American Experience (1988–…): Season 21, Episode 2 - The Polio Crusade - full transcript

The summer of 1950 started
like most summers

in the small town
of Wytheville, Virginia.

School let out,
the town pools opened,

and kids flocked to the soda
fountain on Main Street.

Almost 40% of the town's
5,500 residents

were under the age of 18.

Wytheville was

more or less a lazy-type,
laid-back town.

Everyone knew everyone.

It got really hot
in the summertime,

and we would go swimming.



We were happy-go-lucky kids.

I had a pair of my grandfather's
rubber boots on

and I was wading in the creek.

And when I went to get out,

I felt like something pulled
in my leg.

I went home

and hadn't been home too long

till I started running
a temperature

and was real nauseous, and just
kept going higher and higher.

I was outside playing.

I just didn't feel right.

By the time I got inside
the house to my mother,

I told her I was sick.

I had a headache.



I was so dizzy.

And after that,
I just passed out.

The doctor came to do a spinal
tap on my brother,

and he screamed.

And my mother ran downstairs
with a bed pillow,

went out in the backyard and
covered her head with a pillow,

and laid there and screamed.

We only had two ambulance
services in Wytheville.

One would come into the clinic
with a suspected case

while the other one would be
coming out of the clinic

and leaving for either Roanoke
or Richmond.

In, out; in, out;
in, out; in, out.

Mr. Williams' tote board

was right across the street
from where I worked,

and it was always visible,

and every once in a while,

we'd go to the front door
and look out.

Every time another one came in
with the diagnosis,

well, they changed the count.

♪ ♪

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.

And they took everything out
to the middle of the garden,

and they just made a pile
and burned everything he owned.

They were told to do that
so that we would not get it.

Polio was hitting
Wytheville hard...

harder that year than
any place in the country.

It became more and more evident

that we were really in trouble,

and without knowing what to do
or how to stop it

or how to get away from it.

We were just stuck with it.

You just couldn't pick up
everybody and leave,

and you couldn't set
the whole town on fire.

So it was a...
it was almost...

not hopeless, but it was getting
pretty close that way.

Since the turn
of the 20th century,

polio, also known as infantile
paralysis, had become

an increasingly menacing fact
of American life.

Highly contagious,
the polio virus

tended to strike
during the summer.

It was very reliable.

Come June, July,

you began to see cases of polio,

and they continued on
through September.

The symptoms ranged from
a mild headache and nausea

to muscle weakness, paralysis,
or death.

One never knew how it would go.

Would it pass through the body

and the person would get up
out of bed

a few days later, just fine?

Would there be one leg damaged?

Would both arms?

The paralytic effects
would last for life.

And you didn't have
to look very far

to see people who had been
crippled with polio,

and crippled in terrible ways.

In 1921, the disease struck
an especially prominent citizen

just as his political star
was on the rise.

Polio usually targeted children,

but Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was 39.

After contracting
a sudden fever and chills,

he lost the use
of both his legs.

FDR was

an enormous landmark in
the whole history of polio.

The fact that he came down
with polio

changed the course of
the disease in this country.

Roosevelt worked to restore
both his body and his career.

He bought
a remote Georgia resort

whose spring-fed baths were
reputed to have healing powers

and turned it into the
Georgia Warm Springs Foundation,

committed to rehabilitating
polio patients

from around the country.

In 1928, a still-paralyzed but
vital FDR fought his way back

onto the national
political stage.

To keep the fight
against polio alive,

Roosevelt turned to
his law partner, Basil O'Connor,

a man who knew little
about polio,

but a great deal about power
and persuasion.

"I was never a public
do-gooder," O'Connor declared,

"and had no aspirations
of that kind."

Short-tempered and relentless,
he was a working-class Irishman

who had to dig and fight for
everything he had achieved.

Basil O'Connor has no interest

in being the head of
the Warm Springs Foundation.

But he is so loyal
to Franklin Roosevelt,

and he really believes

the only way to ensure
FDR's political career

is to take over this institution
that is so close to FDR's heart.

With Roosevelt now
in the White House,

O'Connor worked tirelessly to
keep the organization afloat.

America was experiencing
the worst economic depression

in its history.

Charities' traditional
source of funding,

donations from the rich,
had completely dried up.

Worse still, the number of cases
of polio continued to rise.

What made polio so questionable,

what made it so hard for people
to get a grip on,

was that at the very time
America was becoming

a cleaner,
more antiseptic society,

the polio rates were going up
dramatically.

