A biography of polio...
A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease—polio— told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere.
Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard of disease began paralyzing so many children—usually starting in their legs, sometimes moving up through their abdomen and arms. For an unfortunate few, it could paralyze the muscles that allowed them to breathe.
The Moth in the Iron Lung is a fascinating biography of this horrible paralytic disease, where it came from, and why it disappeared in the 1950s. If you’ve never explored the polio story beyond the tales of crippled children and iron lungs, this book will be sure to surprise.
Unvaccinated
Why growing numbers of parents are choosing natural immunity for their children. Maready comments...
When I first heard that people were purposefully not vaccinating their children, I was shocked. Vaccines have been described as the most incredible medical invention of all time—a miracle of science and technology that has saved the lives of untold millions.
I couldn’t believe that seemingly intelligent, educated parents were purposefully foregoing vaccines for their children, and in fact, were so convinced these medical procedures were harming us, they would go out of their way to try to convince others.
I was convinced there was a giant conspiracy to try and discredit vaccines, but after diving headfirst into recent scientific research seldom mentioned in the news, I eventually came to believe much differently about vaccines and the diseases they are supposed to protect us from.
The Autism Vaccine
In the late 1800s, a new disease arrived in North America from Europe [tuberculosis] and began to claim the lives of children everywhere. It would routinely kill over ten thousand children in a single year—more than polio might take in an entire decade. After much trial and tribulation, a shot was developed that helped both those already afflicted with the illness, and those who might one day become infected. But the shot was dangerous, and many parents refused it for their children.
A careful sweep through both the history of autism and the history of vaccination has yielded a significant discovery—a coincidence in time and space seemingly too remarkable to ignore. In 1932, a safer version of the shot was developed, but contained a new ingredient never before tried on humans.
Due to aggressive immunization campaigns, children all over the country began to receive this shot. Within a year, a new mental disorder—unknown to even the most knowledgeable child psychologists in the country—began to appear. It affected toddlers, and mostly boys. Children were losing the ability to speak and would take little interest in any other humans—even their parents.
A few decades ago, the rates of autism were still low enough for it to be considered rare, and most had never even heard of the disorder. Today—just three decades later—is a much different story. Autism is seemingly everywhere, in every school, in every neighborhood. Exasperated parents have written books, lobbied government officials, and funded research to unlock the mysteries of what might be causing this, possibly our generation’s greatest health crisis.
Progress from the scientific and medical communities has been agonizingly slow. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on research, the quest for a possible genetic cause of autism appears to have come up empty.
Curiously, a vaccine for autism is seldom mentioned. Why would this be? Nearly ninety years after autism first began to appear in epidemic form across the United States, scientists appear to have no idea what causes it. With no genetic mutation to correct or no microbe to target, a drug or vaccine for the disorder will remain an impossibility.
Another reason a vaccine to prevent autism is not often discussed is because a large number of parents believe vaccines caused their children’s autism.
"The Autism Vaccine" chronicles the story of two of these children—one known throughout the world, the other completely unknown until recently—and why modern medicine’s attempts to explain what happened to them have so far come up short.
Rarely does an author have the gift for spanning the divide between faith, science and storytelling, but Forrest Maready has found his voice within this exploding genre. A masterful storyteller, Maready is able to explain complex medical and scientific phenomenon simply, often woven within the fabric of a human-sized account.
Forrest is a native of North Carolina and graduate of Wake Forest University, where he studied religion and music. He spent the early part of his career working in the film, television, and advertising industries as a sound engineer, composer, animator, and editor. He is the author of over a dozen books, many of them stemming from years of medical research.
Be sure to check out all of his books. Available in hard copy and Kindle. Here's a sample of his book "The Autism Vaccine".
You can also listen to his interview on The Higherside Chats.