Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Go ahead all you fiction writers. Try to be more interesting and strange than reality. I dare you.
According to a report on CNN, some parents who wish to have their children naturally develop immunities to Chicken Pox rather than be vaccinated are buying pre-licked lollipops from sick kids:
CNN affiliate KPHO in Phoenix found a Facebook website called “Find a Pox Party in Your Area,” which included postings of parents willing to ship infected items across the country.
“Fresh batch of Pox in Nashville Tennessee. Shipping of suckers, spit, and Q-tips available tomorrow. $50 via PayPal,” reads one post. It goes on to explain the money covers overnight shipping.
Parents allow children whose chickenpox is contagious to infect the item before packing and shipping it to parents elsewhere in the country. Those parents then give the items to their children in the hopes they will come down with chickenpox.
“Our round was FedEx’d from Arizona!” reads one Facebook post quoted by KPHO. “We’ve spread cooties to Cookeville, Knoxville and Louisiana.”
From what angle should I look at this, Ricochet? Do I give it a libertarian, “To each his own?” Or, do I go in loco parentis and challenge the parenting skills of the lollipop guild?
An issue for the Rico-lawyers: Is intentionally giving a child a disease a tort, for which the child can sue the parent in a bodily injury case?
I’m anxious to read everyone’s comments, but I’m not sure I’ll be commenting myself. Instead, I’ll be in a corner drafting a licensing law for parenting.
Update question: Is it "Chicken Pox" or "Chickenpox?" I've changed it twice already and can't tell which looks right. Is there a doctor in the Ricochet house? Or a spelling teacher?
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Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Here's my personal experience with this. I knew families growing up who when one kid got chicken pox, they exposed all the rest of the kids so they all were sick at the same time and mom was done with it! I even knew affluent family with four kids who did this in the early 90's.
For my daughter, she received the chicken pox vaccine and then in fifth or six grade came down with chicken pox anyway. Shortly afterward the pediatric community started putting out the message that the chicken pox vaccine needs to be updated every five years. We missed that news by a year. Granted, her chicken pox was not as severe as it would have been if she hadn't received the vaccine, but she still got it.
My take is until there's a better vaccine, get exposed to the real thing. It's a mild disease. If the current vaccine weakens over time and you end up getting chicken pox as an adult, that can be serious.
Doctors, please correct me if I'm way off base.
Feb '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Tommy De Seno:
An issue for the Rico-lawyers: Is intentionally giving a child a disease a tort, for which the child can sue the parent in a bodily injury case?
If it is, then all our parents would have been in trouble. As soon as one of the children in the extended family came down with chicken pox, mumps or measles, all the siblings and cousins piled in, hoping to catch it and ensure immunity as adults. That was SOP back in the 1950s.
Aug '10
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Forget about the tort, what's the legality of shipping an infectious disease across state lines?!
Mar '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
At the risk of stating the obvious, allow me as a professional virologist to make perfectly clear:
Trying to get chicken pox by mail-ordering infected items is a BAD IDEA. Far too many risks, and also very likely not to succeed.
The practice of exposing children to chicken pox by bringing contagious and uninfected kids together is a different matter: although it was done routinely and mostly harmlessly for years (by my parents as well), the vaccine is indeed a better choice today.
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
May I add to the above...shipping the disease across the country however, doesn't sound like a smart idea.
Aug '10
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
My understanding is that a pox-party is quite different from a chicken-lickin' lolly.
Chickenpox viruses use respiratory transmission to spread. You inhale droplets containing the virus that someone else has just coughed into the air, for example. So pox-parties actually make sense.
But chickenpox viruses typically won't survive long on a lolly, whereas other, more dangerous viruses, like hepatitis, might.
As for the disease itself conferring immunity, even that isn't a sure thing. I managed to get chickenpox twice. Once as a toddler, and later as an elementary-school student. Contrary to all reasonable expectations (that I should have at least partial immunity the second time round), my second case was severe, and I still have the scars, even though I was a good girl and didn't scratch. That's life, I guess.
Edited on Nov 9, 2011 at 10:55amRe: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
But what about the booster issues?
Mar '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Chicken pox.
Interesting trivia: the chicken pox virus (Varicella-Zoster virus) is actually not a pox virus (like smallpox), but a form of herpes virus.
Mar '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Very, very illegal.
Remember white powder in envelopes?
May '10
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Remember, chicken pox is not just a childhood disease. The same virus can re-manifest itself later in the adult as shingles. That can be devastatingly painful.
Dec '10
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
I was another lucky twofer on the chicken pox. As to the lollipox? Eww. It's very fortuitous that it's time to shower before work now. Eww.
Mar '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Midget Faded Rattlesnake: My understanding is that a pox-party is quite different from a chickenpox-lickin' lolly.
Chickenpox viruses use respiratory transmission to spread. You inhale droplets containing the virus that someone else has just coughed into the air, for example. So pox-parties actually make sense.
But chickenpox viruses typically won't survive long on a lolly, whereas other, more dangerous viruses, like hepatitis, might.
