Our
Hats Are off to A Magnificent Job!
EDITORIAL
"Bristol Phoenix"
April 14th 2005
By Roswell
Bosworth Jr., Publisher-Emeritus
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the successful production of Salk vaccine to eradicate polio, a dreaded disease which killed and maimed thousands of people around the world each year.
The disease prospered during the warm months of the year, and fear of its deadly effects closed down beaches, swimming pools, theaters, sports events and family gatherings. Those who survived full-fledged attacks of polio were left with life-long impairment of various parts of their bodies-some spending the remainder of their lives breathing artificially in "iron lungs." Others were seriously crippled.
Here in the U. S. polio has long since disappeared, but in isolated pockets in Africa and Asia the battle to stamp out the disease goes on. A great benefactor of this world-wide effort has been Rotary International, which has been raising funds for the past two decades to take the battle against polio to the most remote areas of the world.
Twenty years ago, when he was president of the Bristol Rotary Club, Dr. Manuel L. daSilva engaged the Bristol Rotary Club in this huge effort. Since then the Bristol club and some 30,000 Rotary clubs around the world have raised over half a billion dollars to stamp out polio. Local fund-raisers such as Rotary's Waterfront Festival, the May Breakfast and the Rotary Show have poured thousands of Bristol dollars into this remarkable effort.
Dr. daSilva, and the hundreds of Bristol Rotarians who have supported the cause, may take pride in the following editorial which appeared on Tuesday April 12th in the Wall Street Journal:
Nobel Prize for Peace
Indeed for a long time the International Rotary Clubs deserve to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace, because of their tremendous humanitarian work not only with the campaign for polio plus, but also for their many other enterprises in education, and for better understanding among various peoples of the world!
Manuel Luciano da Silva, M. D.