Francis Ford Coppola recalls his “horror” polio experience as a child

Francis Ford Coppola warns against polio as he worries about future of vaccines.

The Kennedy Center honoree recalled his experience with the disease after recent reports revealed that a top ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President-elect Donald Trump nominated to lead the Health and Human Services Department, was at the Food and Drug Administration had filed a request to revoke approval of a polio vaccine for children.

“People don’t understand that polio is a fever that only affects you for one night. You’re only sick for one night,” Coppola said in an interview with Deadline published Sunday. “The terrible effects of polio, such as the inability to breathe, requiring one to be in an iron lung, or the inability to walk or be completely paralyzed, are the result of the damage done in that one night of infection are.”

The “Megalopolis” director contracted polio when he was about nine years old and was 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 full of children that there were stretchers stacked three or four high in the hallways because there were so many more children than there were beds in the hospital,” he continued. “I remember the children in the iron lungs, whose faces you could see in the mirror, all crying for their parents. They didn’t understand why they were suddenly in these steel cabinets.”

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He added: “I looked around and then when I tried to get out of bed I fell on the floor and realized I couldn’t walk.”

He said he stayed in the polio ward for ten days. A doctor later told him he could “live a long life” but “always be in a wheelchair.” But Coppola said his father, “The Godfather” trilogy composer Carmine Coppola, refused to accept that prediction.

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

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His father learned of the treatment popularized by Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny, which required patients to complete light exercises called the Sister Kenny system. The legendary director of “The Godfather” trilogy said the system is the reason he “can even walk today.”

“But the horror is that I saw a hospital full of screaming children, and that was finally over, thanks to the miraculous Salk vaccination that came just two or three years later,” he said.

“Dr. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, they donated the patents of their vaccines to the public, unlike what is happening today where the companies own them,” Coppola continued. “To see (polio) disappear, there are so many stories about the vaccine, how many lives it saved in an epidemic that was getting worse…It makes the idea so absurd that now they’re talking about a U-turn on the “We would think about vaccines.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also a polio survivor, issued a statement Friday after reports that a key Kennedy ally, Aaron Siri, had targeted the use of the vaccine for children.

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

Siri, Kennedy’s adviser who is 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 the safety of vaccines, according to The New York Times. He has also filed a petition to suspend distribution of other vaccines and has challenged COVID-19 vaccine regulations, the outlet reported.

Kennedy has long questioned the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, which has put him in a controversial position with senators as he tries to shore up their support. Last week, Trump told reporters he was “a big supporter” of the polio vaccine.

“Anyone seeking Senate approval to serve in the new administration would do well to avoid even the appearance of a connection to such efforts,” McConnell added.

Contributor: Sudiksha Kochi

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Francis Ford Coppola recalls his “horror” polio experience as a child

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