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Re:Polio Is on the Brink of Eradication by gumby on Thursday November 23, 2023 @01:18PM (#38395752)
FDR caught polio in his 20s and was wheelchair bound after that.

Mitch McConnell had a mild case of polio as a child and once you know that you can see the resulting trivial impairment in his gait and facial expressions. However his utterly evil attitude and actions have nothing to do with polio.

Re:Polio Is on the Brink of Eradication by shiroiuma on Friday November 24, 2023 @05:39AM (#38402524)
>However his utterly evil attitude and actions have nothing to do with polio.

You don't know that. Without looking into many alternate universes where he did not have polio, there's no way to know how having polio affected his mind, either biochemically or simply by affecting his experiences during his formative years in childhood. Remember the butterfly that causes a hurricane.

Re:Polio Is on the Brink of Eradication by gumby on Friday November 24, 2023 @02:34PM (#38407333)
A shame a rigorous, controlled A/B test wouldn't be ethical, much less possible. What if it turned out to be possible to vaccinate against becoming a jerk?
Re:Polio Is on the Brink of Eradication by shiroiuma on Sunday November 26, 2023 @11:50PM (#38428190)
The problem is that there's infinite ways that someone having a disease like polio could change their actions and therefore the future, and not all outcomes are actually worse. Perhaps having polio makes some people into jerks, and for others it somehow makes them better. Perhaps having polio effectively neutralizes some people who would have caused great harm if they had stayed healthy. Imagine if Hitler had contracted polio and was stuck in an iron lung for most of his life: history would be very different. Perhaps one of the people who did get stuck in an iron lung would have been another Hitler. The possibilities are endless.