How safe is America from polio?

"Perlman was four when he contracted polio. "I was already running and walking, and I remember one morning when I got up and I couldn't stand," he said. "I usually would stand up in the bed. And then I would go out and get dressed and so on. All of a sudden it was like, Stop. Can't do that anymore.""

""There was no protection, and there was no cure," said historian David Oshinsky, a professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winner "Polio: An American Story." "You could be a hands-on parent, a hands-off parent. It didn't matter. You could not protect your child from polio." Polio virus is spread through water, food, and close contact with an infected person. There's no cure or FDA-approved antiviral treatment."

Itzhak Perlman performed on The Ed Sullivan Show at 13 while using braces and crutches that viewers could not see. He contracted polio at age four and suddenly lost the ability to stand. Perlman missed the first polio vaccine introduced in 1955 by about six years, and the illness produced lasting disability and family distress. Polio could cause paralysis severe enough to require mechanical breathing support; thousands of children relied on iron lungs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The virus spreads through water, food, and close contact, and no cure or FDA-approved antiviral treatment exists.

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