The Nome nugget., 1949-01-19
WHY THE NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR INFANTILE PARALYSIS?
(By Paul de Kruif)

tedy long way from the deadly In any one year. in any given epidemic it does not leave it's crppling mark upon large proportion of the children of any community These truths sometimes cited in depre citation of constantly increasing intensive and ex- tensve effort against this crpplng malady These are also the facts used by public health authority soothe citizens at those times when the increase of of n fantle paralysis begins to make frontpage headlines
 Yet the National Foundation for Inantile Paralvss IS essentially the American peoples foundation and such it is responsible to them The most skul propa- ganda has failed to nantile paralysis from it's top rank terrer of the people, The human insight of fathers and mothers looks through the eassurngy low sickness and death rates displayed to them by pub lie heahmen The fact that relatively so few children killed famed by the paralyc terror-that truth IS no comfort to parents if their baby is wrecked for life at lifes begnning
 Even though the incidence of nantile paralysis is low compared to certain other and major ills, yet cannot be dismissed no serious menace to society. This is what IS socially most disturbing about the paralvtc plague: crppling relatively few children and young people in any given year, each epidemic adds mounting accumulation of living human wreckage From pneumonia after few days ordeal you die get better. From almost yearly epdemcs of nfantile paralysls-each one account stastically-there is growing totay of tragedy often than death The number of nfantile paralysis crpples alive in our land today is not exactly known, but it into hundreds of thousands
 2 There is no greater challenge than that of nfantle paralysis 10 medical science again in spite of the rela tivelv few that this disease mains and kills Maybe if public health authorities and of medical science could offer hope of prevention then there would be an end of public panic notable in epidemic sons But this is the fact about nfantie paralysis ad mtted by the medical and public health experts of the committee on virus research and the committee cpl denies of the National Foundation for Infantile Para ysis. at their first meeting, in July 1938-
 After thirty of research in the laboratory and in the field, knowledge leading to the prevention cure or control is not yet available.
 Orthopedic surgeons somewhat mitigate the de- forming and crippng effects of the disease They soften the cruelty of the after effects of it upon ndivd ual children
 But public healthmen have no science to guard ch- dren against epidemic nfantie paralysis No individual child can be guarded with absolute certainty, though if its parents welltodo and sufficiently frightened that child be protected by removing far from the of epidemic influence Provided the child is not a ready harbong the virus when sequestered from the plagues marauding
 Furthermore. in spite of claims persisng among cer- tain of medicine physicians have or med cine to check the maady its acute early with proven power to prevent subsequent maimng of fatal outcome.
 This then is the challenge faced by the scientific and