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The Moth in the Iron Lung: A Biography of Polio Paperback – June 5, 2018

by Forrest Maready (Author)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 738 ratings
#1 Best Seller in Forensic Medicine
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A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease—polio—told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard of disease began paralyzing so many children—usually starting in their legs, sometimes moving up through their abdomen and arms. For an unfortunate few, it could paralyze the muscles that allowed them to breathe.Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors? Why were animals so often paralyzed during the early epidemics when it was later discovered most animals could not become infected? The Moth in the Iron Lung is a fascinating biography of this horrible paralytic disease, where it came from, and why it disappeared in the 1950s. If you’ve never explored the polio story beyond the tales of crippled children and iron lungs, this book will be sure to surprise.
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  1. Print length
    284 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    June 5, 2018
  4. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.71 x 8 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1717583679
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1717583673
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Forrest Maready is an author, medical researcher, and historian who spent much of his life working in the television and film industry. He graduated from Wake Forest University and lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife, son and dog.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 5, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 284 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1717583679
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1717583673
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.71 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 738 ratings

About the author

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Forrest Maready

Forrest Maready

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Forrest Maready is a native of North Carolina and graduate of Wake Forest University, where he studied religion and music. He spent the early part of his career working in the film, television, and advertising industries as a sound engineer, composer, animator, and editor. He is the author of over a dozen books, many of them stemming from years of medical research. The Moth in the Iron Lung, his most popular, tells the true story of polio—a tale much different than most were taught as children. More recently, he founded Protarianism, a Christian denomination focused on restoring both tribes and an understanding of the faith before it was taken over by pagans, polytheists, and philosophers. His book Red Pill Gospel: Christianity, Before it was Ruined by Christians, documents the takeover. Maready lives in North Carolina with his family and is an avid musician, tennis player, and competitive shooter.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
738 global ratings
MOTH in the IRON LUNG
5 Stars
MOTH in the IRON LUNG
This book will blow yoursocks off! No kidding. Easy read. Eye opening.
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Top reviews from the United States

snowpixy
5.0 out of 5 stars Well researched.
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2024
Verified Purchase
Well written book. Convinces me money has and always will betray solid scientific thought. Provides great insight into polio as a garbage can diagnosis, over-represented by heavy metal poisoning. Definitely recommend.
5 people found this helpful
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Jason D. Hoy
5.0 out of 5 stars Mind blowing
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2024
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This is perfect for people that lived through Polio. It’s time to learn the truth and to stop trusting vaccines. It was like reading an intense murder mystery and I can’t wait to read it again.
7 people found this helpful
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Anna
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, must read!! A definite wake up call.
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2023
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I just finished this book last night and wow, what a fascinating yet tragic read. Maready takes us back to 1835 when the first cases of infantile paralysis appeared but were completely rare until the summer of 1894 when it struck with a vengeance. The number of cases escalated in different communities and with varying symptoms through the years, reaching a peak in the US in 1952 and fading out through 1957. Experiments with polio vaccines began in 1935, with a still completely ineffective and in many cases harmful version in 1955. The first live polio vaccine was not approved until 1963, when the polio outbreaks were already past. Corresponding with the rise in poliomyelitis cases was the use of Paris Green, Lead Arsenate, and DDT – all used to the extreme in an attempt to kill the gypsy moth which was a plague of Biblical proportions in Massachusetts, as well as the potato bug which was making its way eastward from central U.S. As polio cases were rising the cause was still unknown but suspected to be carried by flies or mosquitoes, so the application of pesticides increased even more. (Can you believe they would actually sprinkle DDT powder directly on children, animals, and their food! And for a while, victims of polio were treated with mercury pills!?!) Only a few doctors and scientists along the way theorized that the ingested metals and pesticides may be the suspect, but eventually, in the early 50’s, the harmful effects of DDT were undeniable and it was finally being discouraged from use. We know now these harmful chemicals are capable of creating cell membrane dysfunction in the intestines, allowing enterovirus infections to work their way out and into adjacent spinal cord tissue where lesions then develop, causing paralysis and other terrifying symptoms. The author concludes with a modern-day example of a similar phenomenon, the Zika virus. He reflects on the fact that , “Humans prefer a heroic story rather than one of dismal failure.” We seem bent on crediting doctors with a cure rather than admit the cause was man-made all along. Read this chilling book for yourself and see if it doesn’t shake the foundations of what you think you know about medial science and what we’ve been trained to believe.
18 people found this helpful
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Randy
5.0 out of 5 stars Undeniable truth. The work of a true journalist, a maverick
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2023
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I stumbled upon a tweet from Forrest, read this book, and it has changed my life. Uncovering the truth behind the narrative that’s sold to us about Polio. It’s a true biography of Polio and a great short read.

It’s also inspiring. Self researched and self published ,then persevering through the grueling uncertainty and hours of finding nothing.

This book will challenge your worldview, buy it.
21 people found this helpful
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Kacey
5.0 out of 5 stars MOTH in the IRON LUNG
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2023
Verified Purchase
This book will blow your
socks off! No kidding. Easy read. Eye opening.
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Kacey
5.0 out of 5 stars MOTH in the IRON LUNG
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2023
This book will blow your
socks off! No kidding. Easy read. Eye opening.
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8 people found this helpful
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J
5.0 out of 5 stars SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY!
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2023
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Get. This. Book! It’s been an excellent history of not only polio but also the use of chemicals and the government’s (lack of) safety standards.

