Martha Ann Murray, pictured at two months in 1952, was the youngest Arizonian ever placed in a iron lung. She is watched by nurse Martha Sumner at St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson, where the child lies critically ill with polio. Martha Ann’s 5-year-old brother was stricken with a milder version of the disease. Their father was a polio sufferer in 1943. <\/span>AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even in the<\/span> house of horrors that is vaccine-preventable illnesses, polio stands out as particularly terrifying. Before the rollout of the vaccine in the 1950s, the disease paralyzed or killed<\/a> more than 500,000 people worldwide every year. The disease was especially catastrophic for children, some of whom were confined for years to wheelchairs or a mechanical breathing chamber known ominously as the iron lung<\/a>. Older people remember being forbidden<\/a> to play outside during summer outbreaks for fear that they would catch the disease.<\/p>\n The darker chapters of public health history do not seem to faze anti-vaccine activists, who have long claimed<\/a> that measles, a catastrophic disease<\/a>, is no big deal. Now, it\u2019s polio\u2019s turn to be downplayed.<\/p>\n Over the last few months, a handful of influential anti-vaccine activists have dabbled in polio denialism. In September, for example, Larry Cook, founder of the anti-vaccine group Stop Mandatory Vaccination, falsely claimed<\/a> to his 137,000 followers on X that polio \u201cwas cured with high dose vitamin C\u201d and that \u201cthe polio vaccine NEVER stopped polio. We\u2019ve been lied to for decades and decades.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, in October, Suzanne Humphries, a holistic medicine practitioner and anti-vaccine activist<\/a>, appeared<\/a> on Joe Rogan\u2019s wildly popular podcast. \u201cThe early injection caused more paralytic polio than it prevented,\u201d she told Rogan. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the part that people don\u2019t understand when they say, \u2018What about polio? Because there\u2019s no more iron lungs, there\u2019s no more crippling, there\u2019s no more of these poor little kids walking around with their casts.\u2019 Well, that\u2019s not true because the iron lung is now called a ventilator.\u201d She went on to argue that \u201cwe still have polio that we had in 1953\u201d because many of the cases back then weren\u2019t technically polio but rather paralysis triggered by vaccines, tonsillectomies, and exposure to toxic substances like arsenic.<\/p>\n To call those claims dangerously misleading is an understatement, so let\u2019s briefly dispense with them. The early injections were, in fact, remarkably effective, with cases declining<\/a> by 90 percent within the first three years of the vaccine rollout; ventilators are not the same<\/a> as iron lungs; polio was a distinct virus that scientists successfully isolated in stool samples<\/a>.<\/p>\n Humphries isn\u2019t the only one spreading misinformation about polio on Rogan\u2019s show. A month after her appearance, Gavin de Becker, a security specialist, megadonor<\/a> to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s failed presidential campaign, and anti-vaccine<\/a> activist, made similarly specious\u00a0claims on the show<\/a>. \u201cHere\u2019s the reality of polio, right from the CDC website: 99 percent of people who get polio never have any symptoms,\u201d he said. What\u2019s more, he said, polio killed just 500 people last year and paralyzed an additional 500, and many of the cases were actually caused by the live virus contained in vaccines. He went on to claim that historic cases of polio paralysis were actually caused by exposure to the pesticide DDT. \u00a0<\/p>\n Again, a real grab bag here. First off, let\u2019s address the outright falsehoods: Polio paralysis, as PolitiFact<\/em><\/a> and Factcheck.org<\/a> confirm, was never caused by DDT. Now, for the more slippery assertions: Yes, it\u2019s true that 99 percent of polio cases are asymptomatic and that only 1,000 people last year died of or were paralyzed by the disease. True as well that today, most polio cases are caused by the live virus in the vaccine.<\/p>\n What de Becker conveniently ignores is that all these current realities are actually strong arguments in favor <\/em>of vaccination. The fact that the yearly death toll and paralysis numbers are so low is because of widespread vaccination efforts, which have resulted in polio infection decreasing<\/a> by 99 percent worldwide since 1988 and led to it being considered as eradicated in all but two countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Even a paralysis rate of one percent is catastrophic at scale\u2014let\u2019s remember that the disease killed or paralyzed half a million people every year before vaccines. As for vaccine-derived polio, ironically, it is much more likely to spread and mutate in undervaccinated populations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anti-vaccine advocacy groups were quick to amplify Humphries\u2019 and de Becker\u2019s claims. Children\u2019s Health Defense<\/a>, the organization Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy founded, jumped at the chance, as did the MAHA Institute<\/a>, a group that focuses on fundraising and policy around Kennedy\u2019s Make America Healthy Again initiative.<\/p>\n Then, earlier this week, a video<\/a> of a man holding a baby while talking about polio made the rounds. In addition to repeating Humphries\u2019 and de Becker\u2019s dubious talking points, he claims that modern sanitation could stop the spread of polio. \u201cYou have to literally put the feces of a polio-infected human being into your mouth to contract polio,\u201d he announces. \u201cAnd that sounds more like a sanitation issue rather than a vaccination issue.\u201d (Presumably the baby this guy is holding does not attend daycare, where the fecal-oral route of disease transmission is, uh, robust<\/a>.) The video has been viewed 376,000 times on X and counting.<\/p>\n Only a generation or two back, someone who claimed that polio wasn\u2019t so bad would have been swiftly shouted down\u2014because most people knew someone for whom polio had indeed been very bad. It is precisely because of the success of vaccines that polio misinformation can now find a foothold. Last month, infectious disease doctor Neil Stone tweeted<\/a> a photo of an iron lung. \u201cThis is an iron lung for polio victims,\u201d he wrote. \u201cRemember these? Me neither. It\u2019s now in a museum\u2026where it should stay. Why? Because vaccines work.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/larry-cook-tweet-xed-out.png\")