The True Story of Togo is More Than A Movie

By Rich Kozlovich

This weekend I watched a new Disney movie (released December 2019) called, The True Story of Togo, about the 1925 diphtheria serum dog sled run from Nome to Nenana, Alaska.  Six hundred and seventy four miles in what was Alaska’s worst winter storm.

This was a twenty sled team relay with nineteen of them averaging a run of 31 miles. Then there was Togo. Leonhard Seppala owned the team that ran 254 miles, and the lead dog was Togo.

I know everyone thinks Balto was the dog that saved Nome, but that was the result of lazy journalism. That team ran the last leg, but the team led by Leonhard Seppala and Togo were the real saviors of Nome's children.

In 2011 Time Magazine declared Togo the most heroic animal of all time.

The movie is amazingly accurate. The open ice of Norton Sound really was breaking up, although some feel the movie may have taken some dramatic license with this part, but as the site linked notes:

Viewers of Togo might assume its most cinematic moments are the product of Hollywood’s creative license, but they would be wrong. In one dramatic scene, Togo has reached shore, but the sled with the medicine has gotten stuck on floating ice on the other side of a frigid channel of water. In a feat of athleticism and frankly un-doglike ingenuity, Togo grabs the lead rope in his mouth and pulls the sled ashore. This—and we cannot stress this enough—actually happened. 

And make no mistake about this, even if there was a degree of dramatization, the danger was very real. The movie is also very touching. If your heart isn’t touched by this movie, you have no heart.  Above all, this story has in abundance the qualities we all admire so much. Courage and self sacrifice!  But this isn’t a movie review, although it could be and I would give it Five Stars, it’s a commentary on vaccinations.

In recent years we've heard all sorts of claims by prominent celebrities about the horrors of vaccinations, and how they cause autism.  That was largely due the claims by former Doctor, Andrew Wakeman, who has had his medical license revoked, and whose work has been debunked as fraudulent.  Unfortunately lies linger forever in societies, and they have consequences.   

My question is now, and always has been, how do these parents, who through love have not allowed their children to be vaccinated, end up having children get unnecessarily sickened, and sometimes die, feel when their child is unnecessarily inflicted with a potentially deadly disease?  A disease that could have been prevented by a vaccination.

Rarely do people get diphtheria in the United States, but it happens.  What happens if no one around them is vaccinated?  People will be infected and those adults who are older and children between one and five have a very real chance of dying. 

In varying degrees, we've brought so many diseases under control with vaccinations.

Bacterial influenza - Diphtheria - Hepatitis A - Measles - Mumps - Pertussis -
Pneumococcal disease - Polio -  Smallpox - Tetanus - Vericella (Chicken Pox), which can cause shingles later in life - Whooping cough.

How many lives have been saved as a result of these vaccinations? 5,311,338.00!  And the number one killer was Chicken Pox.   Vaccinations save lives.  That's the true lesson that all should come away with in the true story of Togo!

Nuf Ced?