February 27, 2026

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/lessons-from-polio-era 

Freedom, Responsibility, and the Lessons Polio Taught Our Generation

In recent conversations about vaccines, we often hear an argument framed around individual rights and personal choice. This perspective was echoed by ACIP Chair Kirk Milhoan in his January 22 interview with STAT News, when he suggested that vaccine recommendations should place greater emphasis on individual autonomy and questioned whether longstanding vaccines, including polio, should continue to be viewed primarily through a public-health lens. 

As grandparents, we understand that instinct deeply. We raised children. We worried about their safety, questioned new information, and felt the weight of responsibility that comes with making decisions for someone you love more than yourself. Respect for individual liberty is not abstract to us, it is part of who we are as Americans.

But we also belong to a generation that remembers polio. And that memory changes how we see this debate.

Polio was not a distant or theoretical threat when we were children. It arrived quietly, spread easily, and struck without warning. One day a child was fine; the next, paralyzed. Parents kept their children out of swimming pools, movie theaters, and playgrounds. Summers were seasons of fear. Hospital wards filled with children in iron lungs, machines that breathed for bodies polio had left unable to do so.

Janice (Jan) Flood Nichols can attest to what life was like before vaccines. She and her twin brother Frankie were in first grade. It was fall, and they were excited to go trick-or-treating. A few days before Halloween, Frankie caught what seemed like a simple head cold, so their parents kept him home to rest. But the day before Halloween, he suddenly struggled to breathe. They rushed him to the communicable disease hospital in Syracuse.

Doctors performed a spinal tap and placed Frankie in an iron lung. By morning, the diagnosis was confirmed: polio. Jan was brought to the same hospital and given massive doses of gamma globulin, the only treatment doctors hoped might stop the disease.

Frankie’s condition worsened. Unable to control his breathing, doctors rushed him toward emergency surgery. He never made it. Frankie died on November 1, 1953, at 10:25 p.m.

That same night, Jan developed symptoms of polio. Her condition deteriorated rapidly, and she was rushed back to the hospital where Frankie had died. Doctors told her parents they did not know if she would live or die. Jan did survive but spent months painfully rehabilitating and learning to walk again.

Jan’s story is why discussions about polio vaccination cannot be reduced to personal preference alone. Polio is not just a risk to one child or one family. It is a highly contagious virus that spreads silently, often through people who show no symptoms at all. That means individual decisions ripple outward, affecting newborns, pregnant women, immunocompromised individuals, and entire communities.

When we talk about rights, we must also talk about responsibility.

In America, freedom has never meant the absence of limits when others are placed in danger. We accept speed limits not because we distrust drivers, but because unchecked speed endangers everyone on the road. We require clean drinking water and food safety standards because one person’s contamination can harm thousands. Public health has always been a balance between individual liberty and collective protection.

Polio vaccination is no different.

Those of us who lived through the polio era know something that is easy to forget today: vaccines did not take freedom away, they restored it. The widespread use of the polio vaccine didn’t just reduce disease; it gave families their lives back. Children returned to playgrounds and pools. Parents stopped holding their breath every summer. Communities could gather without fear that invisible danger lurked in everyday spaces.

It’s also important to say this clearly: today’s parents are not reckless or uncaring. Vaccine hesitancy often grows from love, fear, and an overwhelming flood of conflicting information. Many parents have never seen the diseases vaccines prevent. That is a testament to how successful vaccination programs have been, but it also makes the risk feel abstract.

For grandparents, it is anything but abstract.

Many of us came together through Grandparents for Vaccines, a national grassroots organization formed to ensure that the hard-won lessons of the past are not forgotten. We speak not as politicians or policymakers, but as witnesses, people who saw firsthand what happens when diseases like polio are allowed to spread, and who now want to protect the children and grandchildren we love.

We remember classmates who never walked again. We remember neighbors who lived with lifelong disabilities. We remember funerals for children who should have grown old alongside us. These memories are not meant to frighten, they are meant to remind us what happens when a dangerous virus is allowed to spread unchecked.

