Doomed to Fail - Ep 162: Sugar Cubes for the Masses - The Polio Vaccine

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Hello 2025! Let's start talking about all the work that went into the Polio vaccine & our current mostly polio-free world! From an endemic disease that had been around for all time to the resurgence in the 1900s, Polio was a 'childhood' disease that people just expected to happen. Until our dear FDR was afflicted, and the March of Dimes changed philanthropy forever. Learn about fundraising, testing, and the two different polio vaccines this week with us on Doomed to Fail!  Some sources:Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/polio-an-american-story_david-m-oshinsky/278057/item/10370684/#edition=3607391&idiq=3905481https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/health/robert-f-kennedy-jr-polio-vaccines.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/1921/09/16/archives/fd-roosevelt-ill-of-poliomyelitis-brought-on-special-car-from.html Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A. 019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Happy 2025, Taylor. How are you? Woo-hoo. I'm good. How are you? I'm good. It is a beautiful, it's been a beautiful December in January and so far. January in Austin but today's like tonight's the first night where it's going to get freezing and I saw that in my in my app because I have it on there and it's going to be cold tomorrow right yeah yeah we're getting get into the 20s I just finished wrapping up all the

plants outside and oh wow faucets and doing all that so wow wow um yeah it's nice here well I was in Puerto Rico for Christmas and New Year's and it was so hot and humid oh my God I'm sure so I'm happy to be someplace where it's like a little bit cold and dry can you explain what the electricity situation was there yes so in well let me introduce ourselves no right hello welcome to doom to fail we bring you history as most notorious disasters epic failures twice a week i'm taylor joined by fars and we are back from our christmas break and um yeah no the electric grid in porto rico is not doing very well essentially like the power went out twice while we were there the first night just went off in the middle of the night in san juan and then the second time

on New Year's Eve, it went off on the entire island. Is it kind of like the situation with Texas where it just wasn't built for the scale that it's operating at? I don't think so. I think it needs to be repaired and updated. I don't know if that's the same thing. Yeah. It's not like the scale. It's like the, just like it's old, you know?

Oh, I see you were saying. Yep, yep, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it was fine. Like a small blackout is. I was kind of fun, you know, you just like, if it's one night, it's nice.

You get to like light candles and you don't have to watch TV and you can just like chill out and like it's nice. And then like we went and we went out to a bar and then the lights went on. Everybody was so excited and that's fun. Like a blackout for like, that's good. But then like we also know people in different parts of Puerto Rico where during Hurricane Maria, they didn't have electricity for like 168 days. Yeah, that's not. That is not fun.

Not fun. My funnest memory from L.A., well, one of my funest memories from L.A. It was when we had a blackout, remember? And we all went down to the Mexican restaurant. Oh, yeah, that was during the day. It was during the day. Yeah, it was during the work day. And we're like, we never took off during the day.

And we just said, like, let's just go ahead, margaritas. It was fun. When I worked in Glendale at the next job, the Glendale grid is absolute shit. And it went down twice in the summer that I worked there. Like three months, the all the power went out twice. At one time, I was looking out the window.

I was in a meeting. And I watched a electric pole explode. And then all the lights went out. that's kind of freaky I was like this place is garbage I think I saw an electric pole explode here in my house like I don't actually see it but I saw sparks flying out of this window behind this window it's just like tree so you can't really see anything but I saw the sparks it's like that's probably dangerous it's probably bad yeah good um but it was but it was super fun and I had a great time and um the kids had a great time and we're just adjusting to being back

on this time zone onto the new year which feels like it's like I could have had two more weeks of this we wouldn't find yeah

I don't really feel ready to like be like oh I'm thinking about my goals of 2025 yet you know I'm kind of like I don't know

I just kind of rolled into this maybe when I like go back to work and people want to like talk about stuff again but like my husband has something where you get back to work

on Monday and you're like I don't remember what I do you know I did kind of and this sounds really stupid I did kind of try and work a little bit like on a daily basis just like like I totally didn't forget what the motions of working were and so the the punch in the face of a first full day back wasn't as hard so yeah no I brought my computer on vacation I was like you know just in case something happens and I didn't open it once so part of myself that was a good move yeah bratty for that um sweet so today we're going to do an episode that you have been researching and going to be presenting. So what do we

dive it into? Cool. I know that you were like, if we don't have anything for this week, we don't have to do it. But I've been reading this book for like my whole life. It seems like, I read a really boring ass long book about this. So I was like, I need this out of my brain so I can do something else. The topic isn't boring, but the book was very long and boring, if that makes sense. Okay. So I'm going to talk about a disease. disease that is almost 100% eradicated, but was a really, really big deal about 100 years ago. Polio? Polio.

