[CholeraJoe]

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Hunter S. Thompson.

[SocialMeltdown]

This was a plot line on South Park.

[Ratatoskr]

Wake me up for the Bubonic Plague Party, okay?

[WhiteGuy]

Does this sort of thing work for "Hangovers"

Just wondering

[lodwick]

...and on Sunday they handle rattlesnakes during services. Too rich.

[mystery-ak]

About 20 years ago a friend of mine intentionally exposed her toddler son to chicken-pox....that little boy got soooo sick....she was a complete moron, and I told her so.

[mrobison]

People have been doing this for at least 30 years. There is nothing new here.

[Askel5]

My Mom tried in vain to infect me when all my sisters were ill. Now she's worried I should go get a vaccine. What do you think?

[Aurelius]

I think the lady is being smart.

My own practice is to try to avoid any medical treatment that hasn't been in use for at least 100 years. The most effective and most trustworthy drugs are those based on naturally occuring substances that were known and used by paleolithic peoples.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"Last month, Shoemaker sent her three children to the house of a friend whose child was infected with chickenpox, hoping they would catch the highly contagious virus. "

This social phenomenon was first exposed a few years back by the cartoon "South Park." The kids retaliated by bringing in a hooker with herpes to infect all ot their parents toothbrushes and toilet seats. These parents deserve no less.

[randita]

This lady is opening herself wide open to a lawsuit. Even if the parents approve of exposing their children this way to chickenpox, there is an incubation period for the disease, during which time an unsuspecting adult or child could come in contact with the child and get the disease.

I have known adults who have gotten either chickenpox or shingles and know that it is a debilitating illness.

I hope this lady has a good lawyer, because if she keeps this up, she's going to need one.

[LurkedLongEnough]

Vaccines are a necessary evil. They sure beat getting chicken pox with 2 weeks of fever, crazed itching, quarantine not to mention lifelong scars and possible cases of shingles. Before the vaccine was available, I was exposed to, and got, chicken pox when I was pregnant, which was scary, but turned out ok.

Exposure to chicken pox actually can kill immune-suppressed people, such as transplant recipients, who may be relatives or friends of kids who attend such parties.

[Alberta's Child]

Interesting story. I read an article a few years ago about an experiment they did over a 15-year period in Scotland. They took a bunch of kindergarten students and divided them into two groups. The first group of kids was raised in a very controlled, sterile environment, and were taken out of their classrooms at the first sign of illness. The second group spent half their days playing outside in the dirt, and were allowed to play together even when they got sick.

Fifteen years later, they studied those kids as 20 year-olds and found that the "outside" kids were far healthier than the "clean" ones.

[Maceman]

You may laugh, but these parties were standard practice in Scarsdale NY (a very affluent suburb of NYC) when I grew up there in the 1950s.

Almost every kid (including me) got chickenpox from these parties, and I don't recall ANYBODY having long-term negative reactions from the disease. It was believed that if you didn't have chickenpox by the time you hit puberty, you faced greatly increased risk of complications from contracting the disease as an adult.

[tacticalogic]

I'm not sure if it's valid for chickenpox, but I can see a certain logic in this for mumps, which seems to have a much greater potential for causing serious problems in adults than in children.

[HamiltonJay]

This vaccine is POINTLESS! With a death rate of 40 people per year, most of them elderly, or with chronic auto immune diseases. Rarely does a healthy child suffer death, or permanent problems from Chicken Pox! Not only that it is only 70% effective at best..

The only reason this vaccine exists is because our society is full of single moms and 2 income families who don't want the inconvience of having a child sick for a few days.

If you have reached maturity and not gotten chicken pox you may wish to consider the vaccine. However to immunize a healthy child for this is ludicrous! THere have been 13 deaths that have been associated with the vaccine over the years.. statistically that is a much higher risk than the disease itself.

[egarvue]

I have adamantly refused the vaccine for my children. I have no problems vaccinating my kids for mumps, rubella, etc., but I refuse chicken pox. Why? Because that vaccine is the ONLY vaccine that I see is being ADVERTISED and by its maker. The ads are everywhere in parent magazines.

If this was some serious disease, of course I would vaccinate our kids. But its chicken pox, for crying out loud. I also have to wonder about the other conditions surrounding the "100 kids killed by chicken pox every year" claim. Are these kids living in poverty or unsanitary conditions? Were they seen by medical professionals as soon as the symptoms appeared? Its details like this that they're leaving out that makes me instantly think: "scare tactic". They're trying to scare the soccer moms into ponying up for their company's product. When it comes to my kid's health, I don't mess around, and this smells just a little too fishy for me.

Our pediatrician pushed and pushed us to get it, and we kept refusing. I then later learned that she was on some research group that received money from the company to push the vaccine. Needless to say, we have a new pediatrician.

[I still care]

We always did this before vaccination. The big worry you had about these childhood diseases was that you would catch it as an adult, rather than as a child, and it would be far more serious. We especially were concerned about the mumps, because if a man gets that after puberty he could become sterile. I knew a man who got it and ended up SO sick. When there were no vaccines for these illnesses, we always tried to get them as children. However, I also know someone who had a bad childhood illness and ended up with brain damage. (I think chickenpox or measles.)

When I was a child, my sister and brother both had mumps, but I stubbornly refused to get it. However, when the mumps vaccine came out years later, I was tested for resistance and sure enough, I had had a subclinical case - no symptoms, but I developed resistance. Now that they have vaccines, I think I would rather go the vaccine route. Both my boys have had the immunizations rather than the illnesses.

[vetvetdoug]

What a novel idea!! This is Darwinian theory in its pure form. The kids that are borne from these stupid parents may not be able to reproduce because of their pediatric disease contracted at a Chicken Pox party. Those that are severely debilitated from chicken pox probably won't reproduce either (it is obvious that those that die won't reproduce). Those that live long enough to develop shingles will curse their parents for their actions and will not be able to reproduce at an older age.I hope readers can see this as sarcasm

[MayflowerMadam]

"Before the introduction of the vaccine, chickenpox killed 100 people annually..."

How many are killed every day by abortion?

[okie_tech]

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

There's nothing new or weird about this, and it really has nothing to do with vaccines. It's been going on for ages. Much better to get it and get it over with when you are young, even better to get it when it's convienent for the parents and planned for when the kids aren't kept home from school.