To the Editor,
When I was in third grade or thereabouts, we all lined up in the school yard to be vaccinated against polio. There was no argument about that. Our parents were well aware of the ravages of polio, having seen the effects firsthand. They had all endured World War II and the Great Depression and were not about to sacrifice their hard-won peace and prosperity to arguments about civil liberties and the vaccine’s effectiveness. The maiming effects of polio and death were broadly distributed across the land.