Yep. I read polio an American story, long and boring, but got the job done. I learned a lot about it. And I have some New York Times articles that I will share as well. Do you know anything about polio? I know that the last human being to have to live in an iron lunger. because of polio just died and he was like a lawyer he looked really rough he was like in really rough shape um he wrote with his mouth like a pen in his mouth and yeah he looked like he had a

really i would have rather just been thrown into the ocean it's rough there's a thing i didn't write this down but there is a thing where people who had polio are very successful not like everybody who lives in an iron lung as a lawyer, but like they tend to be more educated and more successful than their peers because they had to try harder, you know, to like get attention. What else are you going to do? You can't do anything when you're in an iron lung. Yeah.

So, yeah, wild. So let's talk about what polio is and what it does. FDR, of course, fundraising and then vaccines about it. So polio is called poliomyelic. latest. It is a virus, and most cases are totally asymptomatic, and it only happens in humans. So you get it, you don't even notice, and you move on. There's three types of polio. You have to get each type separately to get the immunity to all three, but then you have the immunity to all three. And a lot of times, you would never have any idea that you had it for most of history. It's been around forever. it will give you maybe a headache or a fever, like a little one. But if you start to feel that your neck hurts, you can't move your neck, you start to feel like your limbs are aching, maybe you can't move your legs.

Like that is when it gets really, really bad. And it has gone probably to your brainstem, and that's what causes paralysis. But that is a very, very small percent. Like I said, it's like 1% of people who get it, get that paralysis. And another thing is that they learned. later is it actually gets worse as you get older so you can like live with what you have but then it's going to get worse later so it kind of always stays with you and then a very very small amount end in death but not that many paralysis then like everything goes paralyzed depends it can be

like your legs it can be like your whole body that's why you would need the iron lung it's it can it can vary did fDR have polio probably maybe okay so it's a poop disease it has to do with getting dirty water in your mouth so it's been around like i said forever and for most of time it's been endemic which means everybody would get it when we're another or another it's possible that there's an ancient Egyptian tablet that shows a carving a drawing of someone who has it because they have like smaller legs for their body and it was something that was just like always around but no one knew what it was and they probably were like it's the mom's fault or a witch or something you know for all of time they in the west it was found

as a disease in 1789 by a doctor named michael underwood and the virus was identified in 1909 by a doctor named carl lans Snyder so very new that we even like knew that it was a virus and also very new that we even knew that there are viruses we don't know about viruses until like 1916 it's not crazy yeah kind of makes sense you just like didn't know what why people were getting sick yeah I mean it was in bacteria only like a little bit before that

yeah I thought it was like who the fuck knows that's why that's why I'm like we are so lucky for the time that we live in whenever he's like oh my God it's the worst time ever and it's like it is the best time ever like no human would have wanted to survive any other time

but this time right now yeah it doesn't mean we can't criticize it and want better but it does mean But that's the thing In the future They're going to look back And be like Can you believe

These animals lived in 2025 Like Absolutely How could they survive? Yeah Oh my God How gross But I feel grateful to have

Air conditioning And not have polio And to wash my hands You can just washing your hands Feels so nice Doesn't it? It does I mean

I enjoy being clean And I feel like I'm going to talk about it But for a long time People were not clean No definitely No.

So, but it's interesting. So wait till you like to that part because it actually has to do, the cleanliness has to do with the polio. So everyone's in a while, someone ends up paralyzed, someone dies from this disease. No one knows what it is. And that's just the way it is for thousands of years of human time. Then in the early 20th century, something interesting happens, especially in America. And this goes to what we were just saying is that there's a ton of polio outbreaks. more than ever before.

And there are towns that get totally overrun. So, like, you go to school, and then two weeks later, you know, five of the kids in your class are dead. And three of them are paralyzed. It just, like, is terrible. No one knows what to do. No one knows where it's coming from. Their towns are going to, like, complete lockdown. The town of Hickory, North Carolina, where my father-in-law works right now and goes there, like, every week to be a doctor.

But they were called Polio City, and they would send polio patients. there because so many people there had it and they're trying to figure out like what is going on and some families like all the kids die you know like 13 kids 11 of them die just like terrible stories and it's getting worse and worse and no one can really figure out why it's hitting middle and upper class neighborhoods more than poor neighborhoods which is also confusing because they have this idea that you're getting sick because of dirt and germs and something like that is starting to be a thing but they're like why is this hitting the nicer neighborhoods and not the worst neighborhoods. If you were further away from the city,

you are more likely to get it, which is weird because cities were gross. Are you going to answer why? I am. Okay. Do you think you know why? No, it's the poor and rich thing is incredibly confusing if it's a poop disease. It's confusing, but I'll tell you why in one second.

So in 1916, there's an outbreak where over 20,000 people died. The Roosevelt family, they had all five of their kids. They, FDR sent them out of New York to Campobello, which is their estate in Canada with their vacation home, to get out of it. By 1949, there are like 40,000 cases a year, and it's growing. The 1949 summer was super hot, and it seemed to be getting worse. And it's not the worst thing statistically to happen to children. More children die from cancer. More children die from accidents than from polio during this time.

But it's still alarming and it's alarming when it comes because it comes fast and people don't know, nothing you can do about it. There's no cure, you know? So the buildup to this is Americans being more focused on hygiene and health care. So our health care system now, like we just said, isn't great, but shit tonne better than it used to be because it was nothing. It was like, no one knows what a German is. in Europe, people are just starting to have laboratories and, like, try to see things. It's all very, very new.

