POLIO

I first  became aware of Poliomyelitis as a youth after seeing TV programs showing unfortunate victims in whole body vacuum respirators known as Iron Lungs. These respirators kept people who had the severest forms of polio with disabled chest function alive. Polio was rife throughout the world in hot climates and in moderate climates during hotter weather right through until the 1960’s when oral vaccination became widespread in advanced economies.

At school when I was 13 a girl a year older than myself had calipers on both her polio withered legs from the feet and ankles up to her thighs just above the knee and walked by twisting her hips and throwing her legs forward very awkwardly. She was such a lovely girl with a nice personality and happy outlook.

When I was 17 working in Blackburn as a trainee draughtsman there was an outbreak of polio and fear was rife throughout Blackburn and neighbouring towns.

Some time later I had to undergo a knee cartilage removal and after the operation had to attend hospital physiotherapy sessions. A middle age man was also at the sessions with polio effected legs. He told me that he was the first victim of the outbreak. He had leg calipers from the waist down. He used to give me a lift from the hospital in a car he had had to have modified so that the accelerator, clutch and brakes were operated from handles attached to the steering wheel. He said he had a comprehensive insurance policy that was providing sufficient finance for him.

Puzzled by the Taliban and IS systematically spreading lies about the UN vaccination programs being run in an attempt to eradicate the disease worldwide, by stating that the vaccinations are in fact sterilisation drugs that are part of a Western plot to reduce the birth rate in Muslim nations, and believed by the unfortunately uneducated and illiterate people in these areas, I researched why they would do this evil thing to their own people – mainly children who are at risk of contracting the disease.

It appears that some, number unknown, of the “volunteers” who go out to these remote areas to administer the vaccines also have an agenda of Christian evangelism, albeit not an overt one, but nevertheless a pervasive one, and it is this that the Taliban and IS are frightened of. Yet again suffering caused through religious differences and fanaticism.

However, recently I saw a TV interview with a main stream Mullah from one of these countries who also objected to the vaccinations but for a totally different reason. He said that God was the only one who decided when, where and how people were born and died, and how their lives progressed and He controlled every aspect of everyone’s life. Therefore, if a person contracted polio it was because God willed it to be so. His argument therefore was that to try to prevent people contracting disease by vaccination was an attempt to override or thwart God’s will and was therefore evil. In fact any medical intervention was evil for the same reason.

I used to think that Jehovah’s Witnesses, the more fanatical of whom, let their children die rather that allow certain medical procedures, were the most morally bankrupt religious believers, but it appears they are not alone.

Charles

Back to Education and Indoctrination