It’s my understanding that there was great joy in my family when I was born.

But with that joy – as you know if you’ve experienced parenthood – comes anxiety. How will I keep my baby safe?

In 1954, one of the biggest fears was that your child might contract polio – the disease that killed more children than any other. Those people it didn’t kill suffered paralysis, among them President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who contracted it as an adult. 

Polio fostered one of the biggest medical charities, the March of Dimes, which was much more prominent in the 1950s than it is now.

But to tell my parents on the day I was born that they needn’t worry would have been a gross understatement. Not only was polio neutralized, it was practically obliterated from the planet.

The reason first became known to the world a year after my birth. In April 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, announced a vaccine to prevent polio. Six years later, Dr. Albert Sabin developed an oral vaccine that is still in use today.

Much to my discomfort, my parents weren’t waiting around for an oral vaccine. I got the needles. Three of them. And I was not a particularly good shot taker. 

In the second grade, my entire class got the oral vaccine. Except me. I already had the shots, so I didn’t need the sugar cube that carried the vaccine. I apparently complained about this and was given a subsequent dose that may or may not have been a placebo.

Today’s infants get their polio “shot” as part of a combination vaccination to combat diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough or pertussis, and hepatitis B. 

All diseases most parents don’t even think about in 2024.

Unless they’re idiots who’ve decided vaccines are a hoax.