Leery of Vaccine, Some Parents Hold 'Chickenpox Parties'

Fox News ^ | 10/19/2001

[CholeraJoe]

PITTSBURGH

[nycgal]

LOL

[cajungirl]

Sorry but there is a one to one relationship of chicken pox to shingles. The virus sticks around in neural tisse after the kid recovers only to flare up later in life. It doesn't happen to everyone with chicken pox but when it happens, it is from the pox leftover hiding in neural tissue. the outbreak is in a particular cranial nerve or in dermatomes from the neck down. Kind of acts like the nerve it is in,,follows it down. I had it once around my waist and years later in my facial nerve, acoustic nerve and a branch of the fifth nerve. It iwas hell. My brother in law had it all over his back running around to the front of his trunk,,he was sick for three months on painkillers and steroids and antivirals. Nothing worked very well.

[Vinnie]

But chickenpox as an adult is nasty

You said it. Years ago my daughhter ( youngest child) broke into the rash on Halloween. We saw it putting on her costume. Two weeks later one son came down with it , another two weeks the other son. Then my wife ( I had them as a child). She had pox on every conceivable location, in her ears, mouth, guess where else. Her case was by far the worst.
The pox was in our house through Christmas.

Adults need the vaccine.

[Askel5]

Thanks Vinnie ... I'm long overdue for doctors' visits and will follow up.

[Chemnitz]

OK, you probably know all about it. I am sorry you must suffer so much. I know others who suffered from it. Maddening to say the least.

[Aurelius]

"...it is almost an accident that all major diseases..."

Where did I say or imply anything like that? I don't deny that modern medicine is effective on certain things. I think however that there are a lot of flaws in many of its practices. And it causes a lot of harm, much of it avoidable, in addition to the good it does.

[sweet_diane]

In Dec of '92, our oldest was 4 yr old and brought home chickenpox. My Husband was the 2nd in the household to get them and it truly is hard on adults. I came home from work to find him delirious (sp?) and running a 104 fever that didn't respond to Advil. He'd scratch in his sleep and his forehead is now still pretty scarred. Our youngest was 6 mons old and had a fairly mild case. Yet, I still don't know if I would purposely expose my children...

When we moved about 6 years later we found pink splatters on the wall behind our bed from my frantic coating of my family in Calamine lotion! It really took an ocean...

[Aurelius]

Actually, I would be interested to see your list of the major diseases that have been cured,(i.e. for which a cure has been found) prevented, or brought under control. There is a lot of wiggle room in "brought under control".

[Liberty Teeth]

Whatever happened to a good old fashion tupperware party?

[TomB]

. There is a lot of wiggle room in "brought under control.

No there isn't. It means we don't DIE from them anymore, a short list would be polio, smallpox, diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, many forms of cancer, influenza, malaria, amoebic dysentery, diabetes, etc.

We have been able to either prevent the occurrence of these diseases thurough vaccination or treat them with medication

[Aurelius]

"Influenza"

I don't think so.

[twinzmommy]

There is a test that a doctor can run to see if you have "had" chicken pox.

I think it's around $50-60 (and insurance most of the time covers it) -- it's a blood titer looking for the antibodies (I think).

I have twins -- one of them got chicken pox, out of the blue, no known exposure -- just covered with chicken pox. Her twin, who shared her bed, her baths, playtime, hugs, etc etc etc NEVER GOT ANY VISIBLE SYMPTOMS. This was at 3 years old.

