50th Anniversary of Polio Vaccine

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF POLIO VACCINE

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the polio vaccine. The people of my generation, who were youngsters at that time, remember full well the exciting development. Now polio is virtually eradicated.

The Committee on Foreign Operations, which I have had the privilege to either chair or be ranking member for the last decade or so, has appropriated about $160 million toward that fight over the last 6 years.

Of course, the Rotary International, a private organization, deserves the lion's share of the credit for almost total eradication of polio. This private civic group with international chapters made this a project some 20 years ago and have collected and spent about $600 million and delivered the vaccine in all parts of the world. So because of this, today we can celebrate, essentially, the complete eradication of this disease from the Earth. Rotary deserves a big part of the credit for that.

I rise to talk about this for another reason. It had an enormous impact on me personally. I was struck with polio when I was 2 years old. My dad was overseas fighting in World War II. Polio was similar to having the flu--you felt sick all over. Except when polio went away there were residual effects. In my case, when my flu-like symptoms went away, I had a quadricep in my left leg that was dramatically affected.

My mother was, of course, like many mothers of young polio victims, perplexed about what to do, anxious about whether I would be disabled for the rest of my life. But we were fortunate. While my dad was overseas my mother was living with her sister in east central Alabama, only about 40 or 50 miles from Warm Springs. As everyone knows, President Roosevelt established Warm Springs, where he went to engage in his own physical therapy, as a center to treat other polio victims. So my mother was able to put me in the car, go over to Warm Springs, and actually learn, from those marvelous physical therapists who were there, what to do.

They told my mother she needed to keep me from walking. Now, imagine this. You are the mother of a 2-year-old boy. And we all know how anxious little boys are to get up and get around and get into trouble. So my mother convinced me that I could walk, but I couldn't walk--a pretty subtle concept to try to convey to a 2-year-old. In other words, she wanted me to think I could walk, but she wanted me to also understand I should not walk.

Now, obviously, the only way to enforce that with a 2-year-old is to watch them like a hawk all the time. So I was under intense observation by my mother for 2 years. She administered this physical therapy regiment at least three times a day--all of this really before my recollection. But we now know the things that happened to us in the first 5 years of our lives have an enormous impact on us for the rest of our lives.

So this example of incredible discipline that she was teaching me during this period I always felt had an impact on the rest of my life in terms of whatever discipline I may have been able to bring to bear on things I have been involved in. I really have felt my mother taught me that before I was even old enough to remember.

So this went on for 2 years. My first memory in life was stopping at a shoe store in LaGrange, GA. We had left Warm Springs for the last time, and the physical therapist there had told my mother: Your son can walk now. We think he is going to have a normal childhood and a normal life. We stopped at a shoe store in LaGrange, GA, and bought a pair of saddle oxfords, which are low-top shoes--my first recollection in life.

Thanks to my mother, I had a normal childhood. I was not able to run all that well, but I played baseball and have had a normal life. The only impact of that early childhood experience with polio is that I have a little difficulty going down stairs. Most people do not want to go up stairs and do not mind walking down stairs. I like to walk up stairs and take an elevator down because an effected quadricep impacts your ability to descend stairs.

So I am particularly moved by the fact that we can stand here today and say that polio is essentially eradicated from the face of the Earth. When I was a youngster, the fear of polio was enormous. Mothers, every summer, lived in fear that their children would come down with polio, and many did, many died. Many had much more serious aftereffects than I did, certainly.

But it is with great gratitude that I commend Rotary International today for this extraordinary accomplishment of getting this vaccine out all over the world so that we can essentially say, in 2005, that polio has been eradicated from the face of the Earth.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article from the Wall Street Journal entitled ``Polio and Rotary'' be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

[From the Wall Street Journal, Apr. 12, 2005]

Polio and Rotary

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine. Poliomyelitis, also know as infantile paralysis, used to be one of childhood's most feared diseases. A few years after Dr. Jonas Salk announced his vaccine on April 12, 1955, nearly every child in the U.S. was protected. Today polio has disappeared from the Americas, Europe and the Western Pacific and is nearly gone from the rest of the world.

A too-little known part of this feat is the role played by Rotary, the international businessman's club, which 20 years ago adopted the goal of wiping out the disease. Rotary understood that medical breakthroughs are worthless unless people aren't afraid to immunize their children and efficient delivery systems exist to get the vaccine to them. And so it mobilized its members in 30,100 clubs in 166 countries to make it happen.

In 1985, when Rotary launched its eradication program, there were an estimated 350,000 new cases of polio in 125 countries. Last year, 1,263 cases were reported. More than one million Rotary members have volunteered their time or donated money to immunize two billion children in 122 countries. In 1988, Rotary money and its example were the catalyst for a global eradication drive joined by the World Health Organization, Unicef and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. In 2000 Rotary teamed up with the United Nations Foundation to raise $100 million in private money for the program. By the time the world is certified as polio-free--probably in 2008--Rotary will have contributed $600 million to its eradication effort.

An economist of our acquaintance calls Rotary's effort the most successful private health-care initiative ever. A vaccine-company CEO recently volunteered to us that the work of Rotary and the Gates Foundation, both private groups, has been more effective than any government in promoting vaccines to save lives. It's become fashionable in some quarters to deride civic volunteerism, but Rotary's unsung polio effort deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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