9/12/03

LC030912

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Polio struck millions of people in the 1950's. Now some victims
who thought it was behind them are discovering its unexpected
legacy.

Cheryl Girnus>> I started with a cane, then I went onto a
crutch. Then I went back into a leg brace, then I went into
wrist braces. Then I went onto surgeries again because
everything was deforming again and I felt like I literally did
take a step backwards to the 1050's again.

Val>> And then, shedding light on a part of the planet that has
never seen light before. A new IMAX film takes us 12,000 feet
beneath the sea.

It's all next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.


Val>> Hello, I'm Val Zavala at the California Science Center in
Exposition Park. Later in the program, we will plunge into a
part of the ocean floor never before seen courtesy of a stunning
IMAX film. But first a look at a forgotten disease. In the
1940's and 1950's, polio struck millions of children and caused
nationwide panic until a vaccine was found in 1955. But now,
half a century later, doctors are finding something called post-
polio syndrome. Toni Guinyard introduces us to some people who
are fighting a battle they thought was over.

Toni Guinyard>> Richard Daggett had just turned thirteen when
abruptly his whole life changed. It was 1953, the era of polio.

Richard Daggett>> I woke up on a Friday morning with a very
stiff neck. If I tried to bend forward, it was very painful, so
my parents took me to the doctor.

Toni Guinyard>> Within hours, Daggett found himself in the
communicable disease ward at the County Hospital. Doctors fears
he had polio, a virus that attacks the nerves that control
movement. As the hours passed, Daggett lost the ability to sit
up and, by the next day, unable to breath on his own, he was in
a respirator known in those days as an iron lung. Daggett had
been an active boy and, at first, had no idea how polio would
define his life.

Richard Daggett>> I got polio during the summer and my biggest
fear was that I would miss some school. I didn't realize I
would be paralyzed for years. I just thought, well, I'm here in
a hospital and I have to get out and go to school.

Toni Guinyard>> Daggett says he knew about polio, though he
never worried he might get it. But for many growing up in the
1940's and 1950's, polio was a scary word. The disease was most
prevalent during the summer and many parents kept their children
away from swimming pools and other public places.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> The March of Dimes made regular appeals for
funds to fight the illness and, in a moment of national joy, a
vaccine became available in 1955. Within two years, the
incidents of polio dropped dramatically.

Richard Daggett>> It's a forgotten disease to most people. You
talk to younger people, even younger adults, and you say you
have polio, they won't know what you're talking about.

Toni Guinyard>> Daggett ended up spending three years in
rehabilitation here at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Downey.
Rancho was among the leading centers for treating polio. Like
many of his fellow patients, Daggett was eventually able to walk
and breath on his own. He had no idea all that would change.

Richard Daggett>> Well, almost exactly thirty years and I had
no trouble. Then it was like my warranty ran out and my legs
got noticeably weaker, then my breathing failed. I had classic
pulmonary failure.

Toni Guinyard>> Richard Daggett has what is called post-polio
syndrome and he's not alone.

>> What symptoms in the back are you having?

>> Severe pain and I can't walk for more than a half block
without my hip going to one side.

Toni Guinyard>> Thousands of those who had polio decades ago
and thought it was behind them now report weakness, fatigue and
pain. Doctors at Rancho's post-polio clinic believe many
survivors worked so hard to overcome the effects of the disease
that their bodies are now worn out.

Dr. Sophia Chun>> It's a mindset that these post-polio
survivors taught themselves. The society taught them to really
push and be very vigorous with their recovery, but now they're
being told with the post-polio syndrome that that is what might
have gotten them into this trouble and they have to really
change their whole entire approach to life and really learning
to live within the limits of what they can do.

>> Little by little, you'll be able to kind of stretch a little
farther.

Toni Guinyard>> Cheryl Girnus was nine months old when she came
down with polio in 1953. Though she never fully recovered, she
limped, couldn't run and had trouble going up stairs, she never
imagined her condition might decline. But that's what started
to happen to her in the middle 1980's when she was thirty-five.

Cheryl Girnus>> It's terrifying. You think you're over
something and, all of sudden, I'm going back into using crutches
again. I started with a cane, then I went onto a crutch. Then
I went back into a leg brace, then I went into wrist braces.
Then I went into surgeries again because everything was
deforming again. I felt like I literally did take a step
backwards to the 1950's again and back into the 1960's. I
literally backtracked my life.

