It just struck me tonight, watching this movie again, how incredible the distance is from this movie to today.
Chase’s little sister Missy has polio; the scene where she first wears her leg braces leads into the execrable song “Laugh, Children, Laugh”.
That painful song makes you block the significance of the scene from your mind.
Some reviewers of the movie concentrate on Old Man Harris, the drunk, not realizing that he is comedy relief—they’re distressed that his drunken driving is not taken more seriously.
But here’s the thing—Missy had polio. When was the last time you heard of anyone suffering from polio? After the Salk vaccine in the fifties and the Sabin vaccine in the early sixties, the disease virtually disappeared.
Today we worry about vaccinations causing harm because it’s been so long since we had a true epidemic. Parents opt out of needed vaccinations and end up allowing their children to get sick. So far it’s measles and mumps and chicken pox hitting some areas, not the really serious illnesses like polio.
The headlines and the poorly researched articles posted in papers these days lead to a potentially serious problem.
A tiny amount of mercury (emphasis on tiny) was included in some vaccines as a preservative in the past.
A study or two showed a correlation between the mercury containing vaccine and autism—no causation, only a correlation.
That correlation was reported in a press release and went into the media—parents became concerned and refused vaccines for their children.
And that has led to some problems with disease spreading more than it should.
In the world at the time of Gila Monster, parents wouldn’t have dreamed of declining vaccines for their children—the monsters of serious disease were striking all around them.
It is, sadly, only because of the success of vaccinations that people now view vaccination with suspicion—that and the idiocy of a few people more interested in getting their names in the paper with wild theories than with facts.
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