PA Polio Survivors Network Information and Inspiration for All Polio Survivors and Their Families Serving the Keystone State and Beyond www.papolionetwork.org

May 2020 Our Mission: To Be in Service Providing Information to Polio Survivors, Post Polio Support Groups, Survivor's Families and their Caregivers.

As the world once again realizes what it is to experience the fear of a new and frightening virus, polio has been in the news all around us. Both the International Center for Polio Education and Post-Polio Health International have been providing interesting historical information.

With so much polio history front and center in our news, we found ourselves more and more curious about the “unsung” heroes of the eradication efforts. Dr. David Bodian, PhD, MD and Dr. Isabel Morgan, PhD are less known but were truly instrumental in Dr. Jonas Salk’s ability to create the famous vaccine carrying his name. There will be “unsung” heroes in the COVID19 journey. Only time will tell how long it takes their stories to be told. All over the US, polio survivors and our families watched the re-introduction of The American Experience, PBS documentary: The Polio Crusade. One night wasn’t enough. With thanks to PBS, we’ve brought you the history of that film and easy access to the video. . We now have three “casual” video conversations Easily available on our website. The first was an overall information session completed with Brian Tiburzi, the Executive Director of Post-Polio Health International. The second is an extensive interview with Historian and Professor Dr. Daniel Wilson, PhD: Polio, Coronavirus, Flu and Fear Our third interview, is an informative and uplifting half hour with Primary Care Physician Dr. Marny Eulberg, MD: I’m in Pain. Is it ALWAYS a result of our Polio? Dr. Eulberg helps us understand how we can effectively approach our physicians

Continued . . . . with Post-Polio resource information and why in many areas it’s difficult to find a rehabilitative physician (physiatrist).

Both Dr. Eulberg and Dr. Wilson are polio survivors who bring their own personal journey and experience into their dedication to serve others.

You can find these interviews in the Post-Polio Health International section of our website (under Post-Polio Syndrome). www.papolionetwork.org/post-polio-health-international

Whether in the US or abroad, May is the month we celebrate Mothers. Survivor Diane Huff learned early on that her mother’s passion to care for children with disabilities of all kinds was a gift she would carry with her all throughout her life. She knows in her heart that We Never Walk Alone.

Stay well, and we quote the now famous line: “We’re all in this together”

Continued . . . 2 Dr. David Bodian, PhD, MD Dr. David Bodian, was a medical scientist and teacher whose work helped lay the groundwork for both the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1910, Bodian attended the University of Chicago receiving both his PhD and MD (1937). His earlier contribution was to the method of staining nerve tissue. He joined the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1942. His noted colleagues, who also studied poliomyelitis, were Howard A. Howe and Isabel M. Morgan. (1)(2)

Dr. David Bodian, PhD, MD He joined the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins in 1939 to teach and do research and received an additional appointment to the faculty of the School of Public Health three years later. In the 1940's and 1950's, Dr. Bodian and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins did much of the research that established that the polio virus was, in fact, three distinct viruses - Type I, Type II and Type III. The distribution percentages of (82.1%, 10.2%, 7.7% respectively) found in the early samples of the late 40s held true. Bodian demonstrated that the poliovirus was transmitted through the mouth (oral route) and digestive tract to the bloodstream and then to the nerves. This was counter to the long-held idea that the virus entered the nose and went directly to the nerves. (1)(2)

Bodian’s Legacy “Dr. Bodian is the unsung hero of polio and PPS. It was he who discovered that there are three types of poliovirus. By performing scores of autopsies on animals and people who had polio, Bodian also uncovered the path that the poliovirus followed – from the intestines, to the lymph nodes and into the blood – that ultimately ended with infection of your neurons. Bodian’s discovery that the poliovirus entered the blood before it entered the neurons made a polio vaccine possible. Autopsies also allowed David Bodian to determine that the poliovirus damaged neurons’ protein factories, as well as just how many neurons on average were damaged and killed during an attack. This work revealed that the main event of poliovirus infection was not myelitis – not an inflammation of spinal cord motor neurons – but an encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. In every case of polio Bodian studied, paralytic and “non-paralytic,” he saw a consistent pattern of damage to brain neurons. Bodian’s findings revealed that In all cases of polio “an encephalitis exists whether symptoms are present or not”. (3) “His lab also introduced the use of the chimpanzee as the animal best suited for experimentation because the species had a greater sensitivity to the poliovirus.