Regarding negative reviews... He does cover the polio vaccine, but not vaccines in general, so I don’t understand why people are calling him anti vax in the reviews. He isn’t a doctor, that is true, but you don’t have to go to medical school or get a history degree to be able to use primary sources and critical thinking to form hypotheses. He provides information and it is up to us to form our own opinions.

There is something for everybody in this bibliography of the horrible paralysis epidemics in America: history, medicine, politics, etc.
64 people found this helpful
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J. Goetz
5.0 out of 5 stars The facts do matter
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2023
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Very well written. I found myself stopping repeatedly to do web searches asking “is this true” and finding out that yes, that is true. Forrest has done a great job stitching those truths together.
15 people found this helpful
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Joe Sevy
4.0 out of 5 stars The author makes a compelling case.
Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2019
Verified Purchase
This book details an otherwise unknown history of disease in the western world as brought on by metallic poisoning that was administered literally from cradle to grave.

Most of us are unaware of the ubiquitous use of mercury and other metals, not only in pesticides, but in common medicine. If you received medical care in the years following the civil war to the early 50's, you were being dosed with a whole range of toxic metals, chief among them, mercury.

Further, the application of first "Paris Green", then lead arsenate, and finally DDT, to huge percentages of crops in the U.S. in an ultimately futile attempt to prevent the spread of invasive insects dosed the population bringing on a susceptibility to various disease conditions.

In a stroke of irony, these pesticides were often used by public health officials in an effort to prevent the very problems they were in all likelihood causing.

Far from the somewhat vague story of polio we've been conditioned to believe; an ancient disease finally stopped by the heroic invention of vaccines: Polio was a non-issue prior to the introduction of widespread metallic poisoning. And, further; Polio stopped being a problem coincident to the reduction of metallic poisoning.

I can't imagine very many will ever so much as consider the possibility that there was a cause for the polio outbreaks of the late 19th and 20th centuries, other than the virus supposedly stopped by the vaccines. But, you have to ask yourself: Why wasn't polio a problem before then?

Logically, if polio became a problem, and the problem went away, one should look for a causative agent which also prevailed for a time before also going away.

I do think the book suffers from some hyperbolic inaccuracy, which hurts the message somewhat. Overall, a very well written, and I believe truthful book.
28 people found this helpful
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bashful babe
5.0 out of 5 stars A book you’ll wish you’d read earlier.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 30, 2022
Verified Purchase
I loved everything about the book which reads almost like an detective novel including the authors clever way of introducing us to a number of extremely interesting, highly significant but little publicised facts concerning the lead up to a major historical event. The book encourages us to look deeper into the topic of polio and its devastating effects on public health and to draw our own conclusions about its origins. Was polio a result of natural occurring pathogens , toxicity, accidents , ignorance, cover ups, conspiracy, coincidences or simply a mixture of all or any of these? On reading the first chapter of the book my initial reaction was ‘how come I didn’t know anything about this before? Suffice to say, I didn’t want to put this book down until I finished reading it.
5 people found this helpful
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Sergio
5.0 out of 5 stars A verdadeira ciência na poliomielite
Reviewed in Brazil on August 12, 2019
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Livro faz uma revisão do momento antes, durante e após as epidemias de poliomielite. Pesquisando pontos obscuros do tema. Apresentando outros focos causais da lesão neurológica. Apresentando as vacinas para a polio seus testes pré clínicos e erros. A supressão dos efeitos adversos. Mais a introdução da ventilação mecânica.
2 people found this helpful
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Rachel
5.0 out of 5 stars An easy read, incredibly informative
Reviewed in Australia on March 16, 2022
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I got through this book in 24 hours with a toddler and a baby so I'm very impressed with its readability, while still being incredibly informative and detailed.
It goes through the history of polio in chronological order of notable events and really helps the reader understand much of the pathology that historically is likely to have occurred based on evidence we now have. It also provides insight into past practices of cover ups and industry relationships being protected over the importance of human lives, something that we can still see happening to this day. A fascinating read.
One person found this helpful
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Donna Pihowich
5.0 out of 5 stars Very informative
Reviewed in Canada on August 9, 2021
Verified Purchase
This was an extremely interesting book, I found that the timing was perfect, in light of the situation the world is dealing with today and this
experimental vaccine the government is pushing on its people. Everyone should read this book and realize how vaccines are created and the reason for their creation. Lots of food for thought, after reading this, you can see the bigger picture of what they are really pushing on people that have not done their research into vaccines in general. A vaccine that didn’t need to be used once they found out what the cause of the paralysis was. Once the people of the world realize this virus was created in a lab, and the poison they are pushing on the brainwashed public, it will be far too late for many
14 people found this helpful
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Musicat
5.0 out of 5 stars An important, informative read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2022
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Author has researched extensively including media items and experience of victims. The accounts also provide a good background of the social history and developments in the science and industries of the time. I have recommended this book to many friends, all of them remarking how much they learnt and enjoyed the style and content. A revealing, thought provoking timeline which is not overly technical and easily transports you through the polio saga. A must for the bookshelf. I’ll be reading this one again.
2 people found this helpful
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