You know, like, medical school was like, I don't know, hang out with this doctor for a week and learn how to read Latin and then you're a doctor. Were they also, like, barbers? Barbers also doctors? Yeah. It was like, oh, that's guys, I take this dirty razor and cut off your cyst.

Whatever. Gross. So, in the early 1900s, the Rockefeller started the first lab in the United States. States, but there was plenty you couldn't see. So polio is a virus called a filter virus because you couldn't see it with the first microscopes. It would go through the filter that they had. It was too small to see. So you couldn't even see it. You couldn't see viruses until 1915. But the hygiene part is super interesting. It's a little bit about like consumerism and ads because like now, you

know, everyone's like, oh, take this for gut health, take this for this. It's always going to be someone who's like trying to get you to buy something to be healthy in like a million different ways but in the early 1900s in the United States this hard to do things like sell the strain and they did that by telling people that they shouldn't have bad breath anymore which I'm like 100% for that that makes sense but it was like these commercial companies that were in charge of like selling soap and selling things to get people to to be cleaner and then it had the public health benefits of people you know washing their hands and putting up

screens on their windows and picking up trash on the street, things like that, just like and that resolved a lot of problems. Another thing that they had was like DDT was being sprayed everywhere just to like eliminate the chance to see bugs and all of those things. So a lot of stuff was happening that was objectively good. You know, people are getting cleaner. But the problem is and this is the problem. This is the middle class versus city thing. If you don't get exposed to polio when you are a baby, when you can develop the immunity and you get it later, it's going to be worse. Does that make sense? So that was the problem is that in cities and places that were less clean, you would be

exposed to it really early on, and it was usually nothing. Nothing would happen. You get immune. You wouldn't even know what had happened. But then all of a sudden, there's places where everything is disinfected, so you're not going to get polio when you're a kid. So if you get exposed to it later, it's much. much worse. So that's why if someone comes into the town, you're like little 1950s American

town with polio. That's why a lot of the kids are going to get it all of a sudden. Is that also the logic behind chicken pox that like you need to get it young so that it's not as bad if you get it older? Because if you get it late, it's like shingles, isn't it? Yeah. Which is really bad apparently. Yeah. It's supposed to be awful. So yeah, kind of like that. So the younger you are, the better if you get it. So the people aren't getting. didn't get anymore and that's why it's hitting those nicer neighborhoods got it um they also up and

you know they also would blame immigrants of course you know blaming like the Italians for for bringing it over and they wait this is what 1900s yeah like this is like 1940 wait Italians weren't white in the 1940s I know that's that was my point I know it doesn't just hating the immigrant who cares where they come from so they would like blame them and then And they also said that, like, it didn't hurt African-American kids. Like, they weren't getting it when, like, the reality is that they lived in worse neighborhoods because of America and they would get it early and then they didn't have the same problem. And then also there's not a lot of data about those neighborhoods anyway. So that's probably, I mean, that's not true, obviously, you know.

Do we know that, though? Because isn't it like there are some diseases that are racially? There are, but polio is not one of them. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Polio just hits humans. and it hits them the same, regardless of anything else.

So if you do get polio and you need help and you do become paralyzed, a lot of people would be wearing leg braces, you know, like FDR, have a cocaine, have crutches, have like the little crutches on your arms. Some therapies help a little bit like hydrotherapy and massage to try to get your muscles moving again, but there's no cure. You really can't come back from it. You know, there's things where like, you know, you can get one shoe that has a little bit of a heel, so you don't have much of a limp, but you'll always have.

like a little bit of paralysis and a limp if you have it. Yeah, did it Forrest Gump have it? I don't think so. But he is not a real person and he was okay afterwards. So he couldn't have had polio. He could have been real. We don't know that he wasn't. Okay, I don't know.

We can look it up later. So the iron lung that you said, do you know what the iron lung does? It breathes for you because I assume that your diaphragm is paralyzed. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. So it is called a... it's so it's a negative ventilator so you like lay in it and it sucks the air out so your body

contracts and then it puts air in and your body expands so it like breathes for you by moving your body and then the opposite of that is a positive ventilator which are like the ones that we know about like when someone's on a ventilator because of COVID it's a positive ventilator where they're putting air into you and like pushing it out from inside of you rather than like pulling it away from you out from the outside but it's the same idea to breathe for you make sense so now it's the 1920s and polio again isn't the most important thing but it is scary and fGR has just lost the election for vice president of the united states so he was like on that ticket they lost he's trying to figure out what to do next and he goes to a boy scout camp and there's a picture of him standing