♪ ♪

In time, scientists would unlock
some of polio's mysteries.

They would learn the virus
entered the body

through the mouth;

that it passed
from person to person

through contaminated water,
food, or physical contact.

They would come to understand
that modern sanitation

actually helped explain
the prevalence of the disease.

Infants in clean environments

were less likely to be
exposed to the virus

and develop life-long immunity.

Before improvements
in sanitation,

all children were born
with antibodies against polio.

When we had improved sanitation,

children started to become
exposed to polio

later and later in life,

at a time when those antibodies

they had received from their
mother had already disappeared.

And that's why you saw
an emergence of the disease.

In 1938, O'Connor didn't know
much about the science of polio.

What he did know was
that polio patients depended

on private charities like his,
not the government, for help.

Without a new way
to raise money,

his foundation could offer
little more than hope.

It was time, he decided,
to try something bold.

The only way to fight infantile
paralysis is with money.

And so I'm asking you tonight
to send a dime

to President Roosevelt
at the White House.

Enlisting celebrities
to the cause,

O'Connor made
an unprecedented appeal

to the American public.

Judy, when I spend
a dime on myself

for some little luxury
like this,

I always think about
those unfortunate kids,

how far just a dime
will go toward helping.

Gee, Mickey,

we don't know how lucky we are

and how much we have
to be thankful for

with our health
and our happiness.

Judy, that's why...

The campaign was dubbed
the March of Dimes.

Can I put a dime
in your envelope?

Oh, you know that you can.

And that's what every
good American should do.

Join the March of Dimes.

Send yours to President Franklin
Roosevelt in the White House.

O'Connor waited anxiously to see
if his gamble would pay off.

♪ ♪

The March of Dimes campaign
exceeded all expectations,

raising $1.8 million,

a staggering sum.

What O'Connor realized was

that this was
a fundraising gold mine.

This turns fundraising
on its head.

You no longer want
big donations from the few.

You want small donations
from the millions.

No one is too poor
to give a dime

to help a kid walk again.

O'Connor pledged

to provide care for every
polio patient in America.

To pay for doctors, nurses,

and the most up-to-date
rehabilitation.

He would even invest
in scientific research

aimed at stopping polio forever.

Basil O'Connor was no scientist,

but he was a great
administrator.

He knew how to organize,
he knew how to centralize,

he knew how to focus.

Every summer, more and more
children were infected

with polio.

O'Connor understood that he was
in a race against time.

♪ ♪

I was very active and outgoing

and grew up in a time
and a place

when kids had lots
of independence

and minimal supervision.

Just a few inflexible rules,
like "be home for dinner."

I was 13, and I was
just starting to lean out

and get kind of fast
on the tennis court,

and I was pretty happy
with the way things were going.

Larry Becker grew up
in Hastings, Nebraska.

He was a Boy Scout,
delivered newspapers,

and played trumpet
in the school band.

My legs gave out

as I was pedaling my
ice cream cart home for lunch.

♪ ♪

Larry became delirious
with fever

as the polio virus penetrated
his central nervous system,

infecting and destroying
the nerve fibers

that controlled his muscles.

It's like every muscle
in your body

is extremely sore.

It's very sensitive
to the touch, and just aches.

I lost not only my leg muscles,

but I lost also neck muscles

and, most importantly,
the diaphragm.

I began to have trouble
breathing.

And I remember
the last straw for me

was when I lost the use
of my biceps.

I was afraid of...
not so much of pain,

but of loss of control.

♪ ♪

My parents were
in and out of the room.

They were being given
very bad news.

There wasn't much hope
that I was going to survive.

You've never seen me,

but I'm sure you've seen
my shadow.

I'm never invited,

but I've been an invisible guest

in practically
every kind of home.

This is what
I've been looking for.

To keep up
the fundraising momentum,

O'Connor shifted tactics.

As you probably know,

I'm very fond of children,
especially little children.

I have no prejudices.

I'm quite impartial.

The March of Dimes' new message
was a frightening one:

polio could strike anyone,
anytime.

You went to a movie

and there was a little
short subject about polio.

Memorial Hospital, please.

Infantile paralysis.

Hello...

They would pass a cup
row by row,

something to put whatever
change you had in it.

Polio was brought home every day

to families all over
the United States.

In New York, the March of Dimes
campaign

is inspired by Basil O'Connor,

Jimmy Durante,
Larry and Barry Pellitteri.

During the past few years,

the polio epidemic has been
on the increase and continues...

