LOS ANGELES – At the start of 2025, the countdown is on. On January 20, Donald Trump will once again become President of the United States. One of his first missions will be to compose his government and the future president has already stated that he intends to appoint as Minister of Health the sulphurous Robert Kennedy Jr. Nephew of former President John Kennedy, who was once a lawyer admired is now best known for his anti-vaccine positions.
If the future minister promised that he would not return to vaccination obligations once in office, his past positions are causing concern. Since Donald Trump's electoral victory, several personalities have spoken publicly to denounce the danger that Robert Kennedy's anti-vaccine policy would represent.
Doctors of course, politicians, but also celebrities, especially those old enough to have known the world before 1954 and the development of the polio vaccine by Jonas Salk. A world where more than 20,000 children contracted polio each year in the United States, where thousands of them ended up with terrible iron lungs and where the disease was the terror of every family.
Apocalypse at the hospital
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (82 years old) and actress Mia Farrow (79 years old), both affected by polio when they were children, warned of the devastation that calling vaccines into question would cause. But the testimony that had the most impact was that of Francis Ford Coppola.
In an interview published in Deadline magazine on December 22, the 85-year-old director, author of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, reflected at length on his ten years, when he contracted polio.
« Polio starts with a fever that hits you in the middle of the night » says the filmmaker. “I still remember that night, I was very feverish and my parents took me to the hospital. It was full of children, they were stacked on stretchers because there wasn't enough room to put them all in beds. I remember children in iron lungs who wouldn't stop crying and calling their parents. They didn't understand why they were suddenly trapped in there. I remember being mostly afraid for them, because at least I wasn't in one of those things. For a moment I tried to get up, I fell to the ground and I realized that I couldn't walk anymore, I couldn't get up. I stayed in the hospital for ten days before my parents took me home ».
A doctor then explains to young Francis that he will never be able to walk again. “ My parents took me to a Chinese restaurant because it was my favorite food, but I kept crying because I didn't want to end up in a wheelchair » remembers the filmmaker 75 years later.
The godmother of physiotherapy
Francis' father, Carmine Coppola, however, is determined not to let his son end up disabled. While most doctors at the time recommended immobility for children suffering from polio, the grieving father decided to trust in an experimental therapy promised by Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny.
This nun, considered one of the pioneers of physiotherapy, believes that the best therapy against paralysis is, on the contrary, to promote movements. She was an international star at the time (a film was dedicated to her in 1946) even if her theories were not recognized by all doctors.
« We hired a nurse, who came four days a week to do exercises for me. » says the director. “ In four to five months, she allowed me to gradually regain my mobility, I am eternally grateful to her and to Elizabeth Kenny, without whom I would no longer walk today ».
« The real nightmare is what I saw in the hospital with all these crying children and fortunately it ended a few years later thanks to the wonderful Salk vaccine » explains Coppola. Vaccination has in fact made it possible to eradicate poliomyelitis in the United States and almost everywhere in the world (there were only 84 cases in the world in the first half of 2024).
Francis Ford Coppola also recalls that “ the doctors who developed these vaccines, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, did not patent their discovery and offer it to the public, unlike what happens today when large companies develop drugs ». « When we see all the lives that have been saved thanks to vaccines, it seems so absurd that we now want to revisit it »concludes the director.
Legend has it that during the few months he was bedridden, young Francis developed a great interest in directing, making small puppet theaters. In 1955, once again on his own two feet, he began studying theater and made his first film in 1963.
The rest is known: more than twenty films made over more than six decades, including many masterpieces from the 7th art (The Godfather I and II, Apocalypse Now, Secret Conversation…) which earned him several Oscars and two Palmes d’Or. At 85 years old, Francis Ford Coppola has just released a new film, Megalopolis (which took him more than 40 years to make) and does not intend to stop there.
His next project is a musical. On vaccines?