at the Boy Scout camp and like he looks like everything is fine then that's the last photo of him standing this is in 1921 he goes to campobello which is the Roosevelt's house in Canada and there's his show that was about first ladies that was on showtime and I watched the first episode and I was like this is stupid but they like were so exact on like all the stereotypes like Betty Ford was like constantly drinking and Michelle Obama was like weird and then the Eleanor one that they had Eleanor and Louis Howe who was one of their advisors playing golf on the front lawn and like FDR comes in and he's like drinking a beer and like he's in his pajamas and he's like oh I feel so strong you know whatever the story is that like FGR spent all day with the kids they went out on boats they had a great time he got back home they wanted to do this race which is like you know those families that are like very active yeah it's the Kennedy types yeah so he's like oh they're just race so the race was like a two mile run and then a swim, and then a swim back and then another two-mile run. So he does that race with his kids, and he comes back and he's wearing his bathing suit,

his bathing suit's wet, and he sits in the house for a little bit, checking his mail and his wet bathing suit, and he doesn't feel well, and then he goes to bed early, and the next day his legs can't move. So the question then is, like, what did he have? He was 39 years old, and people think that he has. polio, right? And a couple things here, like, there's stuff recently that says it could be Gian Barra syndrome, which is like another thing, but it doesn't really matter because the work he did was for the charity for polio. So like that's, who cares now? What he really had? You know?

I'm like, I don't. But if he had polio, the reason that he could have gotten polio is because of his isolation, because when he was a kid, his mother was like, you are my precious gift to the world baby and you will not be around other people so he lived the super isolated life and then when he went to like college as a teen he got every disease because he had never been around people before let me ask you a mother can you i've been thinking about this a lot for various reasons but as a mom like can you understand it in an intellectual level like why some parents become that way that I must protect you at all costs for everything. You know, it's funny, I have cousins.

I have a cousin who she's married to a guy and they're both like surgeons. And they have, they came to my parents' house with one of their babies. And well, not a baby, I guess like a toddler or something. The toddler wanted like an apple. The toddler holds the apple as it's cut in half and drops on the ground on the carpet. And then the dad just picks. it up, rubs it on his leg, and gives it back to the kid. It was like, yeah, like, he needs to get sick.

Like, that's how, this is life. He has to get, like, whatever. I'm not going to seal him in a vacuum seal. But, like, what is it about those kinds of parents that do, do that? I'd never been able to, like, understand it. I feel like it's a little bit of, like, disinformation and wanting to control things. So, like, my father-in-law is a doctor, and you could, like, have your leg falling off

and he'd be, like, you're fine. You know, like, he's not. he's not he's exactly like that like a doctor will be like who cares like you're fine like you're not dying are you dying no you're fine and I think people who like don't know what's going on like he has he's told us that he has like you know there are people who want to control every aspect of their child's life and that there's it's just like not good for them at all but I think that they want need to control something maybe something else in their life isn't working you know and they have to control something like Sarah Roosevelt was like all she had was FDR you know like she her husband died she just had this

boy and she had was money she had nothing but time and money so she was like just dedicated her life to fGR like when fgr and er got married sarah was like oh i bought you guys an apartment they're like oh my god thank you and then they were like look this apartment has a door in it that goes directly to my apartment it's the same house surprise like she's crazy you know but she also raised a president so you either raise a president or a serial killer those are your options you're to hear first yeah but um but that could be why he That could be why he got it. The doctor came to see him on that first day,

and just as a side note, the doctor sent him a bill of $600, and they were like, that feels harsh because in today's money, that's like $10,000. But no one had insurance. You didn't have that until FGR made that, you know? I didn't know that.

I didn't know FDR was the one who did that. He was one of the people who made it like a big, like you had to have it like with your job. And he made Medicare and he made Social Security and like all that. those things to help people. Yeah. It's kind of a pretty good president, huh?

Yeah, a couple good things. On September 16th, 1921, on the cover of the New York Times, there's no pictures on the cover, but it has a bunch of little stories on it. But the headline is F.D. Roosevelt's ill of polio myelitis. Brought on special car from Campa Bello, Bay of Fundy to hospital here.

Recovering, doctor says, patients stricken by infantile paralysis a month ago and use of legs affected. So initially it was called infantile paralysis because you mostly got it when you were young, probably because of that like immunity you have when you're a kid or isn't as bad as when you're a kid. So FDR does things like he buys a big part of land in Georgia, in Warm Springs, Georgia, where they have like these natural pools that's supposed to help. It doesn't really help, but it makes you feel better.

You know, those things feel nice and you're floating. Yeah, if we can all afford to buy a hot springs far back there, we'd probably do it. Yeah, so it feels better. He gets a little bit of massage that can help him maybe feel better. We also know this is where Eleanor Roosevelt really gets her stride because people are like, we need you to run for governor, we need you to be president. And ER has to go out and attend a lot of events and keep his name in people's minds and like really like be the person for the family.

But it was very hard for him, obviously. Like he was a father of five big personality, all these things. And all of a sudden he can't walk. So he spent a lot of time in wheelchairs. When he was held up by braces or by people, it was hard for him. They would do things like stand him against a railing or walk him to a podium,

and it was a lot of effort for him to move his legs at all. He, when he was working with the Warm Springs, he worked with his law partner, Basil O'Connor, to start a Warm Springs Foundation to help people who had polio. Into his presidency, they changed it in 1938 to the National Foundation for Infant Paralysis, and they're about to change the way philanthropy works sort of like forever for the world.

