Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as many short stories and other novels, died yesterday at the age of 90 years.
What many people don’t know is that Mr. Clarke was living with post-polio syndrome (PPS) for the past 20 years.
He seems to have been a man ahead of his time. He graduated in 1948 from Kings College in London and obtained first-class honors in both physics and math. Just three years before that, he had published a paper about orbiting communications satellites – decades before they would become a reality.
Men and women with such ideas …read more

What is post-polio syndrome?
Polio, a highly contagious disease that ravaged thousands of North Americans in the early 1900s, is rarely spoken of today. However, many survivors of the polio epidemics are now finding that they are ill again, this time with post-polio syndrome (PPS).
After people recovered from polio, it was assumed that they were well and would no longer be affected by the crippling disease. PPS has surprised the medical community by appearing in 25 to 50% of people who had had polio many years before. The cause isn’t known or understood, but the syndrome is real and can …read more