In the September/October 1997 issue of Humanities, a bimonthly published by the National Endowment for the Humanities there is a review of the new 90 minute documentary film, ‘A Paralyzing Fear: The Story of Polio in America’. Nina Seavey is the director and she received a $749,107 grant from the Endowment to script and produce the film to be shown of PBS in 1998. What was brought to our attention was the remark about Seavey ‘doing a film on polio—and doing it right—was crucial to getting into the March of Dimes archives. Material from the March of Dimes fight against polio was placed in a Fort Lee, NJ warehouse in 1962. Since then, the March of Dimes has refused to allow researchers, including Seavey, access. The organization consistently argued that their focus lay in the present and they preferred not to dwell on the past. There was another issue at stake: the March of Dimes wasn’t quite sure what was there.’ ......... ‘Seavey finally convinced the March of Dimes to give her access to the warehouse — which held 3,000 films and 5,000 photographs — in exchange for logs of what her research team found and a small rights fee.’ There it is as clear as day. The March of Dimes which went into the ‘birth defects business’ has been holding our Polio heritage captive in NJ for almost 40 years. Now, they have released it for a ‘small rights fee’. What may be small to them may mean a lot to the Polio Movement. In addition, the March of Dimes for all practical purposes has abandoned the Polio Movement when they changed their charter. Therefore, they should have turned over our Polio heritage information to the Smithsonian Institute or another Public facility for example, the NY Public Library instead of locking the information in a warehouse. Is there any lawyer out there who wants to help us secure from the March of Dimes what is rightly ours. Or, if you are not a lawyer and want this accomplished you can send us a Grant for this purpose only.