So the depression is kind of in here and that's going to make it a little bit different, but they're going to start with like small dollar donations and things that people didn't do before. Like there used to literally be a community chest, which I thought was only a monopoly, you know, the community chest? Yes.

Well, you would literally just like donate to the community and then someone would be in charge of allocating that money. So you'd be like, I'm going to donate this money to this area and they'd be like, okay, well, we need it in schools today and we need it for something else tomorrow. And so like a committee would allocate it. This was like donating to a very specific cause for a very specific reason. So it starts with these huge birthday parties for FDR. And I'm laughing because do you remember when you were in charge of making all those parties across the country?

Yeah, that did not go well. There was like a book launch that Fars and I were around. And they were like, Fars, why don't you have book reading parties all across the country? And you're like, okay. And then I don't know how many of you schedules. But it was not, yeah, it was not like 30,000 like they did for or like thousands. They did for FGR. But they had huge birthday parties for him.

They raised a ton of money. His birthday is at the end of January. And they don't do a lot of research, but they do help people. There are some like racial tensions where they don't help like everybody as in places like warm springs in Georgia where, you know, It's a lot more segregated than in other places. But the main thing that the foundation does is pay medical bills for people who have polio, regardless of their income status.

So it's sort of a pay as much as you can system, but they want everybody to have the same amount of care. And they will spend in the years that that is, that polio is focused, they're going to spend like $230 million helping people get health care. So super good. They did a lot of really good stuff. Not a ton of research yet, but they do a lot of the health care. So now there's a need to expand the Federation for the Foundation for Infant Paralysis. They want to raise more money.

And an actor named Eddie Cantor suggests the March of Dimes. Have you heard of the March of Dimes? So it was kind of a play on a radio show called The March of Time, which was like a weekly show that would tell you what it was going on in the world. And they were like, everybody, if everyone mailed a dime or every kid mailed a dime to the White House, like we'd raise so much money. So once they made the first ask, it was like pandemonium at the White House. They got like hundreds and thousands of letters that had a dime in them or a quarter or a check or a dollar or all these things. And they just got like, they raised so much money with the March of Dimes. It was really, really incredible.

After Roosevelt passes away in 1946 on his what would have been his 64th birthday, the Roosevelt dime was issued. And that's why he's on every dime. these days i actually did not know that yeah before that it was like i looked it up it was like an eagle or something but now it's fDR forever so the march of so that turned the foundation to the march of dimes march of dimes had like 30 local chapters they did these really they did a lot of like really interesting marketing where they made it like a mother's issue and they were like for mothers like you're the ones who are going to need to protect our your children. So they would do these mother's marches that are really cool. So they would say, like,

so in a lot of time prepping, they send them everything they needed, they needed. They say, go into local radio shows, put out flyers, tell your friends. And on this, on FGR's birthday at the end of January, we, in your neighborhood, anyone who wants to donate money can leave the porch light on. And if they don't want to donate money, they can leave it off and you'll walk past their house and no one will be embarrassed. It won't be weird. Just every house to the porch light on, knock on the door, and they'll be ready with money. And it worked. And they raise a ton of money. that way too. It would just be so much easier to deal with.

It's not cool. There was one cute story where there's a house where all the lights were off except the porch light and they knocked on the door and they were kind of nervous and then an old blind woman answered and she was like, here's your money because she didn't need the lights on. She was blind.

But she knew the portion it was going to be on. So super cool. And it made philanthropy and it made giving something everybody could do. You know, like before this, you didn't think about, I'm going to give a dime to a organization that's going to make a big global impact. But now you could. another thing they did is the movies

in the movie theater they would ask for money and they made a shit ton of money that way too we would have like a little thing and ask them and I think that they've done that recently as well they like asked for money in the movie theater there was a movie like a short film that played before the movies that would talk about the March of Dimes

and get people to donate and one of the first ones starred a very young Nancy Reagan when she was an actress in October. She was an actress yeah so I think I thought this before but from In 1938, through the approval of the vaccine in 1955, the Foundation spent $233 million on patient care. So more than 80% of the polio patients in the United States received aid from the Mars of Dimes.

When did we get a vaccine? 1995. How long was that from when we, 1917 is when they knew it was a virus? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So nearly 40 years. Yeah.

so there are two types of polio vaccines one is live has like a live version of the virus and one is inactive it has a killed version of the virus COVID vaccine for example is an inactive vaccine it has the killed version not a live version of COVID there are two different men who made them the one you know is Jonas Salk you've heard that one right no no why would I have known that I don't know I thought everybody knew that Jonas Salk is the doctor who made the live vaccine, and Albert Sabin is the one who made the kill vaccine. Nope, opposite. Salk made the kill one. Sabin made the live one.

