Quotes & Sayings About Polio

I have studied the effects of our new lots of polio vaccine in 100 adult volunteers and during the next few days shall give it to my wife and 2 children as well as to our neighbors and their children. — Albert Sabin

When you inoculate children with a polio vaccine, you don't sleep well for two or three months. — Jonas Salk

I do not argue that nature is sacrosanct in the sense that we must never tamper with nature. That would disempower, really, all of medicine. That would mean that we can't combat dread diseases - malaria, polio, all of which are given by nature, if one thinks about it. — Michael Sandel

My own experience of over 60 years in biomedical research amply demonstrated that without the use of animals and of human beings, it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans but also among [other] animals. — Albert Sabin

Every day in the United States, seventeen children are killed by gunfire. That's about 6,000 children each year who are killed by guns, as compared, for example, with about 3,000 a year who died at the height of the polio epidemic of the 1950s. We rose up as a society to fight against polio. Why do we not act more forcefully to halt today's even greater scourge? — Jimmy Carter

Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio. — Melinda Gates

The work on [polio] prevention was long delayed by ... misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys — Albert Sabin

What Friedan gave to the world was, "the problem that has no name." She not only named it but dissected it. The advances of science, the development of labor-saving appliances, the development of the suburbs: all had come together to offer women in the 1950s a life their mothers had scarcely dreamed of, free from rampant disease, onerous drudgery, noxious city streets. But the green lawns and big corner lots were isolating, the housework seemed to expand to fill the time available, and polio and smallpox were replaced by depression and alcoholism. All that was covered up in a kitchen conspiracy of denial ...
[i]nstead the problem was with the mystique of waxed floors and perfectly applied lipstick. — Betty Friedan

We have yet to beat our drums for birth control in the way we beat them for polio vaccine. We are still unable to put babies in the class of dangerous epidemics, even though this is the exact truth. — Mary Calderone

Fortunately, perhaps, I was completely ignorant of the orthodox theory of the disease polio-myelitis. — Elizabeth Kenny

If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism. — Jenny McCarthy

I had a series of childhood illnesses ... scarlet fever ... pneumonia ... Polio. I walked with braces until I was at least nine years old. My life wasn't like the average person who grew up and decided to enter the world of sports. — Wilma Rudolph

I am no saviour. I'm absolutely the last person on the planet who can practically help. I don't know how to make the different types of therapeutic feeding milk. I'm no chemist. I'm no doctor. I'm no engineer. I can't manufacture polio vaccines or organise their transportation to the health centres in Saramoussayah or Bissikirima. I can't build schools, or design drainage systems. I can't provide the women and children of Mandiana with water.All I can do now is help make people aware of what is happening, of what they are doing. That is all that I can do. For now. — Tom Hiddleston

I don't think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing. — Bill Gates

I think disease and all the things that we treat are tied to national security in a lot of ways that we maybe don't realize or that the American people don't realize. If other countries have a chance to be stable, then that helps us. If there are ways we can prevent if there are ways we can help other countries defeat diseases, we're about to totally eradicate polio. And can you imagine? That would be so terrific. — Laura Bush

Viruses like symmetrical shapes because symmetry provides a very simple means for them to multiply, and that is what makes viral diseases so infectious - in fact, that's what 'virulent' means. Traditionally, symmetry has been something people have found aesthetically appealing, whether it is seen in a diamond, a flower or the face of a supermodel. But symmetry isn't always so desirable. Some of the most deadly viruses on the biological books, from influenza to herpes, from polio to the AIDS virus, are constructed using the shape of an icosahedron. Is — Marcus Du Sautoy

My two Jamaican cousins ... were studying engineering. 'That's where the money is,' Mom advised ... I was to be an engineering major, despite my allergy to science and math ... Those who preceded me at CCNY include the polio vaccine discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk ... and eight Nobel Prize winners ... In class, I stumbled through math, fumbled through physics, and did reasonably well in, and even enjoyed, geology. All I ever looked forward to was ROTC.
Autobiographical comments on his original reason for going to the City College of New York, where he shortly turned to his military career. — Colin Powell

I couldn't catch a ball if it had Elmer's Glue all over it. And my father had to be this ex-football star. He didn't know what to tell his friends, so he told them all I had Polio. On Father's Day, I used to limp for him. — Matthew West