Correct.
Midget Faded Rattlesnake:
As for the disease conferring more immunity, even that isn't a sure thing. I managed to get chickenpox twice. Once as a toddler, and later as an elementary-school student. Contrary to all reasonable expectations (that I should have at least partial immunity the second time round), my second case was severe, and I still have scars, even though I was a good girl and didn't scratch. That's life, I guess. · Nov 9 at 10:47am
Also true, but rare. However, a greater danger with natural infection is that the chicken pox virus, like all herpes viruses, remains in the body latently for the rest of the patient's life, and can re-emerge as shingles. It appears that vaccination can prevent this as well.
Mar '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Denise Moss
But what about the booster issues? · Nov 9 at 10:48am
Since I'm not an MD, I can't speak to that. The initial WHO reports suggested that most people are protected for 10-20 years, but the vaccine is still (relatively) new, and the recommendations are subject to change.
Feb '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
My mother, an infectious disease control nurse for two hospitals in her prime, told me that such an idea makes no sense unless the lollipops are still wet. The virus, she said, is not active when dry. So sharing a sucker with an infected kid in the same room with you might give you the pox, but not shipping them across the country.
We did not vaccinate our children for years against chicken pox, hoping to have them catch it the old fashioned way, out of concern for the morality of the chicken pox vaccine grown in aborted fetal cell lines. They never caught it. Since they are getting into their teen years, we thought and prayed about it, and after being unsuccessful in getting ethical vaccines in our area, we ended up vaccinating them.
This was also helpful to me and Papa Toad in making our decision.
Edited on Nov 9, 2011 at 4:03pmRe: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Mendel
Chicken pox.
Interesting trivia: the chicken pox virus (Varicella-Zoster virus) is actually not a pox virus (like smallpox), but a form of herpes virus. · Nov 9 at 10:49am
Thanks. I'll go back and fix it again.
Oct '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Having caught chicken pox in high school myself, and suffering horribly from it at that age, when my daughter's day care provider offered to share with her when she was about 3, I accepted. She was still pretty darn miserable, but it got it out of the way well before school started. This was just prior to the vaccine showing up.
The lollipop idea is seriously disgusting - especially as it appears that it wouldn't work.
Oct '10
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
The lollipop idea sounds really dumb. However...
A theory that flows through the "be skeptical of medical authority" camp is that the recurrence of chickenpox in the community and especially schools, provides a booster for adults who had chickenpox as a child to ward off shingles. Since the chickenpox vaccine came out and greatly reduced the incidence of kid chickenpox, there has coincided a substantial increase in the incidence of the far more dangerous and painful shingles. Now we get the shingles vaccine to care for that.
Perhaps in 10 of 15 years we will be hearing about the new problem being faced by those who had shingles vaccine in the past.
I have no authoritative knowledge as to how true the above rationale is, but I do know that there is no free lunch, and that includes health issues. Life is too complex to believe that solutions come free.
May '10
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
Just curious, Mendel, but have you ever heard of people being naturally immune to chicken pox? My brother and I have been exposed to it 3 times in childhood. While others around us got the pox, we never did. When I explained to my OB during my pregnancy that I didn't need to get the chicken pox vaccine because I was naturally immune, she refused to believe me and had me tested. Sonofagun, sure enough, I had the antibodies. But I have never had the symptoms.
Jul '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
I could care less and I'm in the business.
As far as exposing oneself or children to diseases other than the varicella I would think getting kissed by grandma carries about an equal risk or more if the hairy upper lip produces PTSD.
I believe in the late 1700's in Army camps their were clever medics that would inoculate troops during smallpox outbreaks with just a touch of an infected persons fluids which was a technique first learned from herd farmers in Europe.
My kids all got varicella vaccines, big deal. If they need another in 30 years they can have it. If society collapses may they have an astute medic around to inoculate them.
The "increase" in shingles comes I believe in people getting older than ever before and having access to health care as well as expensive vaccinations and medications that love marketing. Did ADHD really rise in numbers or just get marketed?
Mar '11
Re: Chicken Pox Lollipops to Avoid Child Vaccination
raycon:
A theory that flows through the "be skeptical of medical authority" camp is that the recurrence of chickenpox in the community and especially schools, provides a booster for adults who had chickenpox as a child to ward off shingles. Since the chickenpox vaccine came out and greatly reduced the incidence of kid chickenpox, there has coincided a substantial increase in the incidence of the far more dangerous and painful shingles. Now we get the shingles vaccine to care for that.
By definition we cannot know the long-term effects of a recently-introduced medical therapy. The possibility of unintended consequences is always existant. However, the more likely outcome is that, as fewer people carry the chicken pox virus, the chances of getting shingles will also be reduced, as fewer viruses will be circulating through the population. However, like all eradication, this takes many generations.
raycon:
I have no authoritative knowledge as to how true the above rationale is, but I do know that there is no free lunch, and that includes health issues.
True, but the incredible success of the smallpox vaccine suggests that some fruit hangs lower than others.