Francis Ford Coppola Speaks Out About His Traumatic Polio Experience

Francis Ford Coppola, the Oscar-winning director behind The Godfather trilogy, has shared vivid recollections of his battle with polio, a disease that nearly left him permanently paralyzed as a child.

Coppola’s story serves as a poignant reminder of the devastating impact of polio and the lifesaving role vaccines have played in eradicating it.

Coppola’s Battle With Polio

Diagnosed at around age 9, Coppola experienced the swift onset of the disease. “People don’t understand that polio is a fever that just hits you for one night,” he told Deadline. “You only are sick for one night. 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.”

He recounted the overcrowded hospital ward filled with children suffering from the disease. “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,” Coppola said.

The iron lungs used to help polio patients breathe remain etched in his memory. “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.”

The Turning Point

Coppola’s recovery journey was marked by his father’s determination to find an alternative to conventional treatment. Carmine Coppola, a renowned composer, rejected the prevailing method of immobilizing polio patients, believing it would worsen his son’s condition.

Instead, he turned to the therapy developed by Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny, which emphasized gentle muscle exercises. Coppola credits this approach for his ability to walk today.

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Reflecting on the broader impact of vaccines, Coppola expressed deep gratitude for the Salk and Sabin vaccines, which eradicated polio in much of the world. “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,” he said. “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.”

As vaccine skepticism resurfaces, Coppola’s story, alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s warning, highlights the dangers of undermining public trust in proven immunizations.

McConnell stated, “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.”

Coppola’s journey and advocacy for vaccines underscores the critical importance of safeguarding public health advancements against misinformation.

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