Talk:List of poliomyelitis survivors

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Featured list star List of poliomyelitis survivors is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
July 17, 2007 Featured list candidate Promoted

Contents

[edit] Potential names

Only a few minor characters left...

[edit] Geocities

The following people are listed on geocities but don't have a page on Wikipedia.

I'll see if we can create pages for these. Working from the top down. Colin°Talk 13:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)



  • Lauro Halstead: doctor (physiatrist)
  • Nyla Thompson: mouth artist
  • Oscar G. Heirlihy: Radio and TV Pioneer, Newfoundland
  • Ruma (Syrian): ancient Syrian http://www.johnpowell.net/pages/Stele.jpg
  • Tony Gould: author (UK)
  • Walter Jackson (singer) (1938–1983): lead singer of the "Velvetones"

[edit] The Polio Paradox

ISBN 0446690694. Page 106. I've found a few more names thanks to Amazon search but I can't read the whole page since I've never bought from Amazon.com. Can anyone else read the page and check there aren't more names? Despite this being a book, I don't regard this list as a "reliable source" for names. Colin°Talk 16:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Christopher Templeton (also on geocities above)
  • Elizabeth Twistington Higgins (Elizabeth Higgins, dancer)
Those are the only ones that I see. Worrisome is that he also lists Oppenheimer and William O. Douglas, but doesn't give any sort of sources for the survivors.--DO11.10 18:44, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rejects

People for whom WP:RS verification could not be found:

The following people died of polio, so were not "survivors".

[edit] Questions

  • Mel Hague-In an interview Hague stated: ”I was born in 1943 with Cerebral Palsy; back then they called it Infantile Paralysis,” [1] I don’t think that they ever called Cerebral Palsy “infantile paralysis” (although it was known as "Cerebral Paralysis"), so the question is: did they diagnose him with polio or CP, is this a case of memory-lapse?
  • Craig Johnston-“Johnston overcame an appalling bout of the polio-related condition osteomyelitis in his childhood.” [2] Okay but, Osteomyelitis is "an infection of bone or bone marrow, usually caused by pyogenic bacteria or mycobacteria. Extremely rarely, the viruses which cause chickenpox and smallpox have been found to cause a viral osteomyelitis."[3] I couldn’t find anything that said it could be caused by poliovirus, so the problem here is really that osteomyeltis it not “polio-related“.
Any thoughts on what we should do with these two?--DO11.10 19:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Hague is either misremembering or was misdiagnosed. Either way, he shouldn't be included. I agree Johnston's condition isn't really "polio-related". Perhaps the article should have "polio-related" removed. Colin°Talk 13:09, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good to me.--DO11.10 23:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Joseph Goebbels: politician The article says "...the deformity arose from a childhood attack of osteomyelitis and a botched operation to correct it." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DO11.10 (talk • contribs) 17:18, 5 June 2007.
I've done some more research and put him in the Doubtful diagnosis section. Colin°Talk 18:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Elected to add with Miami Herald obit as (mediocre) source. -- MarcoTolo 23:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Oh that's fine as a source. I was uncomfortable using the google-groups copy. I see you've found the original. Colin°Talk 10:17, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, that's kinda what I thought. Having a look through the article as it is now, I wonder if it might be a good idea for Colin to go through and ensure that the article is properly British-ized (or British-ised, as it were). I have no doubt that I've let slip a few American spellings, but my eyes have a tendency to glide right over them.--DO11.10 22:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments (taken from my talk page)

Copied from my talk page -- Colin°Talk 17:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I just a quick look and had the following points.

  1. The doubtful diagnosis section. Bud Daley for instance is hard to reconcile with WP:BLP, it is sourced but when he himself says it's not polio it seems strange to include it. That whole section seems a bit weird. It is doubtful perhaps that Bud Daley has polio, but possible (different than doubtful) that Louis Auguste de Bourbon had polio.
  2. I miss the nationality of the people in the list. Some people use flag icons for that, but I really hate those. Perhaps just mention something like English science fiction author who etc...
  3. There are some unwikified dates in the references.
  4. No article, and no year info of Eleanor Abbott.

Hope that helps some, Garion96 (talk) 00:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your helpful comments.