Toni Guinyard>> Rancho has been at the forefront of efforts to
study and provide care for those with post-polio syndrome. Dr.
Jacquelin Perry is a nationally-recognized orthopedic surgeon
who has spent her career at Rancho. On arriving here in 1955,
she became part of a team working to control deterioration in
polio patients. There was nothing to do for the paralysis, but
surgeries and other treatments could help avoid deformities. In
later years, Dr. Perry's research showed the association between
overuse and post-polio syndrome.

Dr. Jacquelin Perry>> It took a long time to sell it, but I had
the evidence.

Toni Guinyard>> Now at eighty-five and herself coping with
Parkinson's Disease, Dr. Perry remains active at Rancho as an
unpaid consultant.

Dr. Jacquelin Perry>> I got a mind that works. I got time and
I can do things. I like to help people.

Toni Guinyard>> Post-polio survivor, Sue Lau, comes to Rancho
for help with her own symptoms, but she also works through a
support group she founded to increase awareness of the syndrome
among doctors in the community. She says she and fellow
survivors often have a hard time finding physicians who
understand their condition.

Sue Lau>> I may not look like I have a problem, but I have more
of an upper extremity problem that is also now affecting my
lower extremity. For example, I may be walking around and doing
the normal things, but if I get tired and I don't stop right
away, I could fall and I have fallen.

Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Sophia Chun runs Rancho's post-polio
clinic. She wants the medical community to know more about
post-polio and says the lessons learned here will help those
aging with other kinds of disabilities such as stroke. It seems
there is no way to cure post-polio syndrome, but there are ways
to make living with the condition easier.

Val>> There are about a million survivors of polio in the
United States, but only forty clinics that specialize in post-
polio syndrome. Rancho Los Amigos in Downey is one of them.

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Val>> The ocean floor is often called earth's final frontier
and with good reason. Only a tiny percent of it has ever been
explored. But now a stunning IMAX film dives 12,000 feet below
the ocean's surface and shines light on a part of the planet
that has never been seen by human eyes. It has revealed that
the harshest most toxic environment on earth is teeming with
life.

The film is called "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" and one of the
biggest challenges was outfitting the sub called "Alvin" with
lights powerful enough to cut through intense darkness and
withstand crushing water pressure. I talked with IMAX director,
Stephen Low, whose credits also include the IMAX films "Skyward"
and "Titanica".

Stephen Low>> The scientists lit about eight feet out.

Val>> Oh, is that all? Eight fee? That's nothing.

Stephen Low>> Yeah, they were using like four hundred watt
light bulbs, tungsten light bulbs, and shooting on video. So we
were lighting on this film something near the size of a football
field and shooting with IMAX which is, you know, ten times more
powerful than Hollywood cameras.

Val>> So literally, human eyes were able to see something that
they had never seen before because light had never even hit this
place on the planet before?

Stephen Low>> That's right. Most of the areas have never been
lit at all. We've been going out where scientists normally
don't work, so very likely we went into areas where light had
never been shown in the history of the world.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Some of the things we saw are these shrimp. Describe
those.

Stephen Low>> The shrimp are part of this sort of extraordinary
mystery of the chemistry down there. At first when the
scientists discovered these vents in the late 1970's, they
really had no idea and were not expecting that kind of volume of
life, intensity of life.

Val>> Because it's incredibly hot down there. Hot enough to
melt lead, so you were thinking what kind of life could live
there, right?

Stephen Low>> Well, yes. Right on the vents, it gets very hot.
Just slightly off the vents, it's near freezing. It's sterile
and there is very little nutrients because all the nutrients
have to come from the surface.

[Film Clip]>> "In total darkness bathed in the poison breath of
the inner earth at 3,500 of pressure per square inch and
temperatures exceeding 230 degrees Fahrenheit lives the
hypothermaphile."

Stephen Low>> When they discovered these vents, it was just a
fantastic quantity of life and obviously not photosynthesis, so
there was a huge mystery at first. Now the shrimp are bathing
themselves in hydrogen sulfide coming out of the vent --

Val>> - which, to humans, would be --

Stephen Low>> -- it's poison, yeah. To any life on earth, it's
poison. But the shrimp were living off the bacteria that was
growing on their bodies. They were scraping it off and the
bacteria were taking hydrogen sulfide and using it in a chemical
process called chemo-synthesis. It's just an incredible
discovery.

