http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/archive/2004/01/29/chxpox.DTL
January 29, 2004
When she was 7 years old, San Francisco resident Eos de Feminis remembers, she attended an out-of-the-ordinary slumber party. "It was unusual, because we lived across the street from them, so we normally wouldn't spend the night," recalls de Feminis, 36. More notable was the fact that at least one of the kids at the party had broken out with itchy, red sores, and De Feminis was there to deliberately get infected, too.Though chicken-pox parties like the one de Feminis attended have fallen out of favor in recent years, they may be making a comeback. Despite the medical establishment's warnings about the risks involved, some parents are more concerned with the potential side effects of vaccines -- believed to include autism, as well as learning and hyperactivity disorders -- leading them to seek alternatives to vaccination for some childhood diseases.
San Francisco librarian Ren Volpe became interested in chicken-pox parties because her daughter, Isabella, will soon enter kindergarten. "Now that my daughter is almost 4, it's time to start thinking about this, because the public schools require that children be immunized or have proof of having had the disease," says Volpe.
"It's not that I'm against all vaccines," she says. "There are other diseases that I am happy to vaccinate against, like polio. But I just don't see the necessity to vaccinate against a disease that is, at most, uncomfortable and inconvenient, especially when we don't know the long-term effectiveness of this vaccine."
Volpe also notes that catching the disease naturally is more effective than conventional immunizations against it. "The immunity you get from the 'wild' version of chicken pox is lifelong," she observes. "At this point, even the vaccine makers do not know how long the vaccine provides immunity. We are taking the chance that our children will get chicken pox in 15-20 years as an adult, which is apparently much worse, with more complications and higher death rates."
"My memories of being sick as a child are actually quite pleasant," Volpe recalls. "I got to sleep in my parent's bed during the day and eat special food and get my forehead stroked." Not that the experience will necessarily be so painless for her 3-year-old daughter, she admits, acknowledging the discomfort and itchiness characteristic of chicken pox, though she adds, "Personally, I would love a reason to take a week off from work and stay home with my daughter."
Indeed, although the idea of deliberately exposing children to virulent diseases at parties may seem like a trendy, New Age kind of approach to disease prevention, it harkens back at least 350 years. Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762), wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, discovered in her travels that the scourge of smallpox, which had been so devastating in western Europe, had been largely contained in present-day Turkey due to the practice of deliberately infecting children with small quantities of the smallpox virus.
In a letter from 1717, Montague writes, "The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it." She describes parties that were widely held at the time: "People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox; they make parties for this purpose." She then describes the process, wherein a bit of the smallpox virus is introduced through a scratch in the arm or leg in order to infect the child. Noting the procedure's success, she continues, "Every year, thousands undergo this operation, and the French ambassador says pleasantly that they take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son."
After her son's successful ingrafting, Montague subsequently promoted the concept in England and other parts of Europe, where it became a widespread practice. In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner furthered this technique when he discovered that deliberate exposure to cow pox, a disease not fatal to humans, also prevented contraction of the deadly smallpox. Rather than patent his discovery -- a method he termed vaccination, from the Latin word for "cow" -- Jenner offered up the information freely so that even those in poverty would be protected against the dreaded disease.
Chicken pox is, of course, a much milder illness, particularly when experienced in childhood. Less than a generation ago, most people, as children, naturally contracted chicken pox from others and gained lifelong immunity. But nowadays, doctors are vaccinating against chicken pox rather than allowing the disease to spread from person to person. (The commercial chicken-pox vaccine was developed less than 30 years ago, and doctors started recommending vaccination of all children in 1998, with controlled doses of live viruses administered to the patient by health-care practitioners.)
Dr. David Tejeda, chairman of pediatrics at San Francisco's California Pacific Medical Center, understands the concept behind pox parties but states, "As a medical professional, I wouldn't recommend chicken-pox parties, because of the risk." He notes, "Most cases of chicken pox are mild, but there's a chance that if you get it 'wild,' it may be more severe and [may] in some rare cases lead to complications like pneumonia and encephalitis. With the vaccine, you don't have that risk." Dr. Michelle Perro of the Elizabeth Medical Center in San Anselmo agrees, stating, "You can get virulent skin infections, pneumonia and cerebellitis" from a case of chicken pox.
However, Eos de Feminis disputes these warnings, claiming, "Staph infections and other complications, a lot of times, are an end result of antibiotics." A 1998 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention corroborates her statement, finding that in some cases, the use of analgesics, antibiotics and steroidal medications to treat chicken pox increased the severity of the disease and associated complications.
Still, Perro contends that the vaccination is preferable to the "wild" virus contracted naturally. "I frown upon chicken pox parties, because the disease is not as benign as some people think," she says. However, she agrees that, unlike "wild" chicken pox, the vaccine's efficacy is not lifelong. "No vaccines last a lifetime," she says. "You should get boosters every 10 years."
And, Tejada notes, "1 to 2 percent will still get chicken pox [even after vaccination], but it will be relatively mild -- there will only be a handful of pox," as opposed to an average of 200 red and itchy spots with cases of naturally occurring chicken pox.
Ren Volpe believes the bottom line is the reason behind the medical establishment's endorsement of commercial chicken-pox vaccinations. "I believe that the reason the vaccine is being pushed is twofold: There's money to be made by the pharmaceutical companies -- lots of it, if every child in the country must get the vaccine -- and also because so many mothers now work," she says. "Most of us do not have employers that are family friendly and cannot afford or are not allowed to take a whole week off to be with a sick child. This is all about work and money and business, not our children's health."
Volpe, however, is willing to take the chance. "The risks are slim, compared to the risks associated with getting chicken pox as an adult," she says. "Chicken pox is a relatively benign childhood disease, albeit uncomfortable and inconvenient."
Eos de Feminis agrees, observing, "For most kids, a case of poison oak is worse than chicken pox." De Feminis recalls the pox party she attended, held in 1974 in her native Switzerland. "A bunch of the kids from the elementary school, about six or so, spent the night at our neighbor's house," she recounts. "Then, in a couple weeks, I got a very mild case of chicken pox, with about 10 spots. The parties were standard procedure back then."
Even Dr. Michelle Perro herself has not yet immunized her young daughter, hoping she will contract chicken pox naturally. A pediatrician with a diploma in homeopathy, Perro recommends an alternative for those parents uncomfortable with vaccinating their children. "We offer homeopathic doses of the varicella [chicken-pox] virus, which a large population of our clients prefer." She reports that she and her associates have not heard of any children contracting chicken pox after receiving the homeopathic treatment.
However, Perro adds, "once adolescence starts, chicken pox is a much more serious disease, and if you get it as an adult, you can get profoundly ill. If my daughter hasn't gotten it by the time she's 8, I'll have her immunized." De Feminis, however, is hoping to replicate her own childhood encounter with chicken pox -- she's looking for a chicken-pox party her 4-year-old daughter can attend.
Valerie Soe is an award-winning video artist, writer and mother of two young daughters.