Francis Ford Coppola recalls his ‘horror’ polio experience as a child
Francis Ford Coppola is issuing a dire warning on polio amid concerns about the future of vaccines.
The Kennedy Center honoree recalled his experience with the disease after recent reports revealed a top ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the Health and Human Services Department, petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of a polio vaccine for children.
“People don’t understand that polio is a fever that just hits you for one night. You only are sick for one night,” Coppola told Deadline in an interview published Sunday. “The terrible effects of polio, like being unable to breathe so you have to be in an iron lung, or not being able to walk or be totally paralyzed, is the result of the damage of that one night of the infection.”
The “Megalopolis” director contracted polio around the age of 9 and was left bedridden and paralyzed for a portion of his childhood.
“I remember that night. I was feverish and they took me to a hospital ward. It was so crammed with kids that there were gurneys piled up three and four high in the hallways because there were so many more kids than there were beds in the hospital,” he continued. “I remember the kids in the iron lungs who you could see their faces on mirrors, and they were all crying for their parents. They didn’t understand why they were suddenly in these steel cabinets.”
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He added: “I was looking around, and then when I tried to get out of bed, I fell on the floor and I realized I couldn’t walk.”
He said he stayed in the polio ward for 10 days. A doctor would later tell him he’d “be able to live a long life” but “always in a wheelchair.” But Coppola said his father, “The Godfather” trilogy composer Carmine Coppola, refused to accept this prognosis.
“My father didn’t trust the opinion,” he said. “That was a strong opinion that the cure, or the therapy, was to pin you in your bed and make you immovable. It didn’t sound logical to him.”
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His father learned of the treatment popularized by Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny, which had patients complete mild exercises, referred to as the Sister Kenny system. The legendary director of “The Godfather” trilogy said the system is the reason he “even can walk today.”
“But the horror is what I saw a hospital just filled with screaming kids, and that was finally all over, because of the wonderful Salk vaccine that happened just two or three years later,” he said.
“Dr. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, they donated the patents of their vaccines to the public as opposed to what happens today where the companies own them,” Coppola continued. “To see (polio) go away, there’s so many stories about the vaccine, how many lives it saved in an epidemic that was only becoming a bigger epidemic … It makes it so absurd, the idea that they would consider reversing course on vaccines now.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow polio survivor, issued a statement Friday following reports that a top Kennedy ally, Aaron Siri, had targeted the use of the vaccine for children.
“The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous,” McConnell said.
Siri, Kennedy’s adviser who is helping him pick health officials for the incoming Trump administration, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the group Informed Consent Action Safety, which has questioned vaccine safety, according to the New York Times. He has also filed a petition to pause the distribution of other vaccines and he has challenged COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the outlet reported.
Kennedy has a long history of questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, which has put him in a controversial spot with senators as he looks to shore up their support. Last week, Trump told reporters he is “a big believer” in the polio vaccine.
“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell added.
Contributing: Sudiksha Kochi
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