  1. I've reworked the doubtful diagnosis section by spawning off two others: Retrospective diagnosis and Misdiagnosis. Hopefully, moving Bud Daley to the misdiagnosis section removes any BLP issues. The myth that Daley had polio is pervasive: web sites, books and (until I fixed it) Wikipedia all mention it. As with the epilepsy list, countering misleading information is, I believe, as important as presenting just the correct information.
  2. I took the deliberate decision not to include nationality. I'm interested to know what the other editors think about this. Here's my thoughts:
    1. It is often extremely difficult to source, so unless I steal this information from the person's article, I would only be able to mention it in the minority of cases. That might look uneven.
    2. Is it important and helpful? Yes, it may help identify someone. However, nationality might distract the reader from focussing on the person. In List of HIV-positive people (your list :-) the nationality is generally the first word in the mini-biography, leaving less room, perhaps, for some other information. As you scan the list, it tends to become the dominant thing the eye focuses on. Instead of seeing "a poet"; "a journalist", "a biographer", you see "an American"; "an American"; "A French". I wanted each list entry to describe the person first then their encounter with polio. Is your nationality the first thing you want people to think about you?
    3. Occasionally nationality is vital, such as with political positions.
  3. I've fixed the dates.
  4. I'm not sure what to do about Eleanor Abbott, the inventor of Candy Land. There isn't enough info for an article, yet the story is relevant to polio. If people think she should be dropped then that's fine.

Colin°Talk 16:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

To pipe in...thank you for comments Garion96, they have been helpful. I like you have done with the doubtful section, Colin. This second rearrangement is, I think, more informative overall. I am also quite in agreement with you about the nationality aspect. I have observed that in many cases the nationality can be inferred from the text, and might be redundant, if stated right off the bat for each entry. I notice that a few of the entries I added give a nationality when it is not required. Having given it more thought now, I think that I will go through and remove them, so that the list is uniform. Eleanor Abbott is such a great story, but I just don't see finding enough information about her to warrant her own article. It would be a shame to take her out, I am not sure what to do here either...--DO11.10 00:09, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I am still not sure about Bud Daily. One the one hand we are stopping false information, one the other hand when you google and find Bud Daily on Wikipedia you see an immediate relation with polio. He basically never had polio, so I still don't think he belongs on the list.
About the nationality aspect, no I don't think nationality should be have to be the first thing you read. However since Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia I do think it is an important thing to include in a list like this. Whether it is specifically stated or easily figured out from the description. Garion96 (talk) 17:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're Googling for. If I search WP for "Bud Daley", this list is at #20 in the list. #1 is his own article, which was wrong until I fixed it as a result of researching this list. If I just search Google for "Bud Daley", this page isn't in the top 100 (I didn't look beyond that). But at #3, ahead of WP at #4, I get this page which contains the misleading info. FYI: I quoted the text from my source over at Talk:Bud Daley. I think our inclusion of this information does Bud a favour, is more helpful to the reader than saying nothing, and is similar to the sort of content on Snopes. Urban legends don't go away because a few people don't repeat them.

BTW: I'm sure in a few day's time, if you google for "Bud Daily" on WP, this page is all you will find ;-) Colin°Talk 18:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Beautiful work, as usual

Cheers to Colin and the other editors here for some excellent efforts. I've got just two suggestions. First, try to create a stub article for the red link. The second one is a softer judgement call - have a good look at the image use. In particular I'd advise taking out any fair use images. This page already has plenty of images and some WP:FLC reviewers might criticize the large number as decorative. I'd suggest one image per section and captioning that relates each to the topic of polio. In general, captions are among the most read portions of text by article readers. Perhaps there's a way to use more variety, such as a statistical graph of polio rates.

Overall this is well referenced, well written, and beautifully formatted. It certainly looks exhaustive to my eyes (although when it comes to polio I profess no special knowledge beyond the average reader). Good work, you're very close to being ready for candidacy. DurovaCharge! 06:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments and compliments. I'll look into creating an article for that red link. I've checked all the images and none are fair-use. I think the main concern with decoration is where fair-use images are used. However, too many images make the list load slowly and not all the images are of equal quality. I didn't want to remove any until we had settled on the sections, since we need at least one image per section to maintain the table size. In reworking the latter sections, I've had to drop a couple of images (commented-out) to prevent them flowing into the next section. What do people think about removing some. Any suggestions? The captions idea is a good one. I don't know about adding charts since they may be more appropriate on the other polio pages (of which there are plenty) and this is a list about people. Colin°Talk 17:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
The page does load a bit slowly, but I am not sure how much removing a few of the pictures would affect the load speed. For what it is worth, I think that the sections look mostly balanced, except for the politicians, I think that John Porter East could probably removed to balance, since the caption would basically mirror the entry anyway. The science section may be a bit image heavy too (I for one am not a big fan of the Arthur C. Clarke image, he doesn't look a bit like I remember from his dust-jackets, but the Morrison image could also be removed. I think that Elsie should be a keeper though). The other sections seem reasonable to me. The image content also seems to be fairly representative (in respect to gender, nationality, superstars/niche, etc...) . Also, I do really like the caption idea, great suggestion.--DO11.10 00:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tony Gould