Continued . . . 3 Unsung Heroes (continued)

Bodian was involved in research that concluded that the poliovirus multiplied within parts of the brain as well as the spinal cord. His studies published during the 1940s showed that monkeys that appeared not be affected by polio may have had as much nerve damage as those who did but that the distribution of the destroyed motor neurons were too scattered to show clinically-evident functional loss. His histopathologic study of 24 human brains of those who died from acute poliomyelitis showed that all had damage or lesions in the brain, but with great variation in the severity of the involvement. The same centers were involved in almost all cases. The severest lesions were found in the brain stem.”(2) The Vaccine The experiments carried out by Dr. Bodian, Dr. Howard Howe and Dr. Isabel Morgan at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health established that an effective polio vaccine must have antibodies to fight all three viruses. The researchers went on to develop a vaccine that protected monkeys against polio and a vaccine used in an early inoculation project that raised the antibody levels of children. A full professor since 1957, he was director of the department of anatomy from then until 1976 and was professor of neurobiology and professor of anatomy when he reached emeritus status in 1977. David Bodian died in 1992 at the age of 82. (1)

Sources: (1) www.nytimes.com/1992/09/22/obituaries/david-bodian-82-leading-force-in-development-of-polio-vaccines (2) www.polioplace.org/people/david-bodian-phd-md (3) The Polio Paradox (Richard L. Bruno, PhD) p. 34

Dr. Isabel Morgan, PhD The daughter of two accomplished biologists (her father won a Nobel Prize in 1933), Dr. Isabel Morgan was an early and important player in the race to find a polio vaccine. “Isabel Morgan is really one of the unsung heroes of the polio fight,” says author David Oshinsky. “She was a brilliant researcher.” (1) Receiving her A.B. from Stanford University in 1932, she pursued her interest in bacteriology and received an M.A. from Cornell University in 1936 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1938, earning a PhD in Dr. Isabel Morgan, PhD bacteriology, Morgan worked at the Rockefeller Institute for six years before moving to a top-notch lab at Johns Hopkins where she joined David Bodian's poliomyelitis laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. (2) Continued . . . 4 Unsung Heroes (continued . . . ) There, with March of Dimes funding, her team strove to immunize monkeys against polio. At the time, most other prominent virologists believed a vaccine could only be achieved using a live virus, but Morgan thought otherwise. After five years of work, her team became the first to successfully inoculate monkeys with a killed-virus vaccine. Morgan’s research looked incredibly promising to those hoping for a human vaccine, but in 1949, at the height of her career, Morgan surprised the scientific community by leaving polio research behind forever. Morgan reportedly told friends that she quit the field because she was afraid of the next step: testing the vaccine on human children. Like many American women in the years after World War II, much of her energy went into being a homemaker for her husband and stepson. In Morgan’s case, this may have been a serious blow to the scientific community. “She was probably a year or two ahead of Jonas Salk in the race for a vaccine,” says Oshinsky. “Had she stayed the course, there’s a good chance today we’d be talking about the Morgan vaccine and not the Salk vaccine.” Morgan’s Legacy Dr. Morgan spent the following years as a homemaker and stepmother, also working for 11 years at the Westchester County Department of Laboratory Research. After her stepson died in a plane crash in 1960, Dr. Morgan earned a masters degree in biostatistics and consulted at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in New York City. She died in 1996. “The important thing to remember about her is that the science of polio was the science of building blocks,” says Oshinsky. “It wasn’t just Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. Other people did so much of the research that these two scientists built upon.” Sources: (1) www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/polio-bio-morgan/ (2) www.polioplace.org/people/isabel-merrick-morgan-phd