Protecting public health does not mean erasing individual rights. It means recognizing that some choices carry consequences beyond ourselves. Infants cannot choose to be vaccinated yet. People undergoing cancer treatment cannot choose to have fully functioning immune systems. They rely on the rest of us to create a protective barrier around them.

That is not government overreach. It is community care.

As grandparents, our perspective is shaped by time. We have seen what happens before vaccines and after them. We have watched fear give way to relief, and tragedy replaced by prevention. When we advocate for polio vaccination, we are not dismissing freedom—we are defending a broader, deeper version of it.

The freedom for a child to grow up walking.
The freedom for families to trust public spaces.
The freedom for future generations to know polio only as a chapter in history books, not a living threat.

Our message is simple and heartfelt: we respect choice and we remember the cost of unchecked disease. Polio showed our generation that collective protection can increase freedom across an entire society. That lesson continues to matter for the health and well-being of our grandchildren. 

Arthur Lavin, MD, is a retired pediatrician; Author of "Who’s the Boss? Moving Families from Conflict to Collaboration"; and founder and president of Grandparents for Vaccines.

 Teri Mills, MS, RN emeritus, is a retired adult nurse practitioner, the 2019 Oregon nurse of the year, and a board member and founding member of Grandparents for Vaccines.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/lessons-from-polio-era 

Freedom, Responsibility, and the Lessons Polio Taught Our Generation

In recent conversations about vaccines, we often hear an argument framed around individual rights and personal choice. This perspective was echoed by ACIP Chair Kirk Milhoan in his January 22 interview with STAT News, when he suggested that vaccine recommendations should place greater emphasis on individual autonomy and questioned whether longstanding vaccines, including polio, should continue to be viewed primarily through a public-health lens. 

As grandparents, we understand that instinct deeply. We raised children. We worried about their safety, questioned new information, and felt the weight of responsibility that comes with making decisions for someone you love more than yourself. Respect for individual liberty is not abstract to us, it is part of who we are as Americans.

But we also belong to a generation that remembers polio. And that memory changes how we see this debate.

Polio was not a distant or theoretical threat when we were children. It arrived quietly, spread easily, and struck without warning. One day a child was fine; the next, paralyzed. Parents kept their children out of swimming pools, movie theaters, and playgrounds. Summers were seasons of fear. Hospital wards filled with children in iron lungs, machines that breathed for bodies polio had left unable to do so.

Janice (Jan) Flood Nichols can attest to what life was like before vaccines. She and her twin brother Frankie were in first grade. It was fall, and they were excited to go trick-or-treating. A few days before Halloween, Frankie caught what seemed like a simple head cold, so their parents kept him home to rest. But the day before Halloween, he suddenly struggled to breathe. They rushed him to the communicable disease hospital in Syracuse.

Doctors performed a spinal tap and placed Frankie in an iron lung. By morning, the diagnosis was confirmed: polio. Jan was brought to the same hospital and given massive doses of gamma globulin, the only treatment doctors hoped might stop the disease.

Frankie’s condition worsened. Unable to control his breathing, doctors rushed him toward emergency surgery. He never made it. Frankie died on November 1, 1953, at 10:25 p.m.

That same night, Jan developed symptoms of polio. Her condition deteriorated rapidly, and she was rushed back to the hospital where Frankie had died. Doctors told her parents they did not know if she would live or die. Jan did survive but spent months painfully rehabilitating and learning to walk again.

Jan’s story is why discussions about polio vaccination cannot be reduced to personal preference alone. Polio is not just a risk to one child or one family. It is a highly contagious virus that spreads silently, often through people who show no symptoms at all. That means individual decisions ripple outward, affecting newborns, pregnant women, immunocompromised individuals, and entire communities.

When we talk about rights, we must also talk about responsibility.

In America, freedom has never meant the absence of limits when others are placed in danger. We accept speed limits not because we distrust drivers, but because unchecked speed endangers everyone on the road. We require clean drinking water and food safety standards because one person’s contamination can harm thousands. Public health has always been a balance between individual liberty and collective protection.