Tony Gould is not only a polio survivor (see the Geocities list above) but also the author of several non-fiction books.[4][5] We've included one as a reference:

Has anyone got this book? It looks like it might be a good source for the History article. It is a book for lay readers, but does seem to be scholarly researched and published by a reputable press. It appears to have an autobiographical chapter, which could be used to help flesh out an article on him. I think we should try to include him in our list. Colin°Talk 13:29, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I borrowed this book from the library a few months ago, and actually did use it as a reference for some information that I added to the history article. But, from what I remember, the book was mostly about other non-notable, (for the purposes here) polio survivors. I think that he mentioned something about his bout with polio, but I can't remember anything specific, I know it wasn't particularly autobiographical. I suppose I could re-rent to book? It would seem that Gould satisfies the wiki-notability guidelines. [6] What do you think??--DO11.10 00:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Formulaic and weak text

The following sentences are all in a similar weak style. MS Word complains of "verb use", which I think is due to the difference between "caught polio" and "was XXXed". Could someone please fix this and introduce some variety at the same time? Thanks. Colin°Talk 12:44, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Farrow collapsed on her ninth birthday and was diagnosed with polio two days later.
  • He caught polio, aged 14, and was paralysed in an iron lung within 24 hours.
  • He caught polio, aged six months, and was completely paralysed for a time.
  • She caught polio, aged three, and was left with partially paralysed legs.
  • He caught polio, aged seven, and was left with a shrivelled hand and leg.
  • She caught polio, aged three, and was left with difficulty walking.
  • He caught polio, aged nine, and was confined to bed.
  • He caught polio in 1907 and was left with a slight limp
  • She caught polio, aged 11, and was isolated in hospital for a while.
  • He caught polio, aged 13, and was affected with stiffness, pain and weight loss over two weeks. Nicklaus recovered without any paralysis but believes he may have post-polio syndrome, which makes his joints sore.
  • She caught polio, aged seven, and was left with a withered right lower leg and a limp.
  • He caught polio, aged 14, and was paralysed for several months.
  • He caught polio, aged four, and was treated by the method devised by Sister Elizabeth Kenny.
  • He caught polio, aged three, and was left lame in both legs.
I've had a single pass through some of the sections. I tried to add some variety at the beginning of each entry so that they don't all start with "A" or "An". I also re-worded some of the entries to eliminate the above "weak-verb" examples. I am not really sure why MS Word has a problem with the verb usage here, maybe the issue is that "caught" is both the past-tense and past participle of "catch". Perhaps it thinks that the PP version is being used and assumes that the sentence should read "He had caught polio, aged seven..." which, while correct, just sounds funny to me... Long story short: I left a few in. I will have a go at the rest in the next day or two.
On my side, I seem to have a subconscious affinity for commas and probably use them far too often. If you see this has happened, or would like to have a go at any of the entries I wrote/changed, please feel free to do so. I won't be offended. :)--DO11.10 03:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for working on this. It isn't easy to rephrase one's own words. I see you've fixed the red-link with a nice little article. Thanks very much for your help. Colin°Talk 13:14, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Your welcome, and thanks to you for getting the list off the ground (and to this point) so beautifully. Let's hope that FLC continues to go smoothly.--DO11.10 00:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jean Chrétien

