Sukie wrote of this ongoing dialouge :
 
>Beware generalizing where you should not, though.  From some of the
>earlier statements given it was obvious that the foundation of immunity
>has been badly needed.
 
O.K.  Let's get specific.  When my mother was a little girl, (early
fifties) she spent a summer in Greenwich, Conn, in terror.  She was not
allowed to go out and play.  She was not allowed playdates with her
friends.  Her grandmother, who she lived with, did allow her to her to
*call* some of her friends on the phone and speak to them, which made her
feel very grown up.  Sometimes, her friends would come to the windows of
their houses with their phones, and wave while my Mom went to her window
with her phone, and waved to them.  She told me that at times she got so
incredibly bored being housebound, that she lost all sense of fear, but
there was always some grown up around to make sure that she didn't leave
the house.
 
Good thing, too.  Polio was in the neighbourhood, and it caught her
classmate Evan.
 
After some pretty seriopus hospital time and re-hab, Evan was able to
go back to school, with metal leg braces and crutches.  He had a really
lurching walk.  He learned to get around by pretty much putting his
weight on his crutches and throwing the weight of his dead legs forward,
balancing on the sturdiness of the braces, then doing it all over again.
It's fifty years later, and Evan still has metal leg braces and crutches.
He clanks.  He lurches.  He jerks.  Sometimes he falls, and has to be
rescued.  There is nothing that fancy modern medical science can do for
him.  He's just *amn lucky that the virus didn't attack the muscles that
he used to breathe, and he'll tell you so.
 
The Salk polio vaccination came out, and basically EVERY kid in that
neighbourhood, in that town, in that state, in this country lined up
for it.  And if they were old enough to understand, they were greatful.
Their parents sure were.
 
I've had Evan as a houseguest.  In the morning, he straps and buckles on
maybe fifty pounds of metal.  And as I sit here typing I'm thinking that
maybe that pile of metal is the foundation of immunity.  Do I know that
every year a small handfull of children are made ill by the polio
vaccine?  Yup.  Would I get the vaccine for my children?  Yup.  Is
Evan's daughter immunized?  What do you think?
 
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 4644]