Tag: National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis

Wonder Why My Parents Didn’t Give Me Vaccines?

Did your parents vaccinate and protect you against polio, measles, and whatever other diseases were vaccine preventable when you were a child?

Tom Little's editorial cartoon about an unvaccinated child with polio originally appeared in the Nashville Tennessean on January 12, 1956.
Tom Little’s editorial cartoon about an unvaccinated child with polio originally appeared in the Nashville Tennessean on January 12, 1956.

Or did they skip and delay a few, hoping you wouldn’t get sick?

Wonder Why My Parents Didn’t Give Me Salk Shots?

Tom Little helped parents understand what that might feel like without actually having to regret making a poor decision.

The inspiration for Tom Little's cartoon came from thinking of the "children who were left unprotected from from polio through no fault of their own."
The inspiration for Tom Little’s cartoon came from thinking of the “children who were left unprotected from from polio through no fault of their own.”

In addition to receiving a number of prizes and awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartoons, he helped convince a lot of parents to vaccinate and protect their kids against polio.

Tom Little's cartoon helped get kids vaccinated and protected.
Tom Little’s cartoon helped get kids vaccinated and protected.

The cartoon, published 64 years ago, was so effective, it was distributed nationally by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

Would it be effective today?

In 1972, there was an outbreak of paralytic polio among unvaccinated students at Daycroft, a Christian Science boarding school in Greenwich, Connecticut.

What do kids think when they get sick after being exposed to a life-threatening disease that has been vaccine-preventable for many years?

Hopefully we won’t have much opportunity to find out…

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