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“The Moth in the Iron Lung: a biography of polio” is a book by Forrest Maready.

First let me say, “he’s totally bonkers, but all the best people are.” That’s a quote from Lewis Carroll and I think it applies well to this particular trip down the rabbit hole. All in good humor here, that’s not a commentary on the book itself but rather on the subject matter.

Ignorance is bliss, illusions serve a vital and necessary purpose in the world. LOL, I’m actually a bit hesitant to recommend this book and shatter any illusions, but it was right up my alley.

I was especially pleased by how Maready brought back some of the wonder, curiosity, and humility that modern science has so often been lacking. Does anybody even think to ask, “what, where, why, when” anymore? We do not we say, “shut up and respect the narrative,” er, I mean “respect the science.” “Science” has become this hard, unyielding thing that perceives any “why” questions as a kind of blasphemy.

So narratives, myths, and legends tend to shape our current perceptions. We’ve all been immersed in historical narratives about vaccines and disease, vaccines being kind of the hero, the miracle that has allegedly rescued us all from great suffering and death. Some of that narrative was built on the back of tales told about the polio epidemic. Maready provides us some historical facts and details we may not have known and offers a possible hypothesis as to what was really going on at the time.

I’ve already done a great deal of research into polio, DDT, and what the introduction of basic sanitation might have done to our gut microbiome and whatever inherited immunity we might get from our mothers, so being open to such ideas and willing to challenge the standard medical narrative if only in my own mind, is already familiar territory. Maready’s book was encouraging because it was like, oh look at that, there’s somebody else in the world willing to think critically. What a novel idea!

You would have to read the book. I am not saying the book is about any of those things I have just mentioned and I don’t wish to provide any spoilers. I am simply saying there are many complexities to human health that we simply don’t understand fully. Hindsight is always 20/20.

One of my favorite sayings is, “you do not know what you think you know.” How much of our current medical “science” is actually based on facts and data and how much of it is simply based on socially approved narratives and historical lies? That can be a disturbing reality to confront, but I believe it is desperately needed.

Just in my own lifetime, I’ve seen many medical disasters, many cases of, “oops, that was actually not in your best interest at all.” At the moment I’m personally still sucking on some mercury filled amalgam fillings for cavities unable to afford to replace them. In fact, even today the FDA acknowledges that mercury is a very dangerous heavy metal, but don’t worry, it should be perfectly fine just sitting in your mouth. Much of my generation dutifully went to the dentist and had our mouths filled with mercury. I guess I should be grateful we are no longer just routinely coating the gums of teething infants in the stuff.

Speaking of which, mercury poisoning is probably what gave the Mad Hatter his edgy charisma in the first place and inspired Alice to go tripping down the rabbit hole. Sigh. The more things change the more they stay the same.

For me personally, “The Moth in the Iron Lung” helped me to become a bit more philosophically patient or perhaps spiritually compassionate about the sheer ignorance of humankind. We simply don’t know what we don’t know and our capacity to really foul things up, including our own health and well being, is quite unprecedented.