Po' Leo...

Say "polio" to a child today, and he might look at you with a quizzical stare. Say "polio" to your grandmother, and you might get a look of horror. An entire generation of Americans grew up never being able to play in the summer, for fear of a disease that could leave them crippled or dead. Polio is a thankfully forgotten scourge of the Western World, largely eliminated through the use of vaccines.

If you go to the UN in New York, you'll see a clock which counts down to the date at which the world, it was hoped, would be certified Polio-free. The WHO had hoped that, like smallpox, polio could be eliminated. And what a triumph of human achievement that would have been!

Except that in Nigeria, some Muslim clerics decided that vaccination was the work of demon-countries (read: Westerners), and would cause AIDS--and they told this to their followers. And so Polio continues in Africa. But, like most diseases, it spreads easily.

And this year, someone carried it with them to the Hajj in Mecca. The elimination of polio may face a final, fatal blow.

To anyone who, like those clerics, says that science is an inherently "Western" epistomology, I say to them: yes, that may be true, but so what? The fruits of science are neither Western nor Eastern, Judeo-Christian or Muslim. They apply, ignorantly and slendidly, to all mankind. So in our tirades about the Western demons and the ills of developed nations, let us never forget that there is immense human suffering that no longer occurs, because of a group of dedicated scientists.