Val>> And then the other amazing thing were these tube worms.

Stephen Low>> Again, another great mystery because how were
they living in this poison oasis? Gradually, over many years,
they figured out the puzzle that they were living off this
bacteria that was using hydrogen sulfide as a nutrient in
effect. It was an incredible discovery because what it meant
was that life was not just dependent on the sun's energy and
heat and photons, light energy. That effectively light
harnessed both ends of the thermonuclear spectrum. At the
center of the earth is decaying radiation from us, the star that
blew up and gave the material to build the solar system. At
that center of that is this decayed radiation. Well, life
figured out how to use both --

Val>> -- both extremes, both ends.

Stephen Low>> Both ends of the candle, if you will.

Val>> Now when you're down there and you're the cameraman down
there, can you appreciate what you're seeing or is it only when
you get the film back that you see how stunning, how gorgeous
this stuff is?

Stephen Low>> Well, you don't really have time to look around.
The time is so valuable down there. You really have to look
through the camera. The camera has to be in the window. There
are two other windows, but they're facing down and out the side.
So, in fact, there's no good way to really look out normally
except through the front window and, of course, the camera is
there.

So you're looking through the viewfinder of the camera and
trying to find the interesting subjects. You're trying to see
your way around and trying to help the pilot who's lying on the
floor, you know, shouting obscenities most of the time
(laughter). You're inside an active volcano blowing off, you
know, seven hundred degree water. If you get over a vent -- and
there is a porthole actually in the bottom as well, it's plastic
-- you'd be dead pretty fast.

Val>> So if you stayed over that vent too long?

Stephen Low>> Well, more than, I don't know, thirty seconds,
you'd be dead.

Val>> Oh, my God. Did you have any close calls?

Stephen Low>> The worst thing that happened was that my
partner, Bill Reeve, came back with the side of the sub burned,
a hole in the plastic on the sub. You know, the scary thing
about that is that they didn't know that they'd even got that
close.

[Film Clip]>> "The sub's temperature probes indicated water hot
enough to melt lead and it was laden with poisonous hydrogen
sulfide. There should have been nothing alive here at all."

Stephen Low>> The incredible thing is that you're steaming
around in this submarine when you don't know what's going to
loom out of the darkness, you know? You're in a very active
zone where there's a great deal of volcanism and life, so you
don't know. Out of the darkness always loomed something big and
spectacular and, very likely, no one's ever seen that particular
thing before.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Well, thank you so much for letting many, many more
people see what you've seen. You're very, very luck, and thank
you so much for all your hard work.

Stephen Low>> Thank you very much, Val.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Val>> For the last half of the twentieth century, the Red Cars
were a fixture along Los Angeles streets, but they bit the dust
as commuters moved into cars and buses. Now many believe the
Red Cars fell victim to a conspiracy between auto and tire
companies, but a new documentary says that's an urban myth.
Philip Bruce takes a look at the film that tells a different
tale.

Philip Bruce>> When Thom Eberhardt and his wife, Christine
Vasquez, set out to make a film about Los Angeles's legendary
Red Cars, they were thinking about a trip down memory lane and,
to some degree, that's what their documentary is, an intriguing
look at the glory days of mass transit in Los Angeles. The
film, "This Was Pacific Electric", shows how the rail line by
the same name helped transform the wide open spaces of Southern
California and it happened just by offering a viable alternative
to the horse and buggy.

Narrator>> "The first Pacific Electric Line opened on Friday,
July 4, 1902. The interurban cars began running at six a.m.,
one every fifteen minutes. Total travel time from downtown Los
Angeles to the salt spray of Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach?
Fifty minutes. By day's end, 30,000 people had inundated the
tiny beach town. In the coming decade, Long Beach would see its
population increase by 610 percent, making it the fastest-
growing city in the nation."

Philip Bruce>> From that point on, the Red Cars were part of
the local landscape and the filmmakers have tapped the memories
of scores of former riders such as Genevieve Fisher of Glendale
and her sister, Ann, who both recall how the Red Cars were woven
into the fabric of their lives.

Genevieve Fisher>> Oh, I've got to tell you another thing about
the red streetcar. My very first date, I was about thirteen
years old, to the drugstore and we had an ice cream soda and we
came back on the streetcar. That was my first date (laughter).