Polio vaccination is no different.

Those of us who lived through the polio era know something that is easy to forget today: vaccines did not take freedom away, they restored it. The widespread use of the polio vaccine didn’t just reduce disease; it gave families their lives back. Children returned to playgrounds and pools. Parents stopped holding their breath every summer. Communities could gather without fear that invisible danger lurked in everyday spaces.

It’s also important to say this clearly: today’s parents are not reckless or uncaring. Vaccine hesitancy often grows from love, fear, and an overwhelming flood of conflicting information. Many parents have never seen the diseases vaccines prevent. That is a testament to how successful vaccination programs have been, but it also makes the risk feel abstract.

For grandparents, it is anything but abstract.

Many of us came together through Grandparents for Vaccines, a national grassroots organization formed to ensure that the hard-won lessons of the past are not forgotten. We speak not as politicians or policymakers, but as witnesses, people who saw firsthand what happens when diseases like polio are allowed to spread, and who now want to protect the children and grandchildren we love.

We remember classmates who never walked again. We remember neighbors who lived with lifelong disabilities. We remember funerals for children who should have grown old alongside us. These memories are not meant to frighten, they are meant to remind us what happens when a dangerous virus is allowed to spread unchecked.

Protecting public health does not mean erasing individual rights. It means recognizing that some choices carry consequences beyond ourselves. Infants cannot choose to be vaccinated yet. People undergoing cancer treatment cannot choose to have fully functioning immune systems. They rely on the rest of us to create a protective barrier around them.

That is not government overreach. It is community care.

As grandparents, our perspective is shaped by time. We have seen what happens before vaccines and after them. We have watched fear give way to relief, and tragedy replaced by prevention. When we advocate for polio vaccination, we are not dismissing freedom—we are defending a broader, deeper version of it.

The freedom for a child to grow up walking.
The freedom for families to trust public spaces.
The freedom for future generations to know polio only as a chapter in history books, not a living threat.

Our message is simple and heartfelt: we respect choice and we remember the cost of unchecked disease. Polio showed our generation that collective protection can increase freedom across an entire society. That lesson continues to matter for the health and well-being of our grandchildren. 

Arthur Lavin, MD, is a retired pediatrician; Author of "Who’s the Boss? Moving Families from Conflict to Collaboration"; and founder and president of Grandparents for Vaccines.

 Teri Mills, MS, RN emeritus, is a retired adult nurse practitioner, the 2019 Oregon nurse of the year, and a board member and founding member of Grandparents for Vaccines.

Letters to the editor: Kettering school need support; vaccine education available

As  a registered nurse and an attorney, I write in response to two articles  in yesterday’s Dayton Daily News (1) Vaccine guidance raises stakes for  trust and partnership and (2) Parents struggle to navigate a fracturing  vaccine landscape.

Parents,  and others, with questions about vaccines have an additional resource  available to them. Grandparents for Vaccines, a volunteer led  organization, launched on Grandparents Day, Sept. 7, 2025. 

It’s  mission is to ensure America’s grandchildren have their best start in  life without the threat of vaccine-preventable diseases. The  organization is a volunteer -led movement formed to mobilize the voices  of grandparents, and all who care for our grandchildren. 

One  of the founders and the Board President is Dr. Arthur Lavin, retired  Shaker Heights, Ohio pediatrician. Additional founders include  registered nurses and other health care professionals who believe in  evidence based care. To learn more, visit Grandparents for Vaccines, https://grandparentsforvaccines.org.

Carol Roe 

Miamisburg 

Our government has three branches, but America has four. Congress writes the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. That’s the structure. But structure alone is not what sustains a democracy.

There is a fourth branch that is unwritten, unelected, and absolutely essential: the people. The people sustain our democracy, especially when it’s under threat.

Civic muscle

We know the people can do that because we have seen people in action. We have witnessed the power of ordinary people in extraordinary moments. 