So Jonas Salk was born October 28, 1914 in New York. His parents were immigrants, and he was the first person in his family to really receive an education. He was Jewish, which is a big deal because it was hard to get into college. Schools had very clear limits on the number of Jewish people. would allow in. For example, Yale in 1935 had 501 applicants. 76 people were accepted and only five got in. So basically 40% of the people who applied to Yale in 1935 were Jewish and only 7% of the class that got in was Jewish. So they were like, you can't have more than that many Jewish people in this class because of racism. I don't know. So he went to CCNY, then NYU for

medical school and he worked in the flu virus and he worked in Pittsburgh and he had a list of things that he wanted to work on and he probably was just like I'm going to work on polio because I'm going to get a lot of money from the March of Dimes for this and he did he got a lot of like money for research which is fine because that's what you need right so so he did sorry he did get into no he didn't but that was just an example of like he went to NYU but just like the example of like how hard it was to get into medical school if you were Jewish. Okay, so he was like the best of the best of the best of the best

because he was okay, yeah, yeah, right. Like he didn't, he like wasn't like his regular school grades were like okay, but when he started doing like lab work, that's where he really excelled and they were like, this is where we need him. That kind of thing. Yeah, by the way, I think that should be how everything works. Like I don't get the whole, you need to be amazing at

everything. It's like, yeah, just the thing that you have natural aptitude towards like grade that. Like, why do you care how good somebody is and stuff they don't care about? Totally. I'm never going to be able to climb a rope that I can read. Why do we spend so much time learning geometry? Like, how frequently have I had to use geometry in life? While we were in Puerto Rico, our cousin's son, he's like 13, he had geometry homework,

and everybody was mad because they were like, that you're taking away from a vacation and just geometry homework. Can't believe they're teaching you homework, blah, blah, blah. But then we were on a boat. And I feel like we used geometry constantly to not have other boats. because you're like looking under their boat you're like I'm going to go this way I don't know if knowing the formulas I mean I also hate I hated like having to like do the proofs is just the worst the whole thing like all of it was the whole point like you gotta know the math stuff

because you can't have a calculator with you at all times like yeah that's stupid and I would do so much of the stuff we learned Taylor was so pointly cursive I know you love cursive what a waste of time we took classes on how to type it's like that's all we do like why do we have to take a class on anyways whatever well we had to learn how to type I mean I guess but like when we've just at this point well maybe we would have gone to careers we went into if we didn't know how to type I can't imagine how hard my life would be if I didn't know how to type but I also probably could have figured it out that's what I'm getting at did you need a whole semester

I don't think I took a whole semester and typing it wasn't like 1964 or I was like going to be a secretary even though it was a secretary for like a decade no and high school yeah like was it high school yeah I guess what in high school no in like freshman year of high school yeah we had one full semester that was like following that turtle around the screen or or you'd have the blocks full yeah you'd have to hit the letter before it hit the ground I'm always pretty impressed that I can do it without looking I couldn't tell you where the letters are but I know where they are yeah same that's pretty cool um yeah anyway yes I agree and and Jonas Salk was really good at lab work

That was where he excelled. That's where he's going to be a hero. Some things that are some facts about this kill virus vaccine. An absolute insane amount of monkeys were killed to do this. I don't like that. Insane. So just FYI. I would have much rather the humans died.

His vaccine is three shots, one for each type of polio because there are three different types of polio. There were questions with the testing that he did. A lot of it, I think, is like of the time. And a lot of it is like, yeah, I don't know. Because like some people wanted to do like half placebo, half the real polio shot. But he was like, how can I give these kids a fake shot? And then maybe they get polio later, you know, like that would be unfair. And they were like willing to, willing to risk themselves on this vaccine anyway on this trial.

Then he also did some trials in places like the D.T. Watson home for crippled children. and the Polk State School for the R-word and feeble-minded. So that's not great. What? That those people couldn't really consent, you know? Oh, you was doing testing on them. Yeah, we testing the vaccine. In the end, almost 2 million children were involved in the trials, and it worked.

It did stop people from getting polio. It did help eradicate the major outbreaks. In a 1955, it was approved. There was some issues with how he shared the recipes. So it had to be very, very specific. And so he would kind of change it every once in a while. And there was opportunity for error. And another, something that I thought you might have heard is he went on like the radio or TV or something.

And they said, who owns this vaccine? And he said, quote, well, the people, I would say, there is no patent. Could you patent the son? Which is like the whole point where he didn't make any money off of this besides. Yeah, I did know that. Yeah. So that brought up the whole thing because people were afraid of socialized medicine. of course, because they were like, but if it's for free from the government, who's going to pay

the doctors? You know, like, why can't you, you should have to go to the doctor and play three co-pays to get these three shots and all these things. But eventually the government was like, we're going to give this to the children. And they started doing it. In 195, a batch from Cutter Labs, which is a lab in California that was making the vaccine, killed 11 children because they made it wrong. So that made the testing and the just quality control a lot higher for the vaccine. Some people were upset with Salk because he never thanked them. So he kind of like let himself be like, oh, I'm just a humble lab doctor, but also carefully curated his own image. A lot of the photos of him were like in pristine labs and they were all set up before he got

