Paul Alexander...last living man in iron lung has passed away

hawkdon said:
When I was a small kidling I recall we went to visit some one
who was in an iron lung.....quite a shock for my small brain
to absorb....RIP Paul.....
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A friend of my older brother had polio as a child. He was left with weakness in his legs, and I THINK one arm. I remember him walking with a slight limp. I think he had a foot to knee leg brace, but I do not remember now
 

I've never seen a person in an iron lung. Other people as well could breath outside the iron lung for short periods. More than four decades ago I've read the story of a woman who could also leave her iron lung for a short time, got pregnant and a healthy child.
I only knew a polio child as I was in the second or third grade at school. She was 12 years old and wore leg braces on both legs.
 
George1959 said:
I've never seen a person in an iron lung. Other people as well could breath outside the iron lung for short periods. More than four decades ago I've read the story of a woman who could also leave her iron lung for a short time, got pregnant and a healthy child.
I only knew a polio child as I was in the second or third grade at school. She was 12 years old and wore leg braces on both legs.
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My understanding is Paul was the last living person using one. And it was difficult to maintain as parts were no longer made for it
 
Could someone with a lot more tech knowledge than I have describe why today's technology
wasn't able to help this man with something more modern? I'm not wrapping my head around
why something couldn't be done to replace that iron lung in an era that can put people on
the moon and have cars driving themselves. If there's a simple explanation, I haven't thought
of what it might be. 🤷‍♀️
 
CallMeKate said:
Could someone with a lot more tech knowledge than I have describe why today's technology
wasn't able to help this man with something more modern? I'm not wrapping my head around
why something couldn't be done to replace that iron lung in an era that can put people on
the moon and have cars driving themselves. If there's a simple explanation, I haven't thought
of what it might be. 🤷‍♀️
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Good question. I did some research to find an answer and it seems there are ventilators and stuff used now....which is why they are no longer used. But, could not find a reason why Mr Alexander still needed one. I am sure there was some medical explaination. Though he was being trained to breath longer and longer outside of it. Could be for him..maybe he had been in too long, or other medical reasons
 
CallMeKate said:
Could someone with a lot more tech knowledge than I have describe why today's technology
wasn't able to help this man with something more modern? I'm not wrapping my head around
why something couldn't be done to replace that iron lung in an era that can put people on
the moon and have cars driving themselves. If there's a simple explanation, I haven't thought
of what it might be. 🤷‍♀️
Click to expand...
Yes, I was wondering⬆️, too🙄
 
Polio was essentially wiped out in the US due to an intensive, mandatory vaccination program when the Salk vaccine was perfected. Thus, need for new iron lung machines disappeared, and eventually became a smaller and smaller 'replacement parts' manufacturing.

There was no reason for technological advancement in that mfg sector, as vaccines reduced the incidence of polio to basically zero. No cases have been reported in the US since 1979. Vaccination lasts your entire lifetime; children are recommended to get a 4-shot regimen of IPV (inactivated polio vaccine).

Polio Type 1 remains a problem in 2 countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, variant polioviruses are now the main cause of polio outbreaks around the world, with over 600 cases of circulating VDPV type 2 (cVDPV2) reported in 2022. A majority of these cVDPV2 cases have been reported from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, and Nigeria.

The danger is that even IPV-vaccinated people can pick up and spread the virus, although the vaccine protects that person. Global travel has increased the risk of re-introducing polio to a country where younger generations may not have been properly vaccinated.

The explanation of why some polio victims could not live without the iron lung machine is at this link, about halfway thru the article:
Americans are highly vaccinated against polio. Here’s why it could still spread
Essentially, the first polio vaccine was an oral vaccine (OPV, still used in many countries), given on a sugar cube. It is a weakened version of an active polio virus. It works, but in a very small number of people, the virus would re-activate and infect them. The resulting paralysis made them unable to breathe properly. In 2000 the US officially discontinued use of the OPV, and now only IPV injections are used to vaccinate in the US.
 