My father contracted polio on a troop train in Korea. — David Alan Grier

I've tried to imagine how she'd feel knowing that her cells went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity, or that they helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization. I'm pretty sure that she - like most of us - would be shocked to hear that there are trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body. — Rebecca Skloot

That is why we have the polio vaccine. People are blazing their own trial. That is what seems to be important. I don't care to follow and to do what the mass is doing. That is not doing anything, to be doing what everyone else is doing. Everybody is unique. The funny thing about people now is that people don't really understand or really appreciate how unique each individual on earth is. — Henry Threadgill

I really do think cancer will largely be a solved problem. I think most of the infectious diseases like malaria - our foundation is very involved - once we're finishing polio eradication, then starting up this malaria eradication, and getting that done as fast as we can. — Bill Gates

If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung. — Billie Holiday

Because I could dance, my folks went through hell so I could be in movies. But I didn't dance in pictures. I cried! At one point I had polio, which I believe was a result of the stress I felt in the studios. — David Holt

We believe that modern-day Hitlers have deliberately adulterated the oral polio vaccines with anti-fertility drugs and contaminated it with certain viruses which are known to cause HIV and AIDS, the chairman of the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria maintained, urging parents to refuse vaccination. — Eula Biss

Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria. — Victor Davis Hanson

Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa reveals the upheaval of partition through the eyes of a child, "Lame Lenny," a young Parsi girl crippled from polio. Lenny's world is her beloved and beautiful Hindu ayah and her ayah's many Muslim admirers, the cook Imam Din, and the Untouchable gardener. — Nancy Pearl

We are ever on the threshold of new journeys and new discoveries. Can you imagine the excitement of the Wright brothers on the morning of that first flight? The anticipation of Jonas Salk as he analyzed the data that demonstrated a way to prevent polio? — Joseph B. Wirthlin

Who owns the patent on this vaccine?'
'Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? — Jonas Salk

If you think of global public goods like polio eradication, the kind of risk-taking new approach, philanthropy really does have a role to play there, because government doesn't do R&D about new things naturally as much as it probably should, and so philanthropy's there. — Bill Gates

Even to this day, the government, the FDA is refusing to use the sophisticated biotechnology to evaluate the contaminants in the vaccines such as the polio vaccines that they are administering. I think (people) would be appalled that some of the vaccines that are currently being used are still laced with viruses. — Leonard Horowitz

Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between. — Sarah Vowell

Nature is that lovely lady to whom we owe polio, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer. — Stanley Norman Cohen

Quiz 1. Leeuwenhoek saw microorganisms in (a) polio sufferers (b) belly button fuzz (c) malaria victims (d) dental plaque — Anonymous

Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed:
It is safe, and you can't get safer than safe. — Jonas Salk

We're a people who pollute the very air we breathe. And our rivers. We're destroying the great lakes; Erie is already gone, and now we've begun on the oceans. We filled our atmosphere with radioactive fallout that put poison into our children's bones, and we knew it. We've made bombs that can wipe out humanity in minutes, and they are aimed and ready to fire. We ended polio, and then the United States Army bred new strains of germs that can cause fatal, incurable disease. We had a chance to do justice to our Negroes, and when they asked it, we refused. In Asia we burned people alive, we really did. We allow children to grow up malnourished in the United States. We allow people to make money by using our television channels to pursued our own children to smoke, knowing what it is going to do to them. This is a time when it becomes harder and harder to continue telling yourself that we are still good people. We hate each other. And we're used to it. — Jack Finney

I had polio when I was 13. I started feeling stiff, my joints ached, and over a two-week period I lost my coordination and 20 pounds. — Jack Nicklaus

Miriam Sacher had survived polio as a child. To Abraham, she was simply the most exquisite little bird who could not fly. — Guillermo Del Toro

From Lankaster to Lorenz, scientists have gotten it wrong. Parasites are complex, highly adapted creatures that are at the heart of the story of life. If there hadn't been such high walls dividing scientists who study life - the zoologists, the immunologists, the mathematical biologists, the ecologists - parasites might have been recognized sooner as not disgusting, or at least not merely disgusting. If parasites were so feeble, so lazy, how was it that they could manage to live inside every free-living species and infect billions of people? How could they change with time so that medicines that could once treat them became useless? How could parasites defy vaccines, which could corral brutal killers like smallpox and polio? — Carl Zimmer