Fight polio tonight
with your porch lights at 7:00.

The campaign worked.

The March of Dimes grew
to 3,000 local chapters,

creating a network that reached
millions and raised millions...

By the late 1940s,

as much as $22 million per year.

But O'Connor's campaign told
only part of the story.

While polio could be
devastating,

the chances of contracting
an acute case were quite small;

of being paralyzed,
smaller still;

of dying from polio,
extremely remote.

Many more Americans died from
car accidents or tuberculosis.

What the March of Dimes did

was to turn an awful but
relatively uncommon disease

into our national disease
and our national crusade.

Basil O'Connor's feeling was:

We've got to raise money
for this.

The best way you raise money

was basically to scare the hell
out of the American public.

It's hard to imagine today,
I think,

how pervasive the fear was

and how embedded
in the American psyche.

The fear overwhelmed
common sense.

Every summer, in Wytheville

and hundreds of towns
across the country,

people took extraordinary
measures to avoid polio.

They even sprayed
the pesticide DDT,

despite the fact
scientists had proved

flies did not spread the virus.

Not knowing which way to turn,
what's causing it,

people looked for all sorts
of places to put the blame.

Some of them were ludicrous
and some of them weren't.

♪ ♪

Daddy said people just rolled up
their car windows

and put bandanas
around their faces

and zoomed through our town.

We didn't go on Main Street.

We didn't go anywheres near town
during the polio epidemic.

♪ ♪

For the longest time, no one
would bother to call, come,

or get anywhere near our house.

They were afraid.

They didn't want to catch polio.

They didn't want
my mother and daddy

to come in some of the stores.

They just didn't
want them around.

People did as little as
possible, isolated themselves,

and just prayed
they wouldn't get it.

♪ ♪

In 1949, O'Connor took
the campaign against polio

to a new level.

For more than a decade,

scientists funded
by the March of Dimes

had focused on developing

the only viable solution
to stop polio... a vaccine.

Now, O'Connor declared,

the long-awaited miracle
was "in sight."

His message raised hopes, and
dimes, from an anxious public.

But within
the scientific community,

there was a very different
reaction.

A vaccine,
most researchers believed,

was still years away,

if it worked at all.

We lived in this little housing
development in Phoenix.

It was young families
everywhere,

and the population
was just booming.

Couples just like my family...
Father back from the war,

mother had had a career
and let it go to have children.

I was four years old, my brother
was six, my parents were 28.

Life was pretty simple,
pretty happy.

And then one day,

my mother came down
with a backache.

And the doctor examined her,

and my father remembers
the doctor saying,

"I think she has polio,
but don't worry.

"It doesn't look
like a serious case.

"But we have to put her
in the contagious ward,

where she'll be isolated."

And things only got
much, much worse from there.

She survived that night.

But she was paralyzed
from the neck down.

I have no memory
of her going away.

She disappeared overnight.

We went to bed one night and
our mother was in the next room.

We woke up the next morning
and she was gone.

In 1951, two years
after his promise

of an imminent polio vaccine,
O'Connor had little to show.

Then, in September,

traveling home from
a conference in Europe,

he met a scientist as driven and
impatient as O'Connor himself.

Jonas Salk was a 36-year-old
researcher

at the University of Pittsburgh.

He was somebody who had great
confidence in himself.

"Ambitious" is too mild a word.

He was super-ambitious.

He was very aggressive
on what he was doing.

When I first met him,
he looked very intense

and he remained that way.

I mean, never changed.

Real intensive personality.

O'Connor and Salk hit it off
right away.

Their personalities just meshed.

Both shared big dreams,
they shared big goals,

and they saw in each other
someone who was complementary.

Salk's big goals included plans

for an unorthodox polio vaccine.

Up until now, leading-edge
polio researchers had focused

on making a vaccine
from a live virus,

like the vaccines for
yellow fever and smallpox...

a complex and time-consuming
process.

Live virus vaccines were

the gold standard
of virus vaccine.

The whole scientific community
of experts

said that the only vaccine
that would work for polio

would be a live vaccine.

Jonas Salk disagreed.

His experience developing
a flu vaccine told him

that a killed virus vaccine

was both possible
and faster to produce.

Salk had been trained

to believe with influenza
and other viruses

that if you took the virus

and you killed it

and injected it
into someone's arm,

you could trick
the body's immune system

into believing
that an invader had come,

and the body would produce

strong and lasting
antibody protection.

Proponents of the live virus
vaccine

dismissed Salk's ideas

as ill-conceived
scientific heresy...