there. It wasn't like him actually working. And he never won a Nobel Prize, but he did win a bunch of other awards. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter, RIP, gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom the same year. He also gave it to Martin Luther King Jr. So he also... I'd rather have the millions. I'm just going to go out on the limb and say, you can keep the award. I'd rather have the millions. Well, there were also things that like, I mean, he got plenty of money. You know, he had like fellowships that gave him money. Like, one senator was like, we should pay him $10,000 a year until he dies for all the help that he did to America's children. Like, that didn't go anywhere, but people were like, we're going to continue to give this man money because they were

excited. And he also, like, wrote books and was famous and, like, he was fine. But yes. So just a little bit about his life. He was married to Donna Lindsay until their divorce in 1968. They had three sons. He, in 1970, he married artist Francois Gio, and she was a French artist who had two kids with Picasso. So that's weird. She met Picasso when she, yeah, but she meant Picasso when she was 21, he was 61, which feels like gross. like Dr. Seuss's widow, she managed the Salk Institute for Research until her death in 2023 at age 101. Salk himself died earlier, of course, on June 23rd, 1995 at the age of 80 in La Jolla, California, which is where he did a lot of his research. And again, gorgeous.

Makes sense. Gorgeous. So Hes was the kill vaccine. The live vaccine was made by Albert Sabin. He also had March of Dimes money. He was born in a part of Russia that is now Poland on August 26, 1906. And he was a different kind of researcher, a different kind of doctor. And he really wanted the live vaccine. He thought that a live vaccine was the only one that could completely eradicate polio. He was one of the first people to see that polio could be grown in other tissue besides brain tissue

because they were doing things like injecting polio into the brains of monkeys and trying to see what would happen. But he found it could grow in other tissue and they were able to study it more. Kind of like with the Henry and a Lack stuff where like you have the tissue cultures that you can study outside of a body. And that was helpful for like make research. go quicker and save animals. So that's a good thing. Which I like. Yeah.

His vaccine is the oral one. So it's the one that you, either it's like drops or you like eat it on a sugar cube. And he was bad because the United States was like, we're fine. We have this other one. We're not going to, we don't need this one. So he went to the, he went to the USSR. And his vaccine between 1955 and 1961 was tested slash given to at least 100 million

people in the USSR, Eastern Europe, Singapore, Mexico, and the Netherlands. So it was given to people all overruled it, and it worked as well. The problem is that with a live vaccine, you can get polio from it. There is a chance of something called reversion de virulence where the little tiny bit of live polio in the vaccine becomes big, becomes back to being something that can kill you. So people did get polio from it, so it's not perfect. but it was something that was easier to produce and easier to administer.

So they used it for a very, very, very long time in the United States. They switched from the Salk vaccine to the SABIN vaccine in the 60s, and that's when they used for a really long time. He got his presidential Medal of Freedom in 1986, among many, many other awards. He also did not get a Nobel Prize. Both Sabin and Salk are in the Polio Hall of Fame in Warm Springs, Georgia, which still exists as a place to have like, FDR history. So like I said, for a long time, the live virus one was the one that was given.

Most of the world's kids are vaccinated, me, you, we took the live polio vaccine orally. They switched back to the dead one in 2000. So in 2000, they switched back to Salk's vaccine because by the late 1990s, almost all the polio United States was from the live vaccine. Does that make sense? Taylor, so we got injured. So we have polio? We had the live vaccine, which gives us, like, that tiny bit of polio that makes you immune to it. You're immune to it because your body retains it. Yeah.

Like, once you, once you, no, once you get it, your body learns how to fight it and then keeps that memory forever. Interesting. Yes, we got the live polio vaccine. And the problem was now the only way people were getting it was from the vaccine. It was no longer something that was like out. So me and you could have gotten real polio because of this? Yes. Mm-hmm.

The chances were like almost zero, but they were there. But you just said they brought back the kill one because the people were getting real. Yeah, they did. They did. The chances were there. And that's why they brought back the kill one because they were like, now we've eradicated it. There's no natural cases of polio anymore. The only ones are from the vaccine because everybody was immune to it.

So it did the thing. So polio is. is eliminated in the United States in the Americas since 1994, which is like North America, South America, Europe, Western Pacific, Asia, all polio-free by the World Health Organization, which means there have been no wild polio viruses for the last at least three years, like in a row. So you can't just like get it out in the wild. The only two countries where polio is endemic and you can, if you're not vaccinated, actually like kind of get it naturally, are Afghanistan.

and Pakistan, and that has to do with, like, misinformation and, like, their war zones, you know? So that makes it hard. Another misinformation example is in 2003 in Nigeria, a warlord said that the people who were giving the polio shots were sterilizing kids, which is obviously not true. And so polio reappeared. In 2013, nine workers who were giving polio vaccinations were murdered in Cano, Nigeria by, like, vigilantes who thought they were hurting children. And polio survivors and religious leaders got them back on track. And we're told to the people that that, you know, that rumor was not true and that the vaccine was safe. And Africa has been polio free since 2020.

