Chickenpox suckers

Andrew Wakefield's awful legacy lives on. Wakefield is the former medical doctor who published a study in 1998 purporting to show a connection between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism in young children. He faked the data and was stripped of his medical license, but he injected a level of mistrust into the general public concerning vaccinations of all kinds that has proven difficult to shake.

The latest iteration of this concerns the chickenpox vaccine, which doctors recommend in two doses, typically within the first year to 15 months after birth and again at 4 to 6 years of age. As recent news reports make clear, some parents are so concerned about the alleged side-effects of this vaccine they have resorted to buying infected lollipops over the Internet in order to give their children the full-blown disease and the immunity that follows naturally.

P.T. Barnum is vindicated again. Only this time, the suckers buying suckers are involved in a potentially dangerous deception. Medical experts say the infected lollipops, which were licked by children with chickenpox, aren't likely to give children the disease. Typically, it is transmitted through the respiratory system, not through oral ingestion. Therefore, even if the virus were to survive on the lollipop, it probably wouldn't infect the child. However, other germs may well survive the trip. These, doctors say, may include staph infections or other serious diseases.

Then there is the matter of federal law, which prohibits the sending of diseases across state lines.

We've made this argument many times through the years, but apparently it bears repeating. Parents who refuse to inoculate their children for fear of side-effects actually subject those children to a greater chance of even worse consequences. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that chickenpox can, in some cases, lead to skin infections, scarring, pneumonia, brain damage or death. Many of today's adults had the disease as children and can attest to its potential to leave scars. Even this relatively minor side-effect is unnecessary today, given the available vaccine.

It is true that the vaccine has potential side-effects, including allergic reactions and other potentially serious problems. These are, however, extremely rare. The CDC web site notes that "Getting chickenpox vaccine is much safer than getting chickenpox disease."

This may not matter if you think government health experts are part of some grand conspiracy that puts profits ahead of people, or if you believe Wakefield was on to something with his made up data and that concerns about one sort of vaccine somehow translate into concerns about all vaccines.

Not too many years ago, parents held chickenpox parties in order to expose their children at an age when the disease would be the least severe. That was before the vaccine. Today, any parent weighing potential risks would be foolish to calculate that the actual disease is safer than the inoculation.