#979 Paul Alexander: Inspiration and Determination; Validation and Immunization

Throughout childhood, our maternal grandmother, Anne Kagan, would frequently read aloud to us her favorite poems from a dog-eared volume entitled One Hundred and One Famous Poems. Unbeknownst to us, she was providing the two of us with a glorious, absolutely pain-free introduction to some of the English language’s greatest (and occasionally, long-forgotten) wordsmiths. Time and again we would listen to her read (and quite dramatically, I must say), from Keats (Ode On a Grecian Urn), and Byron She Walks in Beauty); to Kipling (If) and Wordsworth (She Was a Phantom of Delight); and from Whittier (The Barefoot Boy) to Kilmer (Trees).

A couple of days ago, I read the obituary of a man named Paul Alexander . . . a man who, due to polio, was forced to live from ages 6 to 78 in an iron lung. The opening paragraph of the New York Times obit told the entire story: Alexander relied on the machine to breathe. Still, he was able to earn a law degree, write a book and, late in life, buil[t] a following on TikTok.

The poem his utterly remarkable life brought to mind was Frank Lebby Stanton’s Keep A-Going!, whose opening stanza I can still hear Grandma Anne reciting from memory:

Ef you strike a thorn or rose,
Keep a-goin'!
Ef it hails, or ef it snows,
Keep a-goin!
'Taint no use to sit an' whine,
When the fish ain't on yer line;
Bait yer hook an' keep a-tryin'—
Keep a-goin'!

I really, really urge you to read Mr. Alexander’s obituary. The story of his life is truly remarkable; in its own way, it rivals that of Helen Keller, who despite being blind and deaf, somehow managed through determination and pluck, a remarkable caretaker and a “never say die” attitude, managed to become the first deafblind individual to graduate from college (Radcliffe College, class of 1904), become a prominent lecturer and author (12 books) and learned to “hear” people’s speech via the Tadoma Method, in which she used her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker. Keller even wrote her first autobiography while studying at Radcliffe. Without question, she, like Paul Alexander, are among history’s greatest inspirations.

In 1952, the then 6-year old Paul was stricken with Polio. It came on seemingly in a day, quickly paralyzed limbs and and left him incapable of breathing on his own - the muscles which control respiration had become incapable of movement. He was quickly placed in an “iron lung,” became worse and worse, and was eventually sent home from hospital to die at home. But he did not. When he was 8, Paul learned to breathe on his own for up to three minutes by gulping in air “like a fish” and swallowing it into his lungs, he told The Dallas Morning News years later. He told the newspaper that he was motivated to learn to breathe by a caregiver who offered him a puppy if he tried to learn to breathe on his own. He got his puppy, and it later became the inspiration for the title of his book, Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung. He learned to write by gripping a long, narrow tube with his teeth; at the end of the tube was a pen or pencil. By painstakingly moving his head, he could put words to paper. He managed to graduate from law school, and was a practicing attorney for more than 30 years . . . all the while being trapped (except for upwards of 3 hours a day) in his iron lung. At his death this week, there is now but one person still living in such a device.

Those of us who were children in the 1950s well remember the panic and fear that Poliomyelitis caused. As children, we had no idea of what caused it and had nightmares about catching it. During the early 1950s, 25,000 to 50,000 new cases of polio occurred each year. Jonas Salk (1914–1995) became a national hero when he allayed the fear of the dreaded disease with his polio vaccine, approved in 1955. Although it was the first polio vaccine, it was not to be the last; Albert Bruce Sabin (1906–1993) introduced an oral vaccine in the United States in the 1960s that replaced Salk’s. (The main difference between the two vaccines was that Salk’s - the first - was made with a “killed” virus and administered by tiny needle pricks on the upper arm, while Sabin’s was made with a live though weakened [attenuated] virus and was administered orally via a sugar cube). By the 1970s, Poliomyelitis was essentially eradicated . . . along with the post-war era’s other monster pediatric stay-home-from-school issues: mumps, measles and chickenpox. Today, those 70 years and older have memories of staying home from school; of spots; of having to stay in darkened rooms and calamine lotion; of “chipmunk cheeks” and the possibility of lethal sequelae (side effects) such as a brain infection called encephalitis, which causes it to swell. And then there was chicken-pox, which caused unbelievable pruritus (eternal itching) and necessitated keeping one’s nails very, very short. Some of us still bear its tiny scars . . . especially on the arms, legs and cheeks.