Most notably, Albert Sabin.

Dr. Sabin had already
established a reputation

as a sound and imaginative,
innovative investigator.

He was a little bit bombastic.

He was a little bit intolerant
of other people's ideas.

He was always convinced
that his own were correct

and most of the time
he was right.

Albert Sabin had been
working for

a number of years
on his live virus vaccine.

Sabin believed that his vaccine
was the perfect polio vaccine.

He also knew that it
would take longer to develop,

and the constant conflict
he had with Basil O'Connor

was over time.

"I need the time
to perfect my vaccine."

Basil O'Connor wanted
everything done now.

Albert Sabin simply believed

that science went by
its own clock

and that
the March of Dimes should wait

until his vaccine was ready.

Salk was a mere
"kitchen chemist,"

Sabin would say,

whose hasty work posed a
lurking danger to human health.

But Basil O'Connor
didn't listen.

Salk's lab would become

a leading recipient of
March of Dimes support.

What made Basil O'Connor

so strong about Jonas Salk

was that O'Connor finally
believed he had met a scientist

who understood that kids
were dying every day

and that speed was important.

Jonas was swimming
against the current.

He was a young whippersnapper
who came out of nowhere

and suddenly is taking on
this responsibility,

and not only that,
but getting the support

of Basil O'Connor,

because Jonas convinced
Basil O'Connor

that we were going to do it.

At his lab at the
University of Pittsburgh,

Salk's race to find
a polio vaccine took off.

♪ ♪

Dr. Salk's laboratory
was like a factory

in that he had
a large number of people.

They were all doing
what he dictated they do.

In contrast,
many laboratories were

more interested in expanding
scientific perspective

and not necessarily
as goal driven.

The pressure he put on his staff
was unrelenting.

"Salk thought big,"
one colleague observed.

"He wanted to leap, not crawl."

♪ ♪

This was a heavily, heavily
financed, expensive project.

We used thousands of monkeys.

We had resources beyond those

that any of the other
researchers had.

He almost immediately could see

that his killed virus vaccine,
at least in animals,

was very, very successful.

His tests with monkeys
were extraordinary.

They had high antibody levels.

None of them seemed
to get polio.

He knew he was on the track
of something very important.

With the success
of his trials on monkeys,

Salk pressed for the next
necessary but risky step...

to test his vaccine in humans.

O'Connor eagerly agreed.

But Sabin issued a warning...
Salk was moving too quickly.

His plan posed a serious threat
to innocent lives.

O'Connor ignored
Sabin's objections.

Salk's human trials
would proceed as planned.

On July 2, 1952,
assisted by the staff

at the D.T. Watson Home
for Crippled Children,

Jonas Salk injected 43 children
with his killed virus vaccine.

The idea of going into
institutions

where there were children
who were damaged

by various diseases and using

or exploiting them
as subjects for these studies

was not regarded
in the same way it is today.

There was no real sense

of what we would call
informed consent.

If you wanted to test,
as Jonas Salk did,

you went to the director
of an orphanage,

or what was called
a home for the feeble-minded,

and you tested.

A few weeks after
the Watson tests,

Salk injected children

at the Polk State School for
the Retarded and Feeble-Minded.

Then he administered
the vaccine to his family

and received a shot himself.

No one got polio.

Blood tests showed that
like his lab monkeys,

his human subjects had
elevated levels

of polio-fighting antibodies.

A vaccine, Salk believed,
was within reach.

1952 saw the outbreak of
America's worst polio epidemic.

More and more
older children and adults

were contracting the disease.

The older you were,
the greater the risk

of paralysis or death.

Hospital wards were
crowded with machines

that helped
paralyzed patients breathe.

They were called iron lungs.

♪ ♪

My father came in

to explain to me that
they wanted

to put me in the iron lung.

And simultaneously
one was moved into my room.

It's a huge piece of equipment,
and looked scary,

and I didn't know what it meant.

Your head is disconnected
from your body.

You can't see your body.

And in my case, I couldn't
move anything at first.

And I was very uncomfortable

because of the pain
in my muscles.

You have to get used to the fact

that you don't control
your respiration rate.

And when you're first put in...

At least
it was the case for me...

Since I was
struggling so much to breathe,

I just relaxed right into it.

The development of the iron lung

was a great scientific
advancement in medical care.

It saved plenty of lives.

It certainly saved
my mother's life,

but it also was its own
terrible existence.