After checking the cited ref (East & Thomas, 2003), I've restored this edit. If there are reliable sources which dispute Jean Chrétien's polio status, I'm all ears. -- MarcoTolo 23:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia own page on the man -- and all the discussion of it on the talk page. They found it was Bell's palsy, not polio. Rmhermen 05:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I found the talk page discussion about Chrétien's facial paralysis less than convincing, and I don't think that they "found" it was anything. The editors there presented that his facial paralysis could have been due to a stroke, or frostbite, or polio, or Bell's Palsy. "Bell's Palsy caused by frostbite" was agreed upon because "for now at least, it seems reasonable". Polio was dismissed, not for lack of RS, I count at least three on that talk page, (in addition here is our ref and another from the CBC) but because of someone's opinion that "The only one that doesn't fit is the Polio stuff, which clearly can be ruled out". "Doesn't fit" with what I am not sure, Bell's Palsy and polio are not mutually exclusive, in fact, Polio is often the cause of Bell's Palsy <symptoms>.
Further down on the talk page, one editor contends that "his facial paralysis was caused by Bell's Palsy; the cause of that condition is the only thing that's unclear." Since RS are available for both BP and polio, "ruling out" polio seems hasty and smacks of original research. I saw no citations for the stoke hypothesis, and while quotes were presented for the frostbite idea, based on "some hits on Google", no source information was given. I think it is pretty clear that, given the sources and research data presented, it very likely could have been polio. Accordingly, I will move Chrétien to the doubtful section and make mention of the Bell's Palsy, potentially caused by polio.--DO11.10 17:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Firstly, I'd like to thank Rmhermen for spotting this potential error. We all want to get the facts right. I agree, Chrétien should move to the doubtful section until we can rule out polio.
However, I'm not sure about "polio causing Bell's palsy". Both medical sources seem to imply that polio is a alternative diagnosis that should be ruled out. The Bell's palsy page says that it is a diagnosis of exclusion, which might suggest they are exclusive by definition. Indeed the second source says "Bell's palsy, a condition that results when a non-polio virus attacks a facial nerve and paralyzes one side of the face." What is clear is that Chrétien has a crooked smile. I think that at the moment we should offer the two possible causes but not imply any link.
What we need, in order to move Chrétien to the Misdiagnosis section, is either an article refuting polio in childhood, or an extensive biography that details his childhood but makes no mention of polio. We probably need a book. Colin°Talk 17:44, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Wow, you are fast, I was just in the processes of rewording my adjustment, so that it was not implied that the Bell's palsy itself was caused by polio. What I should have said above is that Polio is often the underlying cause of symptoms of Bell's Palsy.--DO11.10 17:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] David Onley

He's now Lieutenant Governor of Ontario-designate. Should he be moved to the "Politics" section, instead of "Film, television and radio"? This is an appointed position. -- Zanimum 18:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

This appears to be a ceremonial post that "doesn't come with any tangible power". However, it does appear to be a full-time job. He's also an author, so I guess he fits into lots of sections. Perhaps we should wait till he starts the job next month? Colin°Talk 18:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, basically as Ontario's representative to the Queen, he signs bills into law so she doesn't have some much paperwork. The country has a "governor general", whom does the same thing for federal law, and so technically Canada's head of state is Michaelle Jean. They do however, have the right to not sign anything they don't feel is in the province/country's long-term interest to sign, and occasionally (once every 3 or more governors) use that privilege.
But basically, David will be going around the province constantly, to represent the government. He will take the role of being a prominent advocate for the disabled, as well as a general advocate for all causes.
Regarding being an author, he's only written one book, as far as I know. A really successful book indeed, as far as CanLit goes, but he really never let it known in later years that he was a writer. -- Zanimum 17:31, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name change?

This list should be changed to "List of Notable Polio survivors" - Thousands more people have survived polio worldwide, yet this list is comprised of only notable people. Under its current name, the article is untrue, but if we change it then we can satisfy both fronts. Thoughts? Spawn Man 07:38, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The guideline Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists)#Naming conventions and policy Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Lists discourage use of the word "notable" since all entries on such list must be notable by implication. Wikipedia does not document unnotable people. WP:MEDMOS#Notable cases also discusses the issue and accepts that "notable" may be acceptable since these people are usually notable for reasons other than their medical condition. I also see that the featured list List of notable brain tumor patients has been recently renamed to List of brain tumor patients. So this is an area still under discussion... Colin°Talk 08:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
What about putting notable in the lead sections where it says "This is a list of people who have survived the infectious disease poliomyelitis" - We could change that to "This is a list of notable people who have survived the infectious disease poliomyelitis". This would comply with naming conventions but remain truthful to the actual content of the article, as as it stands, it is a bit misleading; When I saw the article link I thought it would be huge because there are thousands of survivors, but then found out it was only notables. So yes, the addition of notable in the lead could work - thoughts? Spawn Man 12:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Done. Colin°Talk 07:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Cheers, :) Spawn Man 10:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)