humans.
38:43This is an enormous leap of faith.
38:56On April 26, 1954, the March of Dimes began field trials.
39:04Randy Kerr, a six-year-old in McLean, Virginia,
39:07was the first to receive Salk's vaccine.
39:14.
39:39By June, nearly two million children had taken part.
39:45It was the largest human experiment in American history.
39:54Parents would have to wait for nearly a year to learn the results.
40:16on the morning of April 12, 1955, the March of Dimes made their announcement.
40:27There was a build-up to the report on the field trial.
40:33Everybody was interested.
40:35Everybody was waiting, waiting, waiting.
40:38Does it work? Does it work?
40:40There was no bigger story at that time.
40:44It was held in secrecy like no state secret ever could be.
40:50This news was awaited around the world.
41:01A press release would reveal the findings everyone was waiting for.
41:07They were going to bring it up on an elevator.
41:12The press room was overcrowded.
41:14We were elbow to elbow.
41:16The public relations man steps off the elevator with the dolly and he can't move into the press room.
41:23Everybody ganging around him.
41:25Guys were jumping over desks.
41:28The fellow climbed up on the dolly and he began flinging these things out left and right.
41:35It was bedlam.
41:46CBS News presents a special report.
41:49The sock polio vaccine is a success.
41:52The vaccine works.
42:03Factory whistles blew.
42:05School children cheered.
42:08Parents wept.
42:22Everybody was so happy.
42:24It was the most satisfying story I would cover in 44 years in journalism.
42:32The relief that was brought about by all of a sudden having something that could be done to stop this.
42:38I think that was just overwhelming.
42:43Jonas Salk was viewed as an American hero.
42:47This awful disease had now been conquered by this man who we had funded.
42:52This scientist who was us.
42:57This vaccine vindicated 20 years of giving dimes.
43:0320 years of volunteering.
43:06It was a victory for millions of faceless people who had done what they could to end the scourge of
43:13polio.
43:19Five years before, the disease had raged through Wytheville.
43:25Now, the community, like thousands of others across the country, would finally receive the vaccine.
43:39I remember hearing about Dr. Salk, Dr. Salk, and how exciting it was.
43:46A man saved the world from polio.
44:05Less than a month after vaccinations began, the nation's triumphant polio crusade was brought to a screeching halt.
44:13As Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, I recommended the day before yesterday that vaccination programs against poliomyelitis be
44:22temporarily postponed.
44:26Thousands of children vaccinated with the new Salk vaccine had become sick.
44:33Hundreds would be permanently paralyzed.
44:35A handful would even die.
44:40We have gone from this amazing situation of euphoria, a disease on the run, to the vaccine itself producing additional
44:52cases of polio.
44:55All polio vaccine is taken off the market until the government can pinpoint exactly what has gone wrong.
45:06Investigators soon learned that all the sick children had been injected with a bad batch of vaccine made in Berkeley,
45:14California.
45:17After a hasty and poorly staffed government screening process, the vaccine had been deemed safe.
45:25In fact, it had contained virulent live polio virus.
45:32Cutter Laboratories wasn't alone.
45:36All the pharmaceutical companies were having difficulties mass producing Salk's formula.
45:44One scientist especially felt vindicated.
45:48Albert Sabin.
45:50Albert Sabin had always been of the mind that not only was the Salk vaccine not effective, but potentially was
45:58unsafe.
45:59After Cutter, Albert Sabin simply went around to anyone who would ask, and many people did, saying, I told you
46:06so.
46:11Despite the crisis, O'Connor's confidence in Salk's vaccine never faltered.
46:18What do you see for its future?
46:20Well, I can only say to you that I see its future as still a good, sound, safe vaccine that
46:26will protect the people.
46:31The Salk vaccine was licensed at a time when we basically didn't have vaccine regulation in this country.
46:38The government learned that having 10 people oversee vaccines, and frankly doing it on a part-time basis, was not
46:46good enough.
46:48The Cutter incident was a painful lesson about the fact that we needed much better oversight.
46:56In the wake of the tragedy, manufacturing standards would be tightened and government regulation increased.
47:06But, only eight days after the Surgeon General announced a halt, the nation's polio vaccination program resumed.
47:16Americans continued to vaccinate their children.
47:20They had waited years for the polio vaccine.
47:24They were not about to wait any longer.
47:36The nation's polio vaccination program, led by the March of Dimes, now supported by the United States government, proved safe
47:46and overwhelmingly effective.
47:49Within just a few seasons, the number of polio cases in the United States decreased by 50%.
47:58Memories of summers filled with fear began to fade.
48:07By 1962, Albert Sabin's live virus vaccine was finally ready.
48:13An oral vaccine, it was easier to administer and cheaper to produce than Salk's.
48:22The years to come would see the scientific efforts of both Salk and Sabin pay off dramatically.
48:30Polio, once one of America's most feared diseases, became largely a thing of the past.
48:40Nobody cared about polio anymore.
48:43It was over.
48:48My mother coming home from the rehab center,
48:52it is not the story of triumph and conquering.
48:57It is the story of defeat.
49:00After a year of treatment, it didn't fix her.
49:05It didn't fix our family.
49:07Our family had disintegrated around her.
49:12When Catherine Black was six years old, her mother died.
49:27Larry Becker spent two and a half years in the hospital.
49:34He learned to breathe on his own by using the muscles in his neck.
49:42His arms remained paralyzed, but after slowly regaining the use of his legs,
49:48he was finally ready to move home.
49:54There were three steps up to the house, and then my bedroom would be upstairs.
50:00This is the 50s.
50:02If your bedroom was going to be upstairs, then you had to learn to climb the steps.
50:12When I graduated from college, and when I got my PhD, local newspapers published a picture of me writing with
50:20my feet.
50:22I don't know what the headline is exactly.
50:24I always think of it as polio boy makes good, you know, that kind of...
50:29And I thought, well, this is going to follow me for the rest of my life.
50:37So, but, you know, here I am whining.
50:43It's not, it's no big deal.
50:53In 1994, 44 years after the epidemic hit Withville, Virginia,
50:58and nearly 60 years after Basil O'Connor first called upon Americans to send their dimes to the White House,
51:07polio was declared eradicated in the United States.
51:21Next time.
51:22Nobody knew what would happen when you put human sperm and a human egg in a dish
51:28and implanted it in a woman's uterus.
51:31A medical miracle amidst a political battleground.
51:34This is treading on the work that belongs only to God and nature.
51:38What were the costs to deliver Test 2 babies?
51:42Next time on American Experience.
51:45Made possible in part by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
Comentários