So it worked. Sweet. I'm glad it worked because that is terrifying. Like I said, like that situation when you got like the iron lung guy. Like, I mean, you know, God, like what. Like what a life. Yeah. You got to, at some point, it's like quality of life has to count for something, you know?

And if I was in that position, I don't know. I don't think I would go. I don't know. Yeah. It's hard. So the March of Dimes continues to be an organization. It helps with babies worldwide. They help with measles and rebella, neonatal care.

They were really big in promoting folic acid, which is like a vitamin that you take when you're pregnant. And they, you know, found that that was really helpful to pregnancies and to babies. And so they were part of that. that big campaign. The problem right now is the polio vaccine is sort of a victim of your own success kind of thing. And I was thinking about it like, why am I paying Terminex so much money to come to my house

every month if I don't have any bugs when like the reason I don't have any bugs is because I'd be Terminex so much money every month, you know? That's actually what I was going to ask you was do we even, if it's been eradicated, do we even need? We do. Yeah. Because it's not, it's not like it's gone from like the world. Like it could be, it could exist.

We just don't get it anymore, you know? yeah so it's like still out there so um there's also like misinformation obviously like rfk said that it caused cancer it does not at one point someone suggested that it was a reason that we have HIV and AIDS because of the monkey testing that that brought it over into like human laboratories which is also not true um but it works and we know that it works because there's no polio so we have to keep doing it like having the bug guy come over but people won't get polio anymore my bug guy's coming over tomorrow actually how many vaccines how many like for your kids like how many vaccines do they get i don't know a lot they get a lot on their babies um i mean the worst part honestly is that

they put a grown-up size band-aid on their legs and their legs are like the size of your like wrist you know so like their big their little chunky little baby thigh has this huge ass band-aid on it and you have to rip it off and they get so sad whenever i i just took luna to get her um annual checkup and this is where I'm like not totally on the vaccine train is where they're like yeah we're gonna give her we're to administer like four vaccines to her

and I'm like no like her body can't be good no no it's fine get it over with they don't interact with each other they're different things I'd rather not take my kids four separate times to get shots

it doesn't matter you're changing the body chemistry so many times but they don't interact with each other it's different I mean, I'm okay with it. You can do whatever you want to do. But I think you should do it all the same time.

And that is my story. I never knew my parents to direct me with light polio. Like, I should have a word with them. Yeah. You drank it. It was a little thing in your mouth. And that's it. You didn't have polio anymore.

I also, for this episode, recorded a bonus episode with my dad. And we recorded this morning. and I will publish that as a separate thing because my dad remembers the day that you stood in line and got the polio vaccine in the sugar cube and then no one had to worry about it anymore. That's incredible. So we talked about it.

Yeah. So it's fun. He told me about, you know, waiting in line, getting the sugar cube. My grandma brought their birth certificates and wrote down in a notebook. You'll hear it.

I'll post it. It also realizes like how prevalent FDR is. And like at first I thought how prevalent he is or his family is in our. stories and and then I was like actually he's kind of like that in every story because he was president the most consequential time in human

history I know can you believe it what a time? It was like the Great Depression World War II polio huge like all every like huge thing yeah he was a part of I also think it ties so

into the thing that we say all the time about how dynasties are so difficult because like don't Roosevelt kids now you know like none of them are closer to being president because you always end up with kids who like can't do it so he was like he was just like an outlier you know like the family was rich but he was like exceptional yeah that's kind of I think that's just how it is with every yeah can you imagine like I I shouldn't talk I shouldn't talk shit about someone so young but I have thought about like baron Trump and it's like how do you not be

um like actual like monster like yeah it's it's gotta be impossible like you're raised it's royalty from like birth like it's it's yeah like first first like wealth royalty and actual like basically like real like royalty royalty it's it can't produce a good human like i don't know maybe again the kids like fucking 18 years old i shouldn't talk shit about them but still i so i don't know how you can be normal in that situation. Yeah. Ridiculous.

Cool. Well, that's all I have, and I have to go because we're going to the movies. What are you saying? Sonic 3. This should be fun. It should be fun.

The first two are great. You should let your kids know. I was a huge Sonic fan on Sega Genesis. Sega Genesis was, oh, yeah. You probably buy it at the $15. At the dentist we go to with them, they have like an old Arcadian that has the Sega,

the Sonic 2 on it. It's so fun. that was the best game that was a best that was you bought a Sega Genesis you bought for for Sonic you bought uh N64 for um golden eye that was the rules that's it so okay cool well thanks for sharing go enjoy the film and um and I'll uh yeah we'll we'll go ahead and um well whatever we can do our check-ins after this but anyways thank you for sharing thank you everyone please tell your friends um we are trying to figure out how to grow in 2025 so far as aren't going to have meetings about it but to tell your friends tell your friends we'd appreciate

Appreciate it. Doomed to tip fell apart on all the social medias. Sweet. Cool. Thanks all. Bye.