Leaders in the effort against polio were honored at the opening of the Polio Hall of Fame on January 2, 1958. From the left: Thomas Rivers, Charles Armstrong, John Paul, Thomas Francis, Jr., Albert Sabin, Joseph Melnick, Isabel Morgan, Howard Howe, David Bodian, Jonas Salk, Eleanor Roosevelt and Basil O’Connor Photo Credit: Wikpedia 5 “In the summer of 1950 fear gripped the residents of Wytheville, Virginia. Movie theaters shut down, baseball games were cancelled and panicky parents kept their children indoors — anything to keep them safe from an invisible invader. Outsiders sped through town with their windows rolled up and bandanas covering their faces. The ones who couldn’t escape the perpetrator were left paralyzed, and some died in the wake of the devastating and contagious virus. Polio had struck in Wytheville. The town was in the midst of a full-blown epidemic. That year alone, more than 33,000 Americans fell victim — half of them under the age of ten. AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents The Polio Crusade, a one-hour documentary from filmmaker Sarah Colt (Geronimo, RFK) that 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. Based in part on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky, The Polio Crusade features interviews with historians, scientists, polio survivors, and the only surviving scientist from the core research team that developed the Salk vaccine, Julius Youngner. “Daddy and Mama took everything Sonny owned, all of his clothes, his bed, his chest of drawers, and he had a fabulous comic book collection. They took everything out to the middle of the garden and they made a pile and burned everything he owned. They were told to do that, so we would not get it,” recalls Anne Crockett-Stark, who was just seven years old when her brother fell ill during Wytheville’s polio epidemic. The victims found an unlikely champion in New York lawyer Basil O’Connor. His innovative public relations campaign transformed polio - a devastating, but relatively rare disease - into a nationwide cause. He rallied the American public to fight a war against polio. In 1928, O’Connor inherited the leadership of a polio rehabilitation center from his law partner — future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As the nation reeled from the economic trauma of the Great Depression, O’Connor faced a pressing challenge: funding. He took an unlikely new approach, turning to the public for donations. Rather than relying on wealthy philanthropists, O’Connor asked every person to contribute what small change they could. His pleas struck a chord with Americans — within days, envelopes stuffed with change flooded the White House mailroom, and “The March of Dimes” was born. Basil O’Connor made a pledge to provide care for every polio patient in America, and to invest in scientific research to create a vaccine that would end the disease forever. One young researcher caught O’Connor’s attention, a scientist whose

continued . . . 6 The Polio Crusade (continued . . .) sense of urgency for a vaccine matched his own: Dr. Jonas Salk, the director of the virus research program at the University of Pittsburgh. During World War II, Jonas Salk was part of a government effort to develop an influenza vaccine. He believed he could apply the same killed virus approach to polio. But established researchers scoffed at Salk’s theory and dismissed his methods. A bitter feud arose between Salk and his leading rival, Albert Sabin, an established polio researcher at the University of Cincinnati who was working on his own live virus vaccine. The two men were unrelenting in their pursuit of a vaccine, but it was Salk who would introduce his formula first. On April 26, 1954, at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia, the Salk vaccine field trials began. It was the largest public health experiment in American history — no one was certain it was safe, or whether it could provide effective protection against the crippling disease. By June 1954, nearly two million school children in forty- four states had taken part. On April 12, 1955, almost a year since the end of the field trials, the Salk vaccine was ruled “safe, effective, and potent.” Within just a few years of being licensed, the Salk vaccine decreased the number of polio cases in the United States by fifty percent. By the early 1960s, the number of Americans contracting polio fell to a few thousand annually. “This vaccine vindicated twenty years of giving dimes, twenty years of volunteering. It was a victory for millions of faceless people who had done what they could to end the scourge of polio,” says David Oshinsky in the film. “The story of the polio crusade pays tribute to a time when Americans banded together to conquer a terrible disease,” says AMERICAN EXPERIENCE executive producer Mark Samels. “The result was a medical breakthrough that saved countless lives, and had a pervasive impact on American philanthropy that continues to be felt today.” Sources: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/polio/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/polio/#part01

If the video is no longer available by direct PBS website link (above), it is available for purchase in DVD format from both Amazon and PBS. 7 The Polio Crusade – from An American Experience (continued)

For National Radio Day, a group broadcasting from a CBS Dr. David Bodian, Dr. Jonas E. Salk, Dr. Thomas Francis, and microphone at the First International Poliomyelitis Conference, Dr. Thomas M. Rivers (in coats facing camera) 1948. Isabel Morgan, center, and David Bodian, far right, being briefed on telecast report for poliomyelitis vaccine. were influential polio researchers. Source: NYU Health Sciences Library Source: Hopkins Medical Archives

We Never Walk Alone Diane Huff September 1944 Carpenter Street, Philadelphia, PA

Until I was eight years old my development was probably quite normal. One morning, shortly before my ninth birthday, I had trouble getting my shoes on, but eventually I did and went off to school with this thought from my mother – “If you have any trouble during school, go to the office”. I was in 3A, Miss Bull was my teacher and she was about to give us a math test, when I thought, “aha – pain”. I can remember sitting on the long, cold, marble bench in the hall outside the principal’s office and being in a state of fright, knowing full well I was in over my head. The only thing to support my doubts was my mother’s “If”. I remember being taken to our family doctor, who said something to the effect that I was seeking attention. That night, the pain engulfed my whole body and my mother was in a state of panic. By morning I had fallen asleep wrapped around a chair, with my head on the window ledge. It was World War II. My father was gone and my mother was alone with four children. That same day, my Grandfather came to drive me to the Naval Hospital. This was during the war and because my father was a sailor, I was entitled to use this service. I’ll never forget seeing those beautiful buildings on the grounds of the

