Paul Alexander – a Pluto success story

An inspirational life has ended at 78 as Paul Alexander, “the man in the iron lung”, who contracted polio when he was six, leaving him paralysed from the neck down, has died. He went on to earn a law degree, practice law, become a campaigner for disability rights and publish a memoir, written by tapping the letters on a keyboard with a pen glued to a stick clenched between his teeth. After years, he eventually learned to breathe by himself, having been promised a puppy if he did, so that he was able to leave the lung for short periods of time. Ventilators replaced the lung but he kept living in the cylinder because, he said, he was used to it.

  A polio vaccine developed in the 1950s saw a dramatic fall in cases – from around 350,000 worldwide in 1988 to just 30 confirmed cases in 2022.

  He was homeschooled and went out with friends who took him in his wheelchair to the local cinema and diner; eventually attended college and law school.

Later he formed a platonic, but essential, relationship with his caregiver Kathy Gaines. He said latterly: “I wanted to accomplish the things I was told I couldn’t accomplish and to achieve the dreams I dreamed. You can truly do anything. You just have to set your mind to it, and work hard.”

  Born 30 January 1946 in Dallas, Texas, no birth time, he did have a robust chart with an Air Grand Trine of a Sun Venus in Aquarius trine Uranus trine Neptune – custom built as a thinker and communicator. Formed into a talented and influential Kite by Sun Venus opposition Pluto, making determined Pluto the driving planet. He had a Capricorn Moon which may have opposed a tenacious Mars Saturn conjunction in Cancer. Ebertin describes Mars Saturn as – energetic people able to overcome the greatest difficulty.

  His get-it-together and build-a-life 5^th harmonic was strong, as was his victim/healer 12H, his breakthrough 13H, and strongest of all was his leaving-a-legacy 17H.