Lethe200 said:
Essentially, the first polio vaccine was an oral vaccine (OPV, still used in many countries), given on a sugar cube. It is a weakened version of an active polio virus. It works, but in a very small number of people, the virus would re-activate and infect them. The resulting paralysis made them unable to breathe properly. In 2000 the US officially discontinued use of the OPV, and now only IPV injections are used to vaccinate in the US.
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I was among the children that got the sugar cube with the drop of the vaccine. Never had any problems. On TV were ads "oral vaccination is sweet, polio is cruel" to motivate parents getting their children vaccinated. And yes, later they stopped it and used injections. But since we got vaccinated at school, there was no choice not to get vaccinated.
 
When I was a little girl my mother's younger cousin brought his fiance' to the house to meet us all. She was so beautiful, I thought she was Snow White. A few weeks later they got married and then, on their Honeymoon, she caught polio. She was in an iron lung for a while, but after that, she was home, but paralyzed from the neck down. My cousin took wonderful care of her all her life until she died in the mid 1980's.

What sad stories go with this disease. Roosevelt's big effort to find a vaccine worked. I always wonder what other diseases could be cured with another big "March of Dimes."
 
It's the Jab-anti-jab conundrums. It's the, "we're gonna get sick right away after the Jab."
It's not the, "if we get sick after the jab, we will do better while becoming more immune."

So, Conspiracy theorists win some of the people over. Fooling all the people all of the time is the challenge for them.
And Genius can also be crazy !

Then you have the "Fear of the Bug Bites" bunch.
Remember the weekly spraying at the Fort for bugs from an airplane.
Going inside when you heard it coming.

Then there the guy who witnesses an 18-wheeler driving right over a car full of Teenagers &
thinking that could have been me! Thus, getting a Truck Drivers License.

Millions of hours of Computer studies for "Curing Childhood Cancers" have been made.
St. Jude's accepts donations. There are terrible things happening to the young now.
St. Louis Children's Hospital Foundation

________________________________________________
 
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Lethe200 said:
Essentially, the first polio vaccine was an oral vaccine (OPV, still used in many countries), given on a sugar cube. It is a weakened version of an active polio virus. It works, but in a very small number of people, the virus would re-activate and infect them. The resulting paralysis made them unable to breathe properly. In 2000 the US officially discontinued use of the OPV, and now only IPV injections are used to vaccinate in the US.
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Hmmm,I remember getting an injection long before getting the "sugar cube" vaccine. Around 1955 we started getting the injection at school and around `59?60? the sugar cube vaccine came out. As kids,we were really happy about that!
 
CallMeKate said:
Could someone with a lot more tech knowledge than I have describe why today's technology
wasn't able to help this man with something more modern? I'm not wrapping my head around
why something couldn't be done to replace that iron lung in an era that can put people on
the moon and have cars driving themselves. If there's a simple explanation, I haven't thought
of what it might be. 🤷‍♀️
Click to expand...
I tried to find the reason why in some of the obits but I could not. Maybe you'd have to buy his book? Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung

Example: Christopher Reeve was left paralyzed from the neck down after a riding accident. He had to be on oxygen constantly, which I believe blocks the trachea so he could not speak for a while, but eventually he said he learned how to speak by swallowing air and releasing that through his vocal cords.

Here he is on Letterman: (You can actually hear his ventilator in this interview. This is after three years of intensive physical therapy because he could afford it. )

Reeve graciously points out that his recovery was much easier that others' because he had financial resources. So maybe Paul Alexander was still in the lung because of bad insurance? Medicaid? IDK.

Alexander was paralysed as a child. After that, did his lungs even grow to adult size? We don't know.

Alexander had social media followers. Here is a very good example of someone the social media companies should have PAID for his content, whether he had 2 followers or 2 million.
 
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Back in the 70's, I saw a lot of people in those things. There was a hospital in Philadelphia, which the name slips me at the moment, but they had a whole ward or maybe it was the whole floor floor of polio patients in those things. When the doctor told us that they will likely have to stay in those things for the rest of their life, I thought he was kidding us, so I asked the stupid question, "How do they go to the bathroom?"

They stay at the hospital until they learn how to cope with doing certain daily things like eating and going to the bathroom. Some, not all of the patients did get some time during the day out of their iron lung.

I give Paul Alexander a lot of credit for his willingness to survive and do whatever he had to just to stay alive.
 

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