The story of FDR as U.S. Commander in Chief is a heroic war story of a president who had already overcome great adversity in facing polio but who went on to take the reins of our armed forces in the greatest conflagration in human history - on our behalf. — Nigel Hamilton

We're all responsible for creating a polio-free world while we still can. — Bill Gates

When I think of cancer prevention, I think of cancer vaccines, but I think more broadly of all that we can do to prevent cancer. And part of that is coming up with a vaccine that will work like the vaccines we have for hepatitis B or flu or polio. — Laurie Glimcher

In my life I have had various health threats: polio, seizures, a brain aneurysm. None of these things has really changed me much, although it is hard to say for sure. These are events that are part of my life. They make me who I am. I am thankful for them. They are scary. — Neil Young

Nigeria and Pakistan are two countries that have had a lot of trouble with polio. And part of the reason is that there's a lot of political unrest, and people really distrust what the government is doing. That has an effect on people's health, and it has an effect on the health of children. — Eula Biss

In 1955, amid the great fanfare that accompanied the initial release of the [polio] vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk was asked who owned the patent. He replied, "Well, the people, I would say. Could you patent the sun? — John Abramson

Epidemiologists-scientists who study the spread of disease-use a special number to describe how contagious a virus is. It's called the basic reproduction number, or R0 for short. It's complicated to calculate but simple to understand-it counts how many people one sick person is expected to infect over the course of his or her illness. If I'm sick with a cold and I make two other people sick, the R0 of my virus is 2. Colds and seasonal flus typically have R0 values of around 1.5 to 2. The 1918 flu pandemic R0 was estimated to be 2 to 3, while diseases like polio and small pox have R0 values of around 5 to 7. — Jennifer Gardy

Somebody bought me a Snuggie as a joke gift. Haha, the joke's on you, I enjoy it. I toss and turn at night, finally a blanket that's like, 'I'm going to keep you warm.' It's like having a small child with polio keep you in a full nelson - the perfect pressure. — Daniel Tosh

Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections. — Ezekiel Emanuel

India just went 3 years with no cases [of polio]. Pakistan is our toughest location right now because some parts of the Taliban have not allowed vaccinators to come in and have even attacked vaccinators. We are hopeful this will get resolved since no one wants their kid to be paralyzed. I spend a lot of time making sure the polio campaign is doing the best it can. We have great computer models that help guide our activities. — Bill Gates

I was more afraid that in a few words thrown out he might destroy something that I loved. What if his words had the effect of polio on me? What a terrible disease that must be if it could kill God in a man. — Yann Martel

My mother is a fighter. After she battled polio and learned to walk again, the doctors told her she would be a cripple her entire life. Instead of accepting defeat, she refused this fate and went on to become the West African Women's Singles tennis champion in college. — Uzo Aduba

You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' pg. 303 — Diane Setterfield

Our understanding of evolution came to us by exactly the same method of scientific discovery that led to printing presses, polio vaccines, and smartphones. — Bill Nye

Where there is a confluence of interests among nations, as, for example the swine flu or polio, you can get well functioning international institutions like the World Health Organization. And you can act. Climate change is different, because the science remains hypothetical and the potential costs staggering. — Charles Krauthammer

But cancer can also be fun with its luncheons, theatre parties, and fund raising luaus ... What will they all do if a cure comes out of it? Considering how easily the March of Dimes conglomerate shifted gears after the polio vaccine, it should pose no problem. — Edgar Berman

Infectious disease is one of the primary mechanisms of natural immunity. Whether we are sick or healthy, disease is always passing through our bodies. "Probably we're diseased all the time," as one biologist puts it, "but we're hardly ever ill." It is only when disease manifests as illness that we see it as unnatural, in the "contrary to the ordinary course of nature" sense of the word. When a child's fingers blacken on his hand from Hib disease, when tetanus locks a child's jaw and stiffens her body, when a baby barks for breath from pertussis, when a child's legs are twisted and shrunken with polio - then disease does not seem natural. — Eula Biss

Embarrassing ourselves in front of strangers is literally one of the worst things that can happen to us. It's in the slot where polio used to be. Awkwardness, rejection, missing out. We've conquered everything else and these constants of human life are all that remain to bedevil us. — Alexandra Petri