My mother was flat on her back,

being breathed by a machine,

tended by people
through little portholes

on the side of the machine,

seeing nothing of the world

except what she could see
through a mirror above her face.

What happens to your mind
day after day,

night after night?

For most, the iron lung was

a temporary measure
to help them survive

during the
most acute phase of the disease.

For others, it was permanent.

Hello there,
this is a wonderful day for me.

Five minutes
out of my iron lung.

Five minutes out
of my little prison...

my kind and friendly prison.

The first time
I got out of the iron lung,

I saw the doctor cry
because of the difficulties

I was having on the bed.

That was a shock.

And that soon turned
into a kind of...

uh, self-disgust, I think,
or shame,

which I didn't articulate,
but, um...

I just wanted to hide.

I was 13 years old...
I thought I was immortal.

♪ ♪

I don't ever remember being
afraid that I would die.

I was afraid
I wouldn't get better.

Surveys showed that
apart from the atomic bomb,

Americans' greatest fear
was polio.

People had put up with polio
for a really long time,

and they wanted it over.

They wanted it done with.

The American public wanted
that vaccine.

♪ ♪

On November 16, 1953,

Basil O'Connor made
a stunning announcement.

The March of Dimes would
finance, plan, and coordinate

an unprecedented
human experiment,

testing Salk's vaccine

on hundreds of thousands
of schoolchildren.

Reaction from within
the scientific community

was scathing.

Injecting Salk's vaccine,
Albert Sabin warned,

might cause polio,
not prevent it.

Sabin was very aggressive.

And he could be very abrasive.

He was trying everything
to postpone the field trial,

to downgrade the Salk vaccine.

He said, "This vaccine isn't
ready to be tested.

"We should wait five more years.

We should wait ten more years."

O'Connor refused to wait.

With another polio season
looming,

he would let nothing stop
the trials.

"This is one of the most
important projects

in medical history," he wrote

to parents across the country.

"We feel sure you'll want
your child to take part."

As a parent today,
it's unimaginable

that I would be one of those
people pushing my child

to the front of the line,
saying, you know,

"Put the polio vaccine
in my child first,

and let's see if it works."

You are asking the parents
of America

to line up their kids
for a vaccine

that no one is
sure how well it works,

and no one is certain
that it is perfectly safe.

It has really not been tested
that much on humans.

This is an
enormous leap of faith.

♪ ♪

On April 26, 1954,

the March of Dimes began
field trials.

Randy Kerr,

a six-year-old
in McLean, Virginia,

was the first to receive
Salk's vaccine.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

By June, nearly two million
children had taken part.

It was the largest human
experiment in American history.

Parents would have to wait
for nearly a year

to learn the results.

♪ ♪

On the morning
of April 12, 1955,

the March of Dimes made
their announcement.

♪ ♪

There was a build-up

to the report
on the field trial.

Everybody was interested.

Everybody was waiting,
waiting, waiting.

Does it work?
Does it work?

There was no bigger story
at that time.

It was held in secrecy

like no state secret
ever could be.

This news was awaited
around the world.

♪ ♪

A press release would reveal
the findings

everyone was waiting for.

They were going to bring it up
on an elevator.

The press room was overcrowded.

We were elbow to elbow.

The public relations man

steps off the elevator
with the dolly

and he can't move into
the press room.

Everybody ganging around him.

Guys were jumping over desks.

The fellow climbed up
on the dolly

and he began flinging these
things out left and right.

It was bedlam.

CBS News presents

a special report.

The Salk polio vaccine

is a success.

The vaccine works.

♪ ♪

Factory whistles blew,

school children cheered,

parents wept.

♪ ♪

Everybody was so happy.

It was the most satisfying story
I would cover

in 44 years in journalism.

The relief that
was brought about

by all of a sudden having
something that could be done

to stop this, it was...

I think that was just
overwhelming.

Jonas Salk was viewed
as an American hero.

This awful disease

had now been conquered by this
man who we had funded, who...

this scientist who was us.

This vaccine vindicated

20 years of giving dimes,

20 years of volunteering.

It was a victory for
millions of faceless people

who had done what they could
to end the scourge of polio.

♪ ♪

Five years before,

the disease had raged
through Wytheville.

Now the community,

like thousands of others
across the country,

would finally receive
the vaccine.

I remember hearing
about Dr. Salk, Dr. Salk,

and how exciting it was.

That man saved the world
from polio.

♪ ♪

Less than a month
after vaccinations began,

the nation's
triumphant polio crusade

was brought
to a screeching halt.