Although these mostly childhood diseases were finally brought under control because of vaccines - Salk, Sabin and “MMR” (mumps-measles-rubella) - the science behind them fired up debates that continue to this day. Why? Partly because many post “Baby Boom Generation” folks (and their children and grandchildren) don’t know drek from shinola about history; they simply have little or no knowledge of these childhood diseases, and claim to have “knowledge” (gained largely through mis- and disinformation spread by social media) that vaccines are a hoax, science itself is a hoax; that when a governmental body or agency mandates children to be immunized before attending school this is a breach of parental authority . . . or part of a Zionist conspiracy (remember: both Salk and Sabin were Jewish) or the CDC is a mere lapdog of the liberals . . . or a thousand other things. Here in Florida, our Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, M.D. recently said in a letter that parents at an elementary school with confirmed measles cases can decide whether their children should attend school. This simply contradicts widespread medical guidance about how to keep the disease from spreading. And spreading it is. However, in all fairness to “The Doctor from Perdition” he’s merely serving the man who hired him, Governor Ron DeSantis, with every ounce of his being. I’m sure he must have learned in his Infectious Diseases course at Harvard Med. that Measles is one of the world’s most infectious diseases. Cases and deaths have been rising across the globe, in part because health officials have struggled to vaccinate people in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and growing vaccine hesitancy.

The same goes for Polio - the disease which kept Paul Alexander imprisoned in an iron lung for more than 90% of his life. It has resurfaced . . . in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and the United States. Answering the question “why now?” isn’t totally clear. However, at base, it seems to stem from a growing percentage of the child population not being vaccinated at an early age. Then too, there is the whole “anti-vaxxer” craze in which “knowledgeable” parents refuse to have their children immunized with the aforementioned “MMR” vaccine because they have “read” that it can lead to autism. And even if you were to ask most anti-vaxxers “which studies state this?” they will be mute. Professional anti-vaxxers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (who is now running as an independent for POTUS) will site 2 studies - both of which were determined to be fatally flawed. The 2 studies, which were published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet (Published since 1823, it’s on a par with the Journal of the American Medical Association) were so egregiously, so dangerously flawed, that Wakefield (1956- ) was struck off the medical register in the United Kingdom - tantamount to losing his license to practice. And yet, even if anti-vaxxers don’t know his name and cannot identify The Lancet, they continue spouting their bilge.

I think I understand why an ever- growing number of people believe in anti-vaxx myths; they are afraid, frustrated and taught to distrust science and the so-called “intellectual elite.” What I cannot fathom are the creators and perpetrators of all these dangerous myths; what’s behind their willful perfidy? Is it for political gain? Is it for profit or ego enhancement? Or is it for picking off “low-hanging fruit” on the tree of society, in order to eventually fell the tree itself?

It is a pity that a significant percentage of the so-called “enlightened” populace are anti-science . . . in the name of personal liberty or religious freedom. I think of Paul Alexander who, if he’d only been born a few years later, would likely have received a Salk vaccine and would never have had to live out his life in an iron lung. What he was able to accomplish despite this multi-ton millstone that kept him alive is a story for the ages . . . and hopefully a source of inspiration for us all.

When it looks like all is up,
Keep a-going’!
Drain the sweetness from the cup,
Keep a-agoin’!
See the wild birds on the wing,
Hear the bells that sweetly ring,
When you feel like singin’ - SING —
Keep a-going’!