It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland. — Haruki Murakami

My father died when I was 10; my sister got polio a couple of years later and was paralyzed. So there I was - my sister in a wheel chair, my father gone, and my mother a quiet little mouse. You see, it was the '30s in the South, so my mother was not prepared to cope. So I was scared to death. And being that scared, everything afterward became a struggle not to go down the drain. Struggling became a way of life for me. — Helen Gurley Brown

A deranged person is supposed to have the strength of ten men.
I have the strength of one small boy ... with polio. — Woody Allen

The drops (polio vaccine) were designed,said these believers. Their intention and effect was genocidal. Nobody was to swallow them, or administer them to infants. Within months, polio was back ... — Christopher Hitchens

Without animal research, polio would still be claiming thousands of lives each year. — Albert Sabin

Vic Wertz once hit a ball rather famously that was later described as such: 'It would have been a home run in any other park - including Yellowstone.' Instead, he's remembered as the guy who got robbed by Willie Mays' spectacular catch during the 1954 World Series between the Indians and the Giants, a play that remains one of the game's all-time greatest defensive efforts. What people often forget about Wertz is that his greatest battle wasn't that one at bat, and that one out never defined his career. He was stricken with polio in 1955, and after 74 games his season was over and his career was hanging in the balance. 'The Catch' by Willie Mays couldn't keep him down, and neither could polio - he came back in 1956, and despite playing in only 136 games he belted 32 home runs with 106 RBIs. — Tucker Elliot

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate ... Choose science. — Carl Sagan

My fear is that if we don't take remedial steps to control polio in the tribal areas, we will be faced with international sanctions. — Mamnoon Hussain

Sometimes Fazlullah appeared galloping in on a black horse. His men stopped health workers giving polio drops, saying the vaccinations were an American plot to make Muslim women infertile so that the people of Swat would die out. — Malala Yousafzai

I went to several different grade schools all over the West Coast. I got polio when I was 8 and spent eight months in the hospital and a rehab clinic in Seattle. — Dennis Washington

I am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. My mother is a survivor of both polio and of the Igbo genocide during her country's civil war in the late 1960s. — Uzo Aduba

Sport can be used for messaging, for example, making the connections between shin guards or a helmet that protects you, and protection in terms of HIV and AIDS. There has also been a very active program in Africa called 'Kick Polio out of Africa,' where soccer players have spoken out in terms of polio. There is also going to be a swim for malaria. — Carol Bellamy

The charged atmosphere made every little thing stand out as a performance, a movement distinct and vastly important. It was one of those hypersensitive moments when all your automatic movements, however long established, however habitual, become separate acts of will. You are like a man learning to walk after polio. You take nothing for granted, absolutely nothing at all. — Raymond Chandler

Dr.Costa then offered important clues to differentiate the syndrome from polio. in tick paralysis there is no fever, the spinal fluod is normal, the knee jerk and other reflexes are lost early, the patient is passive and apathetic, and, of course, the child has had a recent tick bite, or an attached tick is found. — Pamela Nagami

She limped, unaided around the house, like a bird with its wing broken. Tame, because it couldn't fly away. All her time was taken up with managing herself, working out new ways to do things. Being a different person in the world. — Joan London

Fear is the polio of the soul. Faith is the life based on unseen realities; it is the word become flesh. — Clarence Jordan

I'm old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn't been that long since most people who caught pneumonia died from it. These medical breakthroughs were practically miracles. — Pat Cadigan

A huge meringue with polio who drives everywhere in a beautifully restored Hillman Imp. — St John Morris

A hundred million crystallized polio viruses could cover the period at the end of this sentence. There could be two hundred and fifty Woodstock Festivals of viruses sitting on that period-the combined populations of Great Britain and France-and you would never know it. — Anonymous

Fear is the polio of the soul which prevents our walking by faith. — Clarence Jordan

There are cases where government-to-government aid actually has worked. Look at the eradication of smallpox and the near eradication of polio. But these are really top down solutions that require government-to-government support and aid. — Jacqueline Novogratz

If you withdraw the incredible focus on polio, it will spread back, and in poor countries you'll get something like 100,000 cases a year. So by being very intense and getting the cases down to zero, what you do is you avoid all the future cases. — Bill Gates

