Francis Ford Coppola recalls his ‘horrific’ polio experience as a child

On December 23, 2024By Littum

Francis Ford Coppola issues a dire warning about polio amid concerns about the future of vaccines.

The Kennedy Center honoree recalled her experience with the disease after recent reports revealed a top ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President Donald Trump tapped to lead the Health and Human Services Department, requested the Food and Drug Administration revoke that approval of a polio vaccine for children.

“People don’t understand that polio is a fever that just hits you for one night. You’re only sick for one night,” Coppola told Deadline in an interview published on Sunday. “The terrible effects of polio, like not being able to breathe so you have to be in an iron lung, or not being able to walk or being totally paralyzed, are the result of the damage from that one night of infection. “

The “Megalopolis” director contracted polio around the age of 9 and was left bedridden and paralyzed for part of his childhood.

“I remember that night. I had a fever and they took me to a hospital ward. It was so packed with children that there were stretchers stacked three and four high in the corridors because there were so many more children than there were beds in hospital,” he continued. “I remember the kids in the iron lungs, 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 lockers.”

He added: “I looked around and 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 that he would “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 that prognosis.

“My father didn’t trust the statement,” he said. “It was a strong belief that the cure or the therapy was to pin you to your bed and make you immovable. It didn’t sound logical to him.”

His father learned about the treatment popularized by Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny, who had patients perform gentle exercises, called the Sister Kenny System. The legendary director of “The Godfather” trilogy said the system is the reason he “can walk by himself today.”

“But the horror is what I saw a hospital full of screaming children and it was finally 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 on their vaccines to the public as opposed to what happens today where the companies own them,” Coppola continued. “To see (polio) go away, there are 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, another polio survivor, issued a statement Friday after reports that a top Kennedy aide, Aaron Siri, had targeted the use of the vaccine in children.

“The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and delivered on the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they are dangerous,” McConnell said.

Siri, Kennedy’s adviser helping him select 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 New York Times. He has also filed a petition to halt 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 seeks to shore up their support. Last week, Trump told reporters that he is “a big supporter” of the polio vaccine.

“Anyone seeking Senate consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to avoid even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell added.

Cast: Sudiksha Kochi