Orgies of Death - The Dangerous Tradition of Pox Parties and Measles Teas

The other day, Reuben Gaines, over at The Poxes Blog, shared some information about groups on Facebook for people to arrange for the sociopathic practice of intentionally infecting their children with vaccine-preventable diseases. Groups like Rubella Immunity Network, Vaccine-Free Immunity, Chicken Pox Immunity Network and Montreal Chicken Pox Party, among others, rather than trying to protect children from disease, actively promote giving them diseases. The participants in these groups labor under the false notions that diseases like chickenpox, rubella and measles are completely harmless and that vaccinations are worthless, are more dangerous than the diseases, or both. I'm sure they truly believe that they are doing what is best for their little ones, but unfortunately, they are dangerously wrong. While most children will come through the disease unharmed, not all will. And certainly more are harmed, and die, from disease than are injured by vaccines.

Sadly, this isn't a new thing at all. Groups crop up worldwide:

Opponents of immunization often try to infect healthy children in a controlled way by holding so-called "measles parties" with an infected child at the focus, intending to provide their own children with life-long immunity.

Even as far back as 2001 in the United Kingdom, people were holding measles parties. They're in Germany, too. But as an article in SABC News notes:

There is a considerable variation across Europe, with Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands having high immunization and low death rates, while Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland have lower rates of immunization and correspondingly more deaths.

It's a tradition that goes even farther back than just 13 years.

VacTruth Alleges Bullying in One-Sided Account of Nurse-Patient Encounter

Anti-vaccine activists have a love-hate relationship with medical providers, be they nurses, doctors, pharmacists, whatever. They love to hate any medical provider that dares to question their anti-vaccine beliefs. When they encounter someone who strongly urges them to get vaccinated or to vaccinate their children, the nurse or doctor is invariably described as a "bully", "ignorant", "ill-informed", "brain-washed", "pharma whores" and so on. They push "propaganda" are paid by "Big Pharma". Any interaction is viewed through this lens, that the parent is right and the medical professional is hopelessly benighted or even downright evil. If they happen to have a poor bedside manner, so much the worse, though given how some anti-vaccine activists respond to science-based feedback, I might be a bit short-tempered, too.

Over the weekend, an anti-vaccine blog called VacTruth.com (why must anti-vaccine groups always use such Orwellian names?) posted a story entitled "Bully Nurse Harasses Parents of Unvaccinated Baby at Michigan Hospital". According to the account, an unidentified couple brought their child to an urgent care center in Madison Heights, MI after talking on the phone with a nurse at their pediatrician's office. Their son, called "Oliver" in the article, had cold symptoms, a low fever and an "acne-like" rash on his face. Following the advice, they reportedly went to the Detroit Medical Center at Madison Heights, where the admitting nurse, if the account is to be believed, suspected the child had chicken pox and subsequently harassed, ridiculed and bullied the parents.

A Pox on Health Reporting

Science and health reporting in the U.S. can be a bit of a mixed bag. Sometimes, reports on these topics are level-headed, presenting accurate information in the proper context. There is often a great deal of nuance involved. More often, though, news outlets do a less than optimal job. They oversimplify. They leave out important details. They get details wrong. They engage in inappropriate emotional appeals to spin the story, often to the detriment of truthful reporting.

You may have heard in the news, recently, of FrankieElizabeth Staiti, a 5-year-old New York kindergartener who has been barred from school because she has not received the varicella vaccine. The reason? Her pediatrician refuses to give the varicella vaccine to any child who has an infant sibling, believing that the varicella vaccine poses too great a risk, since it uses a live, weakened virus. FrankieElizabeth has a 14-week-old sister. Her mother, Elizabeth Wagner, applied for a medical exemption for her daughter, but it was rejected after the Department of Education reviewed it with her and FrankieElizabeth's pediatrician.

That is the basic story. But there are some problems with the way that a lot of outlets are reporting on this.

Wanted: Varicella zoster virus

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Follow the Bouncing Ball

Back in January, I wrote about an outbreak of chicken pox at a day care facility. The outbreak involved four children, three of whom were siblings. One of the siblings was too young to receive the varicella vaccine. The three other children were all old enough, but their parents had not had them immunized due to a general distrust of vaccines. The facility was unaware that the kids were unimmunized because of two things: a) the parents allegedly faked their children's immunization records and b) the facility reportedly did not do their due diligence to validate the records. To make things worse, two of the day care staff were pregnant, one of whom had an uncertain history of immunity (either by vaccine or infection) to varicella, and thus was at risk for contracting chicken pox and passing it on to her fetus. In addition to increased risks to the mother (PDF), there would also be a risk of congenital varicella syndrome for the unborn child. To top it all off, the state in which this outbreak occurred does not require reporting of chicken pox cases unless they are fatal, so the whole thing may have gone unnoticed by anyone involved with public health.

That last bit is not the case in Alaska, where chicken pox cases are required by regulation to be reported to the Alaska Section of Epidemiology (SOE). I bring this up because, in 2011, Alaska's Kenai Peninsula also saw an outbreak of chicken pox at a day care facility. And, like the outbreak mentioned above, it occurred late in the year and also involved kids whose parents had eschewed vaccination.

Dropping the Ball at Day Care

For as long as humans have gathered in societies, perhaps even before we evolved into homo sapiens, we have engaged in the communal care of our children. Whether it is a collection of parents, sharing responsibility for the care and upbringing of the youth; a single parent caring for several neighborhood kids; or even modern professional facilities; to one degree or another, there has always been a need, on occasion, for a division of labor when it comes to taking care of infants, toddlers and older children.

Today, this most often takes the form of day care. The demands of working life lead us to put our trust in others to watch after our children while we go off to earn a living to provide for our families. The opportunity to stay at home, to spend time with our kids, is often a luxury that few can afford. This may be due to the necessity of simply earning enough money to pay for rent and other bills or the need to advance in our careers. Whatever the reason, there are many for whom day care is a necessity, and as such, we trust that those in charge will take appropriate measures and put in place certain rules to ensure the well-being of those under their care. We also trust that all parents who use those resources will abide by the rules.

When the system breaks down, the repercussions frequently ripple outward, affecting more than just one or two people who failed to uphold that trust.