Chicken pox parties
I think chicken pox parties are about as nutty an idea as I've ever run across. Actually, it's more than nutty. It borders on child abuse.
The Patriot-News ran a story Tuesday about this phenomenon. The idea is that instead of having your child vaccinated against chicken pox and NOT getting this highly contagious disease, you deliberately expose them to some kid who has it. That way, instead of a momentary sting while the injection goes in, your kid can suffer and miss school for two weeks and get his or her immunity the "natural" way.
What's more, you'll stuck it to the medical establishment and all those selfish mothers who would rather work to get money for "fancy vacations" (the usual vice of choice) and expensive clothing than stay home with their children. Sure, your child may be one of the 40 or so who die of chicken pox every year, or who get an extremely painful case of shingles as an adult because he or she had chicken pox as a child, but isn't that natural, too?
Full disclosure: I had chicken pox as a child, but did not aquire it at a chicken pox party. I spent two miserable, itchy weeks in bed and then had to catch up on my school work. When I was in my 30s, I came down with shingles, but fortunately it was caught by my doctor and zapped with prednisone before it could morph into climb-the-wall pain. My older daughter was born in 1993, two years before the vaccine was approved for use. When the FDA gave the okay in 1995, we rushed to Jones, Daly & Coldren to have her get the shot. Same with my younger daughter born in 1997.
My father worked for Parke, Davis & Co., a pharmaceutical manufacturer, and I've always taken a very benign view toward the wonders of medical science. People live a whole lot longer now because of pharmaceuticall advances. A lot more men used to die in their 50s from heart disease than do now since the advent of anti-cholesterol and blood pressure pills (and the great drop-off, too, in cigarette smoking).
There are really two things driving chicken pox parties. One is a general, sort of libertarian distrust of the medical establishment and embracing of "natural" cures. The other is antagonism by conservatives, religious or otherwise, toward mothers who work, whether for personal fulfillment or (more likely) because their family needs the second income. The doctor quoted in the Patriot-News article who suggested that chicken pox vaccinations are really for the convenience of working parents (read: mothers) had that written all over him. For families with two working parents of modest means, chicken pox and the need to stay home to nurse a sick child for two weeks can be financially devastating.
I used to wonder, before my daughter got vaccinated, what we would do if she came down with chickenpox late in the year when we either couldn't take vacation (my wife is a speech pathologist for Capital Area Intermediate Unit) and all my vacation days for the year were gone. Fortunately, that never happened, and now that they're vaccinated, it probably won't.
So I say Yay! for chicken pox vaccine. It's worked so far.