After the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the community rose in solidarity and care. We saw that power during the winter storms that have buried Western Pennsylvania, when people cleared snow, shared warmth, and made sure no one was left alone.

That same civic muscle, that instinct to protect one another when systems strain, is what sustains our democracy.

It protects a free press when journalists continue reporting despite threats, and when citizens fund community newsrooms to prevent news deserts and preserve watchdog journalism. It defends the rule of law when civil servants testify truthfully under oath, even at personal cost, and when pro bono attorneys represent protesters, journalists, and vulnerable communities whose constitutional rights are threatened.

In moments of crisis, millions have marched peacefully to demand equal protection under the law, invoking First Amendment rights not as a slogan, but as a responsibility. This was on full display last October, when nearly seven million Americans peacefully poured into the streets for nationwide “No Kings” protests, drawing massive crowds in Pittsburgh and outlying towns. Allderdice students offered a vivid reminder in their recent walk out to protest ICE’s actions that the power of this republic does not belong to kings or rulers.

When ICE moved to disrupt protests and threaten the people standing for justice, ordinary Pennsylvanians rose to defend the Constitution. Many learned how to confront disruptors, sometimes armed with nothing more than a whistle and their phones. Jon Stewart calls them “weapons of mass illumination,” tiny lanterns of democracy. In our hands, they capture injustice, preserve truth, and shine a piercing light where power prefers shadow.

Rights and responsibilities

This is not about politics. This is about the survival of our democracy. Transparency is not optional. It is constitutional.

In Minneapolis, nurses went door to door to ensure patients received care without fear of immigration enforcement. They understood something fundamental: public health and civil liberties are intertwined. When fear keeps people from seeking care, the whole community suffers.

We attended a virtual vigil with nurses from WeCare in Minneapolis. Pittsburgh nurses also came together to honor Alex Pretti. They stood at the Fred Rogers Memorial because we must always find the helpers, and ask “are you okay?”

When misinformation spreads faster than truth, healthcare workers, parents, and grandparents push back in living rooms, churches, and community centers. Grandparents for Vaccines, for example, which we co-founded, tries to harness the moral authority, experience, and love of grandparents to promote the health, safety, and well-being of the next generation. That, too, is constitutional work, protecting the general welfare of our citizens.

Democracy is not self-executing. The Constitution does not defend itself. It depends on citizens who understand that rights and responsibilities travel together.

Freedom of speech means showing up and speaking. Freedom of the press means supporting journalism that holds power accountable. The duty of citizenship means rejecting violence, intimidation, and lies, even when they serve our preferred side.

The Fourth Branch is not red or blue. It is American. And right now, it is needed as much as ever.

Dependent on the Fourth Branch

History rarely hinges on presidents and judges. More often, it hinges on us.

The Fourth Branch has always been there, from citizens who insisted on civil rights, to those who defended free speech, to those who quietly uphold democratic norms when no one is watching.

Ordinary people. Extraordinary resolve.

The Constitution is not just a document we admire. It is not a structure we can take for granted. It will break down if we do that.

It the bedrock of a system we must sustain. Its future depends, as it always has, on the Fourth Branch: the people.

Donna A. Gaffney and Teri Mills are leaders in Nurses for America and members of Defend Public Health. Their previous article was "Vaccines save lives Mr. Kennedy.”

When we became grandparents, we expected to worry about school performance, scraped knees, first heartbreaks, and whether our grandchildren were getting enough sleep. We never expected to worry that diseases we once thought were gone might come roaring into their lives. Yet here we are.

We understand why some parents hesitate about vaccines. The internet is saturated with alarming stories and loud voices warning that vaccines may do more harm than good. When you love your child more than anything, even a small seed of doubt can grow quickly. Fear is powerful, especially when it comes fueled by emotional anecdotes rather than medical facts.

As grandparents, we’ve lived long enough to remember what those fears leave out.

