To the editor:

I wanted to respond to Eric Lucentini's guest column "Polio - a disease that's not gone, not forgotten" (Gazette, Oct. 24). First I wanted to thank Mr. Lucentini for bringing up the subject of polio and describing how the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, spearheaded by the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF, has dramatically decreased (if not yet eradicated) the incidence of polio. This initiative has been very successful and should be appreciated. The fact that polio still lurks is another very important point to bring up, especially at a time when people are sometimes questioning vaccinations, not just for polio, but in general.

My difficulties in reading the column are more with Mr. Lucentini's way of expressing how he felt about his friend "Hugh" who had polio. Although I completely understand how an 8-year-old may have felt afraid looking at his friend's leg, the terminology used by the guest writer to describe Hugh's leg was quite offensive to me.

I had polio myself when I was 20 months old and it also affected one of my legs in the same way as described in the column. My leg is atrophied (not "withered") and looks different, but is not "hideously deformed" and has not been "useless", but has stood by me all these years. I also wear a long leg brace, although now it's mostly plastic and metal not a "grotesque latticework of steel and leather," I also underwent the same surgery that Hugh had to lengthen his leg, and yes, there was pain like in any other orthopedic surgery, but it wasn't a "medieval torture rack".

This use of terms like "withered," "hideously deformed," and "grotesque" present people with disabilities, not just people with polio, in a negative light and reinforce prejudices in our society at large. I think this is unfortunate, because the rest of the article was excellent and very important.

Philippe Galaski

Amherst

Philippe Galaski is a post-polio support group facilitator in Amherst.