As surgeon general of the
Public Health Service,

I recommended
the day before yesterday

that vaccination programs
against poliomyelitis

be temporarily postponed.

Thousands of children vaccinated

with the new Salk vaccine
had become sick.

Hundreds would be
permanently paralyzed.

A handful would even die.

We have gone

from this amazing situation
of euphoria,

a disease on the run,

to the vaccine itself producing
additional cases of polio.

All polio vaccine is
taken off the market

until the government
can pinpoint

exactly what has gone wrong.

Investigators soon learned

that all the sick children
had been injected

with a bad batch of vaccine
made in Berkeley, California.

After a hasty and poorly staffed
government screening process,

the vaccine
had been deemed safe.

In fact, it had contained
virulent live polio virus.

Cutter Laboratories
wasn't alone.

All the pharmaceutical companies
were having difficulties

mass-producing Salk's formula.

One scientist, especially,
felt vindicated...

Albert Sabin.

Sabin had always
been of the mind

that not only was
the Salk vaccine not effective

but potentially was unsafe.

After Cutter,
Albert Sabin simply went around

to anyone who would ask...
And many people did...

saying, "I told you so."

Despite the crisis,

O'Connor's confidence in
Salk's vaccine never faltered.

What do you see for its future?

Well, I can only say to you
that I see its future

is still a good,
sound, safe vaccine

that will protect the people.

The Salk vaccine
was licensed at a time

when we basically didn't have
vaccine regulation

in this country.

The government learned

that having ten people
oversee vaccines...

and, frankly, doing it
on a part-time basis...

Was not good enough.

The Cutter incident was
a painful lesson

about the fact that we needed
much better oversight.

In the wake of the tragedy,

manufacturing standards
would be tightened

and government regulation
increased.

But, only eight days after

the surgeon general
announced a halt,

the nation's polio vaccination
program resumed.

Americans continued to vaccinate
their children.

They had waited years
for the polio vaccine.

They were not about
to wait any longer.

The nation's polio
vaccination program,

led by the March of Dimes,

now supported by the
United States government,

proved safe
and overwhelmingly effective.

Within just a few seasons,

the number of polio cases
in the United States

decreased by 50%.

Memories of summers filled
with fear began to fade.

By 1962,

Albert Sabin's live virus
vaccine was finally ready.

An oral vaccine,
it was easier to administer

and cheaper to produce
than Salk's.

The years to come would see
the scientific efforts

of both Salk and Sabin
pay off dramatically.

Polio, once one of America's
most feared diseases,

became largely a thing
of the past.

Nobody cared about
polio anymore.

It was over.

♪ ♪

My mother, coming home
from the rehab center,

it is not the story
of triumph and conquering.

It is the story of defeat.

After a year of treatment,
it didn't fix her.

It didn't fix our family.

Our family had disintegrated
around her.

When Kathryn Black
was six years old,

her mother died.

♪ ♪

Larry Becker spent
two-and-a-half years

in the hospital.

He learned to breathe on his own

by using the muscles
in his neck.

His arms remained paralyzed,

but after slowly regaining
the use of his legs,

he was finally ready
to move home.

There were three steps
up to the house,

and then my bedroom would be
upstairs.

This is the '50s.

If your bedroom was going
to be upstairs,

then you had to learn
to climb the steps.

♪ ♪

When I graduated from college,

and when I got my Ph.D.,

local newspapers published
a picture of me

writing with my feet.

I don't know what the headline
is exactly.

I always think of it as
"Polio Boy Makes Good,"

you know, that kind of...

And I thought, "Whoa,

this is going to follow me
for the rest of my life."

So...

But, you know,
here I am whining.

It's not...
it's no big deal.

In 1994,

44 years after the epidemic hit
Wytheville, Virginia,

and nearly 60 years after
Basil O'Connor

first called upon Americans

to send their dimes
to the White House,

polio was declared eradicated
in the United States.

♪ ♪

Next time...

He waged a war
against global hunger.

Norman Borlaug was responsible

for the spread of large-scale
agricultural production

around the world.

And unleashed a series
of unintended consequences.

The impact can be seen
in the degradation of soil,

a broken agrarian community,

a broken society.

"The Man Who Tried
to Feed the World,"

next time
on "American Experience."

Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.

"American Experience:
The Polio Crusade"

is available on DVD.

To order, visit ShopPBS
or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

"American Experience"
is also available

with PBS Passport
and on Amazon Prime Video.

♪ ♪