When I worked on the polio vaccine, I had a theory. I guided each [experiment] by imagining myself in the phenomenon in which I was interested. The intuitive realm ... the realm of the imagination guides my thinking. — Jonas Salk

So, obviously, autism - which is the key in this - is a very big problem. We need more studies about it. We certainly have to try to figure out what causes it and why and do something about it. But to tab it to vaccines, I think, is a real mistake. Not only is there no evidence, but what it leads to is larger numbers of unvaccinated children. And that's not only a problem for polio. It's a problem for a wide range of vaccine-preventable diseases. — David Oshinsky

Faye keeps forgetting what she'll be giving up if she decides to stay here. Access to modern medicine, for starters. In 2015 people can survive cancer, tuberculosis, scarlet fever. Vaccines eradicated polio and measles. Do you really want to live in a world with iron lungs and polio, Faye? Do you?" "I guess I could go back to 2015 and live in a world with meth, heroin, terrorism, HIV and Ebola. Huge improvement, right? — Tiffany Reisz

Polio has not been eradicated by vaccination, it is lurking behind a redefinition and new diagnostic names like viral or aseptic meningitis ... According to one of the 1997 issues of the MMWR, there are some 30,000 to 50,000 cases of viral meningitis per year in the United States alone. That's where all those 30,000 - 50,000 cases of polio disappeared after the introduction of mass vaccination — Viera Scheibner

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas. — Bill Gates

I consider myself incredibly lucky to live and work in places like Canada and the U.S. where polio no longer threatens to rob the livelihoods of innocent children. As a young woman, I stand behind the women around the globe who are leading the charge against polio and working relentlessly to achieve a polio-free world. — Ksenia Solo

Failure is not an event, but rather a judgment about an event. Failure is not something that happens to us or a label we attach to things. It is a way we think about outcomes. Before Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio that finally worked, he tried two hundred unsuccessful ones. Somebody asked him, "How did it feel to fail two hundred times?" "I never failed two hundred times in my life," Salk replied. "I was taught not to use the word 'failure.' I just discovered two hundred ways how not to vaccinate for polio. — John Ortberg Jr.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television. — Francis Ford Coppola

Humans have always used our intelligence and creativity to improve our existence. After all, we invented the wheel, discovered how to make fire, invented the printing press and found a vaccine for polio. — Naveen Jain

Why is it that when we had rotary phones, when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we're doing right now? — Geoffrey Canada

There are very few issues that lie specifically in one region now. Polio in Syria doesn't affect Syria alone. I don't think any issue can ever be isolated into local politics these days, because we all know too much. — Cate Blanchett

I was a shy ugly kid who led a big fantasy life. I thought I was an angel sent from heaven, to cure polio. When Dr. Salk did that I was really pissed off. — Cher

Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn't live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at. — David Sedaris

Polio's pretty special because once you get an eradication, you no longer have to spend money on it; it's just there as a gift for the rest of time. — Bill Gates

The main problem, certainly, for the people who will not get vaccinated with Thimerosal, which was put into polio vaccine. And the belief was that it may cause autism. And there's been an awful lot done in terms of studies in Western Europe, Canada, the United States, and no correlation was found between Thimerosal and autism from those children who took vaccines. Indeed, when Thimerosal was taken out of many of these vaccines, the autism rate in the United States still rose. — David Oshinsky

Superstition, she said. Soup with a bonobo finger in it is supposed to make a pregnant woman give birth to a strong baby. Putting another finger in the bathwater keeps the baby strong. "I hope the stupid polio", I said, and surprised myself by even sort of meaning it. I kissed the top of the bonobo's head. I imagined him in his crate, crying against the bars, someone lifting him out only to chop off a finger. Plunging him back into the crate, then pulling him out a few days later to take another ... — Eliot Schrefer

I am more connected to the world of the imagination, but you don't have to have polio to do that. — Ben Lewin

When I was a child, there were not that many vaccines. I was vaccinated for polio. I actually got measles as a child. I got pertussis, whooping cough. I remember that very well. — Anthony Fauci

In Jamaica, we eradicated polio many years ago, but there are a lot of kids suffering in Africa still. — Ziggy Marley

I've crippled more people than polio. — The Undertaker

It blows my mind that there are people out there who deny the holocaust. Why would you ever deny such a great achievement. It's like denying the cure for polio or something. — Zach Braff