Last year, when they were 5, I went ahead and had the blood test run, and the doctor argued with me -- it's a shot vs. drawing blood she's still going to be stuck with a needle blah blah blah (and all the while I'm thinking -- "you're taking blood out, not putting crap in"). Anyway -- point being, the child that showed NO symptoms at all.. . not a bump, not a fever, nothing, tested that yes in fact she had had chicken pox. So she doesn't *have* to have the vaccine (Texas law requires it for school, and even though we homeschool I want my records up to date).

twinzmommy

[Aurelius]

The "vaccination" for smallpox was developed by Edward Jenner about 1797. Prior to that people did just what the mothers in this article did. They infected people from someone suffering from a "mild case" of smallpox. Sometimes this had the desired result, confering immunity without too much harm to the patient, sometimes it didn't. Jenner learned, by whatever means, that milkmaids who had contracted so-called cowpox apparently had immunity to smallpox, and thus conceived the idea of infecting people with cowpox as protection against smallpox. Modern ethicists might be troubled by the experimental methods he used to determine effectiveness. His innovation has become the "paradigm" in the Kuhnian sense for modern medicine, so that "vaccinations" are soughts for all sorts of ailments, for some of which, at least, vaccination is probably not the approriate path to cure. Note the eytmolgical origin of the word "vaccination".

[TomB]

Yes they were so successful that smallpox wasn't eradicated from the world until the 1980's. Apparently what they were doing was not as effective as modern science.

You did a very nice job of proving my point.

[Askel5]

You are one cool Mom. I'll ask him to add it to my bloodwork.

[cajungirl]

the last case of smallpox in the world was in 1977 I think. It was only after a world effort to vaccinate everyone. It took that long probably because of the primitive conditions thruout most of the third world. I don't know when the last case of smallpox in this country was. We are lately for the first time in years seeing whooping cough in adults. My guess is that they have vaccinations that have become ineffective. One of the biggest public health triumphs was eradication of malaria and yellow fever as well as numerous parasitic infections in this country. In the rural south until the 40's nearly all the kids had hookworms. The Rockefeller foundation funded efforts just to get the kids not to go barefoot and that cut way down on hookworms. Public health is the best answer to population infectious and contagious diseases. The entire system went downhill in my opinion after the early 80's when they totally blew it on the aids epidemic due to politics. Isn't much better in terms of tuberculosis, they don't quarantine anymore and the drug resistant tb is terrible and it is nearly impossible to force treatment. That is a bomb waiting to go off.

[George from New England]

Ditto on the chicken pox vaccine being useless.
I also feel the Hepatitus B vaccine for infants a joke too!
All this to feed the pockets of the drug companies.

[omegatoo]

Vaccinations for diseases that are likely to kill you are probably a good idea.(meningitis, pertussis)
Vaccinations for diseases that are likely to cause lots of problems for you in the future are probably a good idea.(hepatitis)
Vaccinations that are not proven beyond 25 years (the Japanese studies) for a disease that is not likely to cause much harm (chicken pox) are debatable. Labeling someone "loopy" because they don't believe in it or "vaccine nazi" because they do, is silly.
My biggest problem with the chicken pox vaccine is that 25 year mark. I have a daughter, and don't want her immunity waning during her child-bearing years...chicken pox in pregnancy can be very dangerous...that said, I haven't vaccinated my 6-year-old, but if she were a boy, I probably would have.
As far as the shingles connection, since many vaccinated children are getting mild cases of chicken pox, they probably also have some virus in their nerves, in 10 or 15 years we should know if they are protected from shingles or not. Until then, I don't think anybody knows.
O2 (sorry for posting to myself, but I couldn't post to "all" like I wanted to.)

[Aurelius]

Apparantly what who was doing was not as effective as modern science? What point do you think has been proved?

I am afraid that your idea of what is the point of contention here is somewhat different from mine.

[Aurelius]

See the following in today's New York Times:

'Cure' for Bioterror May Be Worse Than the Disease

On mortality rates of vaccination, the article states:"...one in a million who were vaccinated in the 1960's died or had brain damage. The vaccine can cause severe infections in one of 18,000, with the virus spreading throughout the body."

Wiping out a disease through a program of compulsory vaccination results inevitably in a point being reached where the probability of dying from the vaccine exceeds the probability of contracting and dying from the disease.