We remember measles, polio, and whooping cough, as real and frightening illnesses that often hospitalized children, causing lasting disabilities, and sometimes took young lives. Many parents today have never seen these diseases firsthand. That is a testament to the success of vaccines, but it has also made the dangers feel distant, even imaginary. When a threat feels invisible, protection can feel optional.

It isn’t.

Diseases do not disappear on their own. They disappear because communities choose to protect one another. When vaccination rates fall, preventable diseases return, and the consequences fall first and hardest on the most vulnerable, infants, medically fragile children and older adults.

That reality is why Grandparents for Vaccines was formed. This grassroots organization grew out of concern from grandparents across the country who were alarmed by declining vaccination rates and the growing influence of misinformation. Many of us raised our own children in a time when vaccines were understood as a public good, something that protected not just individual families, but entire communities. Our mission is simple: to use our lived experience, our voices, and our love for the next generation to advocate for routine childhood immunization and to ensure that preventable diseases do not reclaim a foothold in our grandchildren’s lives.

Grandparents for Vaccines does more than raise awareness. We take action. Members host community conversations and educational events, partner with pediatricians and public health experts, and share personal stories about what life was like before vaccines were widely available. With an emphasis on storytelling campaigns and a growing YouTube channel, grandparents speak directly to parents in a voice rooted not in politics, but in care, memory, and lived experience. These stories are not meant to frighten, but to remind us what is at stake and what we stand to protect.

On the Grandparents for Vaccines YouTube channel, one grandmother describes her 4 year old sister contracting measles before a vaccine was available, recalling how quickly this childhood illness resulted in permanent cognitive impairment, changing her entire family’s life forever. In another video, a grandfather speaks about his grandson, born prematurely and too young to be fully vaccinated, and his fear that declining community vaccination rates could expose the baby to life-threatening infections. A grandmother shares the heartbreak of losing her perfectly healthy 2 year old grandson from meningitis. These are not abstract debates; they are lived realities that connect past and present.

We frequently hear parents say they are overwhelmed with immunization information. The vaccine schedule feels complicated. The instructions are dense. One doctor’s visit doesn’t always leave room for every question. When answers feel rushed or confusing, uncertainty can harden into hesitation.

That is not a failure of parents. It is a failure of our systems to communicate clearly and compassionately.

As grandparents, many of us feel a responsibility to speak up, not to shame or lecture, but to share perspective. We have seen what happens when vaccines are absent. We understand that “natural” exposure often means very real suffering. Today’s questions deserve respect, but so do yesterday’s consequences.

Vaccines are not about blind trust. They are about decades of evidence, constant monitoring, and a simple goal: giving children the chance to grow up healthy and safe.

We want our grandchildren to grow up in a world where parents don’t have to learn the hard way what previous generations fought so hard to prevent. Choosing vaccination is not just a medical decision. It is an act of love, protection, and hope for the future.

As grandparents, we owe our grandchildren nothing less.

Donna A. Gaffney of Pacific Palisades, Calif., and Teri Mills of Tualatin, Ore., are medical

professionals and co-founders and board members of Grandparents for Vaccines.

In The Wizard of Oz, authority was created through spectacle. Smoke, sounds, and illusion mask the absence of substance, until the curtain is pulled back and the truth is revealed. It is a story about deception, but also about courage, especially the courage it takes to name what is happening when appearances no longer match reality.

That moment arrived on January 5th 2026 in American public health.

Federal health officials announced sweeping revisions to the U.S. childhood immunization schedule, reducing the number of diseases covered by routine vaccination and circumventing the detailed, evidence-based review process that has guided national recommendations for decades. Issued jointly by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the decision represents a profound shift in how this country protects its children.

As grandparents, we are speaking out because we have lived long enough to know what this kind of shift can mean. We remember the world before vaccines quietly transformed childhood. We remember polio wards and iron lungs. We remember measles outbreaks that closed schools, influenza seasons that filled pediatric wards, and families forever changed by diseases that are now largely preventable. Especially memorable, were children suffering the consequences of hepatitis B infections, specifically chronic liver disease. Vaccines did not erase risk entirely, but they changed the landscape of childhood in ways that saved lives and spared suffering.

