[netmilsmom]

>>Even with the death of children on their bloody hands, the anti-vaccination fanatics remain totally delusional, totally without a clue.<<

Death of children?
I lived through chicken pox, all measles (including rubella) and mumps.
My niece had Whooping cough (got it as an infant before the second immunization)

Homeschoolers have Chicken Pox parties to pass it around.

No one died. I’m not anti-vaccine but isn’t that statement a bit dramatic?

[FormerACLUmember]

Try actually reading the article under consideration in the post.

[AnAmericanMother]

Well, chicken pox can give you shingles, and measles can make you blind, and German measles will cause severe deformities in an unborn baby, and mumps can make little boys sterile . . . and certainly people die from whooping cough.

We just don't appreciate how bad some of the outcomes of those childhood diseases were, before vaccines. Most of us were lucky -- but some little kids weren't. We don't hear from them because they're not here.

[Pharmboy]

Not at all. The less vaccinations, the more kids will die. While there needs to be thousands of cases of measles for deaths to occur, they DO occur. And short of death, measles can be, for some, a devastating disease. The fact that you (and I) survived measles is meaningless to the mother who loses her kid because she did not have him or her vaccinated because of bad information and fraudulent researchers.

[Caramelgal]

Homeschoolers have Chicken Pox parties to pass it around.

You homeschoolers might want to rethink that.

Chicken Pox while rarely fatal in itself is typically much more severe in adults than in children. So your kid gets sick and recovers just fine, but while the disease is in its non-symptomatic incubation stage, some un-immunized adult ends up sick because your kid infects him. And how would you feel if your child infects a pregnant woman?

Pregnant women and those with suppressed immune systems are at highest risk of serious complications. A pregnant woman exposed to the Chicken Pox can suffer a spontaneous abortion. Plus a complication of Chicken Pox is Shingles that comes out decades after the having Chicken Pox as a child. While not fatal, I understand that Shingles can be extremely painful and very unpleasant.

And complications from Measles are relatively common, ranging from relatively mild and less serious diarrhea, to pneumonia and encephalitis, corneal ulceration leading to corneal scarring. Complications are usually more severe amongst adults who catch the virus.

My older brother, in 1961, when he was 12 years old got the Mumps. He seemed to be recovering just fine when he became very ill. He developed both Meningitis and Encephalitis. While this was a very rare complication, it was none the less a complication of having had the Mumps.

He lapsed into a coma, his organs started shutting down and his veins were collapsing. The doctors were not optimistic for his survival and told my parents that even in the slim chance he did live he’d probably never be the same again, probably severely mentally disabled. A priest was called in and performed Last Rites.

Gratefully, he did live and eventually recovered fully, but he spent over two months in the hospital. His motor skills and speech were seriously messed up for a time. He had to have therapy to re-learn to walk, talk and feed him self.

I don’t question the well intentioned motives, but I do question the good judgment of parents who would make their kids sick on purpose.