Ann>> I knew the conductor on the streetcar and I'd get on it
and ride for free and ride all the way into Los Angeles. Then
they'd turn around and I'd ride it back home for free
(laughter).

Philip Bruce>> But just as compelling as the history of the Red
Cars is the story of how they wound up on the scrap heap.
Popular urban legend has it that they died as a result of a
conspiracy between General Motors and half a dozen other big
companies, all with a vested interest in killing mass transit to
sell buses and cars.

Thom Eberhardt>> The conspiracy theory is that sometime in the
past, nobody can say exactly when, but it's generally pegged as
sometime in the early 1950's, General Motors along with
Firestone Tire and, depending on who you're listening to, either
Standard Oil or Phillips 66 Petroleum, got together, formed a
consortium to start buying up rail companies that were running
transit lines in cities around America and then started
systematically, once they were partnered into those companies,
getting rid of the trolley car lines and replacing them with
buses running on the streets. General Motors buses running on
Firestone tires burning, depending on who you talk to, either
Phillips 66 or Standard Oil, and that's the conspiracy theory
and we've got those guys to blame.

Narrator>> "Once upon a time, the Red Cars ran up and down the
tree-lined streets of Southern California. Everyone loved the
Red Cars. Their frequent, convenient and very friendly service,
everyone rode them everywhere. All was good in those golden
pre-smog years, but sneaky corporations led by no less than
General Motors, ganged up to eliminate the friendly Red Cars.
They wanted people to use tires and petroleum and, most
important, General Motors buses."

[Film Clip]>> "Buses are clean, comfortable and attractively
modern with such features as the ultra-smart new interiors."

Thom Eberhardt>> And the nice thing about the conspiracy theory
is it gives you one simple the-guy-you-love-to-hate target and
you don't have to think about it anymore. But it's simply not
true, simply not true.

Philip Bruce>> Make no mistake, federal authorities did
prosecute those big corporations back in the mid-1940's for
allegedly working to speed up the Red Cars' demise, but most
historians say the conspiracy had a lot less to do with the rail
line's death than simple money problems. Pacific Electric was
deeply in debt. The Red Cars had been losing money since the
1930's and the company was burdened by the huge expense of
having to maintain the streets where its rail lines ran.
Eberhardt and Vasquez say those facts are supported by people
who knew the Red Cars firsthand.

Thom Eberhardt>> You won't find one of them that will tell you
that the General Motors conspiracy theory holds air at all.
It's weird. You would think that those guys amongst all of
those people where that system is so beloved and the memory of
that system is so beloved, they would be looking for somebody to
blame for its demise. You'll find amongst those people that
they don't point at General Motors or Firestone Tire or Phillips
66 Petroleum or all of that gang that was supposed to have
gotten rid of the system.

Christine Vasquez>> And they're been not only obsessed. They
are really great historians. We interviewed some, but met many
and, almost without exception, these people study the history
of, I'm sure, other rails, but Red Car was our subject. They
really possess a world of knowledge.

Narrator>> "You can still see traces of it today like dinosaur
bones from Newport Beach to Watts, from Santa Monica to San
Bernardino, and with bits and pieces scattered everywhere in
between. Remnants of a rail system that once boasted 2,700
scheduled trains a day. Now it exists only in photographs and a
few hundred feet of home movies. This is the story of the
Pacific Electric. What happened to it and what happened to us."

Christine Vasquez>> All these memories, everybody has mostly
great memories. One or two sad memories, but mostly fun,
nostalgic memories.

Thom Eberhardt>> They won't talk about the Pacific. You can't
talk about anybody who was actually there at that time without
also hearing about going shopping at Bullocks downtown, about
going to Clifton's Cafeteria, about riding it out to the pike,
or even some of the older people out to the ostrich farm. It's
all part and parcel of the same thing. It's just a piece of
history of Southern California.

Val>> Of course, urban myths die hard, so the one about the Red
Cars may be around for a while. That's our program. Our thanks
to the folks at the California Science Center for their help.
I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for
watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Monday on Life and Times, it's a crusade to help ex-cons
and former gang members shed their old lives, but they'll have
to lose a layer of skin to do it.

>> So with the tattoos off and getting jobs, with stopping
violence and the bullets, hopefully we can help a segment of the
population be able to go in another direction with their lives.

Val>> That's Monday on Life and Times.