Continued . . . 8 We Never Walk Along (continued . . .) Naval Hospital of Philadelphia. All around us were Navy Waves (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and sailors marching. Talk about pain, I remember being given a spinal tap and my mother becoming faint. The doctor told her to “put your head down between your legs”. One word from that day is very clear. POLIO. Polio was the one word that sent fear into every mother’s heart. I was one of thousands of Main Hospital Building, Naval Hospital children that contracted polio in 1944. The lives Philadelphia. Library of Congress photo of my brothers and sister, my parents and myself were forever changed with that one word. Immediately, the neighbors withdrew because of “fear”. My father was restricted to his base because of “fear”. It was a fear that my entire family carried the disease. I was taken by ambulance, far from my home, to a hospital for crippled children and placed in an isolation ward. THAT was where I discovered that the pit of fear has no bottom. I was never so alone in my life. I wanted desperately to be hugged, but the nurses seemed afraid to touch us. They did only what was necessary. As a result, for way too long, I lived out of touch with the rest of the world. My only steady companion was the swishing sound of a nearby respirator. When I finally did get to see my mother, she was dressed like a mummy . . . certainly not like a Mom. She was not allowed to cross a certain mark on the floor. She could not touch me and I could not hold on to her. To this day, I can still remember being treated with “hot packs” from my neck to my toes, with what was then seen as an accepted form of torturous medical care. One day, when I was determined to be no longer contagious, I was taken to another ward, filled with children and teens. I felt like I was alive again! The teenagers would laugh and sing all the time, my mother could visit more often and she could even sit on my bed! Then, one day I was allowed to stand. The day my mother came to take me from the hospital, I thought I was going home. But, in fact I was on my way to the Home of the Merciful Saviour, an institution for crippled children in Philadelphia. I lived there for many months. It may be difficult for some people to understand how an institution could offer love and security, but I can honestly say that it was a stable time of my life. It also opened my eyes to the image of the person behind a deformed, crippled human body. By the time I turned nine, I was an adult. I was forced to learn and accept the fact that parents can give away their children and somehow justify it in their own minds. Sadly, I saw it happen to the children around me.

Continued . . . 9 We Never Walk Alone (continued) Through those months of recovery, I always felt comfortable in the hospital chapel. The one thing that the institution did not prepare me for was how the “outside” world would accept me. My disabled body was always in full view. I have questioned God a lot throughout my life. Looking back, I see that somehow I became aware that He was with me the entire time of my recovery. The other children were comfortable with me Photo credit: hmsschool.org and I was able to give care to those in pain. Little did I know that this gift from that experience would become a way of life. After more than 5 months of being hospitalized, I was finally able to go home. My father, now stationed in the South Pacific, would not be home until the following year. It was time for me to go back to school but I was unable to walk that far. I remember my mother putting me in a stroller and wheeling me the few blocks to our neighborhood school. She always got me there early, before the other children arrived. When I look back, I realize just how strong my mother truly was. Her oldest child was hospitalized far from home and would be permanently disabled from polio. All the while, she cared for me, my three younger siblings and other children with disabilities, with a love and devotion that would continue well after my father returned home. One day, my mother received a message. “The war is over. Tell the kids I’m coming home.” Although it took a long time for it to actually happen, I’ll never forget the night my father returned home. While the other kids ran down the stairs to greet him, I wasn’t far behind. I married John in 1956 and was blessed with four wonderful children of my own. I will always be handicapped. I will always be a survivor of polio. I will always have two legs that do not match. Now, I am dealing with Post-Polio Syndrome. My weak leg is weaker and the prognosis is not good. But that being said, I am not alone. I am not defined by this horrific disease that people all over the world have feared for centuries. Diane as “Popcorn” the Polio is not gone, it is still active in third world clown. Bringing joy to children countries. Although there has not been a reported disabled with case in the US since 1979, my real fear is how easily muscular that could change with the unsubstantiated ‘fears’ of dystrophy. vaccinations that has emerged here in the US and abroad. 10 How are Polio Survivors Responding to COVID-19? A PBS Radio Interview with Dr. Richard L. Bruno, HD, PhD

Listen HERE

You can also find this interview in the Encyclopedia of Polio and PPS.

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