Mail order diseases

[salvorhardin]

Idiocy, plain and simple. If you're doing this to your child you should be arrested for child endangerment.

Doctors and medical experts are concerned about a new trend taking place on Facebook. Parents are trading live viruses through the mail in order to infect their children.

The Facebook group is called "Find a Pox Party in Your Area." According to the group's page, it is geared toward "parents who want their children to obtain natural immunity for the chicken pox."

On the page, parents post where they live and ask if anyone with a child who has the chicken pox would be willing to send saliva, infected lollipops or clothing through the mail.

Parents also use the page to set up play dates with children who currently have chicken pox.
Full story: http://www.kpho.com/story/15896021/cbs-5-investigates-mail-order-diseases

[LeftishBrit]

1. Yikes

Apart from the risk to the children in question, I'd worry about others being exposed; e.g. postal workers handing the packages.

[RKP5637]

2. This, is F'en insane. What a bunch of ignoramuses roam the planet. I would

classify anyone doing this as a terrorist and take appropriate action.

[bemildred]

3. LOL.

:popcorn:

[bemildred]

11. To be fair, this used to be done for protection against smallpox.

Didn't it? Isn't that how the first "vaccination" came about?

So it could be sort of a cultural remnant.

[laconicsax]

12. No. n/t

[bemildred]

13. Yeah, I guess that was cowpox for smallpox. nt

[laconicsax]

14. And it wasn't done the same way. n/t

[bemildred]

15. Yep, no Facebook back ther. nt

[laconicsax]

16. Or anti-vax loons. n/t

[HuckleB]

17. Oh, there were plenty of those, even then. -eom-

[laconicsax]

18. But back then they were anti-inoculation loons.

[HuckleB]

19. +1

[bemildred]

21. Or vaccinations even. nt

[get the red out]

4. I dutifully infected my little sister

But that was entirely accidental when I was 11 and she was 2. I can't imagine someone intentionally infecting their kids with anything. Every time parents I know hear of something going around school they discuss it with dread.

[dflprincess]

7. My mom & her sisters intentionally exposed all my female cousins & myself

to a younger cousin when he came down with German measles (aka Rubella) - but that was before the MMR vaccine. At the time, none of us figured out what they were up to as we were usually kept away from sick kid. Rubella is a fairly mild disease in a child, the biggest risk is to a fetus if its mother gets the disease. So that was why we were all exposed, mother & the aunts all thought it was the only way to protect us from running the risk of getting it at a much later date when we were pregnant.

But, as I said, that was before the vaccine.

[TheWraith]

5. I dunno, I've heard this same rumor going around for years. Never seen any proof.

There always seem to be stories about this sort of thing going around; proof is rather lacking though, which makes me consider it suspect. It's easy for some local news outlet to run an "outrage of the week" story like this without bothering to see if it's true.

[salvorhardin]

6. The Facebook group is at least real

It doesn't have very many members (about 1,000) and seems to serve mostly as a clearinghouse of vaccine misinformation from all the usual sources. They do seem to be trying to organize "Pox Parties". I don't know how successful they are, but from what I understand from discussions I've had with anti-vaccination parents this is not uncommon. I don't see a lot of evidence of live virus contaminated food and objects being sent through the mail, but there are a couple of postings and they do have a disclaimer on the info page.

My best guess is that it's probably going on, but represents a very small and highly marginalized minority.

FB Group: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Find-a-Pox-Party-in-Your-Area/125145780870717

[MedicalAdmin]

22. Um - OK?

Here's the thing, it is one thing to arrange this for your own children, but quite another to send bio-harardous material through any common carrier or mail....

I have heard about this for a few years now. We try to discourage it when we can, but realize that we also need to be prepared incase the parents ignore that advice. After all our patients are not the parents (usually) but the kids. I have never understood any family practices that refuse to see any patients that aren't 100% compliant on this one issue but are fine with less compliance on other issues.

[Odin2005]

8. More anti-vaxer stupidity.

[uppityperson]

9. Idiots. Sending live viruses through the mail is not really bright and is illegal.

Aside from the "we all survived so what's the big deal" idiocy.

[Voice for Peace]

10. one of the early episodes of south park was about this

the kids found out the parents had intentionally infected them with chicken pox so they decided to get even. as I recall it was that one of the parents had herpes and the kids somehow put it on all their parents' toothbrushes.

[SheilaT]

20. About twenty years ago,

when my older son had been through at least three rounds of chicken pox at his school and not gotten it yet, I was planning a spring break trip to visit my sister in another state, who had kids the same age as mine. She called me up the night before I was going there to tell me her oldest had just broken out with chicken pox, in case I wanted to cancel the visit.

Nope. I headed there and exactly three weeks later my two sons broke out in chicken pox within hours of each other. I'd already seen how much sicker a teen got if they came down with chicken pox at that age, rather than younger.