Chickenpox Parties Becoming Popular

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Old fashioned chickenpox parties becoming popular among parents who distrust vaccines
NewsTarget.com

Since 1995, chickenpox vaccines have become safe, easy-to-get, and highly recommended by doctors. But, increasingly, parents are turning to the old fashioned cure for the disease: chickenpox parties. Parents whose kids come down with the pox are calling the neighbors, and inviting everyone over for some direct exposure. Doctors warn that this approach is a little risky. In the pre-vaccine days, about 100 people died from each year from chicken pox. To learn more on this topic, be sure to also read the related article, 'Do not email' registries for parents begin in July in two states.

Overview:

Elaine Fawcett is one of a growing number of mothers nationwide who has exposed her two toddlers to chickenpox, rather than opting for the vaccine.

In December, she quarantined her 1- and 4-year-old girls after she exposed them to the childhood virus, waiting for the onset of the telltale blisters and itchy skin.

Deliberately exposing children to chickenpox to give them immunity used to be common, but today most children are vaccinated using a shot first approved in 1995.

Yet parents nationwide are once again opting for exposure over the needle, tapping into resources from next-door neighbors to the Internet to find "chickenpox parties."

When Erica Ceilidh of North Portland learned that a friend's child had chickenpox, she rushed to expose her own home-schooled son and daughter. It worked --- and after her children got the disease, she sent a note to friends and to an e-mail list, saying they were welcome to expose their kids. "It was less serious than plenty of colds that they had," Ceilidh said, adding that she would have had her children vaccinated if they hadn't gotten chickenpox by their teen years.

"We know that the vaccine is extremely effective to prevent severe disease, certainly," said Rafael Harpaz, an epidemiologist in the National Immunization Program at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Parents who choose to immunize their children by exposure are increasingly using the Internet to find chickenpox parties.

One e-mail list calls itself "the high-tech version of neighborhood moms of years past that would gather all the kids in the neighborhood together when a child had chickenpox, etc., to expose all the other kids to it."
And Mothering magazine's January/February 2004 issue detailed a chickenpox party, complete with "Tips for a Chickenpox Party."