These children are not abstractions to us. Dr. Danielle Dunetz, a pediatrician in New Hampshire, recalls an 18-year-old girl she met on her first day of residency. Just weeks after graduating high school, this young woman was hospitalized with anorexia nervosa. Further testing revealed liver cancer with metastases. She had never received the hepatitis B birth dose. She hoped to become a teacher. She died from a preventable disease just weeks before entering college. 

The rollback of routine recommendations for vaccines protecting against illnesses such as influenza, RSV, hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, and meningococcal disease places children at unnecessary risk and creates confusion for parents seeking clear guidance. Vaccine recommendations were not created casually. For decades, they were shaped by pediatricians, immunologists, and public health experts who reviewed data carefully and transparently, always with the goal of protecting children in the real-world conditions of the United States.

That process has now been disrupted.

Supporters of the changes point to other countries as models, particularly Denmark. But the United States is not Denmark. Our population is vastly larger and more diverse. Our classrooms are more crowded. Our climate, healthcare access, and disease exposure risks differ significantly. Importing another country’s immunization schedule without accounting for these realities does not strengthen public health. It destabilizes a system that parents, clinicians, schools, and communities have relied on for generations.

When national guidance becomes unstable, trust erodes. And when trust erodes, vaccination rates fall. History has shown us this repeatedly. Confusion is not neutral. It is dangerous.

Let us be clear about one critical point. These vaccines are not banned. Parents can still protect their children. Pediatricians can still recommend these vaccines, and families can still request them. Insurance coverage remains in place. What has changed is the clarity and strength of federal guidance that families have long depended on.

In moments like this, trusted medical relationships matter more than ever. Grandparents for Vaccines urges parents to turn to the immunization schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and to speak directly with their child’s pediatrician. Ask questions. Seek evidence. Rely on clinicians whose careers are grounded in caring for children, not on shifting political winds.

Grandparents carry a unique form of authority. Ours is not rooted in ideology, but in memory. We know what happens when preventable diseases return, because we lived through those eras. We know that public health gains, once lost, are hard to reclaim. And we know that children pay the price when adults fail to act with care, humility, and responsibility.

We are raising our voices now, before the consequences fully unfold, to say this plainly, “Do not play politics with the health of our grandchildren. Protect them.”

America’s grandmothers and grandfathers are standing up so the nation can hear our plea. Across generations, we share one responsibility: to ensure that children are protected by evidence, not illusion. Grandparents for Vaccines will continue to speak, advocate, and stand with families and pediatricians to keep all our grandchildren safe.

Donna A. Gaffney and Teri Mills (Co-founders of Grandparents of Vaccines and Leaders in Nurses for America)

The critical role of immigrant workers in healthcare is underscored by your recent article about the death of nurse Muthoni Nduthu, the nurse who perished with two others in an explosion at Silver Lake Nursing Home in Bucks County.
Ms. Nduthu and her family emigrated from Kenya to Philadelphia two decades ago. Like many immigrants — some, yes, undocumented — she worked long hours and put herself through school to become part of the huge share of foreign-born workers in the healthcare sector — 28% of the overall direct care workforce for long-term care, and 32% of workers in home care settings, according to a 2025 analysis by KFF.

What would the steadily growing U.S. aging population do without these men and women?

As a nurse myself, and recently having family members in other rehabilitation centers, I can attest to the important roles of immigrants and people of color in providing care. It is tough work, with a median annual wage of $16,800, according to a brief prepared for the SCAN Foundation. Consequently, there isn’t a clamor for these jobs by native-born Americans.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deployments are having a chilling effect on immigrants seeking employment in healthcare — something we absolutely don’t need as our aging population demands more care.
We need more people committed to helping others like Nduthu. Let’s honor her memory by welcoming newcomers to our country, thoughtfully reforming immigration laws, and realizing that adequate healthcare can’t be achieved without immigrants.

Pat Ford-Roegner, Glen Mills.  Pat is a Core Leader for Nurse for America.