Current mood:

*Snarl*

Infectious diseases are GOOD for you

So, there's this new book out, which (according to the advertising blurb):

This book takes children aged 4 - 10 years on a journey of discovering about the ineffectiveness of vaccinations, while teaching them to embrace childhood disease, heal if they get a disease, and build their immune systems naturally.

Yes, embrace childhood diseases. And the title is (get this) Melanie's Marvelous Measles. Yes, I'm sure that the week of misery I spent when I had chicken pox would have been "marvelous" if I'd only known to embrace it.

For blog posts of other people boggling over this, see here and here.

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rainkatt
2011-12-15 05:14 am UTC (link)

GAH.

My SO and I are both old. We both had measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox as children.

Aside from not wishing that misery on anyone, we have side effects. He's completely deaf in one ear from the rubella. I've had shingles twice. The delirium/itching/agony were not in the least fun, and I'll take a vaccination any day.

I got the mumps when I was in high school. I lucked out and didn't have lasting complications, but my entire upper body was swollen beyond recognition for two weeks. The pain was not something I'd ever repeat willingly, and I would never make a child suffer that if there was any alternative. Not to mention missing two weeks of school six weeks before I was supposed to graduate. The make up work was a nightmare.

How can anyone with an ounce of compassion wish any of these things on their children?

Bleah.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	bienegold 2011-12-15 05:15 pm UTC (link)
	Honestly, I think it's because they don't remember them. Pretty much everyone who's having kids now is fully vaccinated themselves, except for chickenpox, and for most people, childhood chickenpox wasn't that big a deal. Anything with a name like mumps can't be that bad, right? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

rainkatt
2011-12-15 06:24 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, I started thinking about that after I posted. My son had every vaccination that was available to us, and I don't remember him getting any of the "classic" diseases except for chickenpox, which was pretty mild.

I've worked with people in their twenties and thirties who have no clue about what having mumps or measles would be like, so I guess I can see how they could just think one gets a few itchy spots, and it's all over.

This whole thing still makes me rage. And really, why develop a vaccine for these diseases if they haven't been killing people? (I know, the people involved in this stupid anti-vax movement are not using their brains.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	fern_on_fen 2011-12-27 07:19 pm UTC (link)
	Someone needs to start a PR campaign to rename some of these diseases. Chicken pox? Mumps? Measeles? Too cutesy. Punch it up. Hell itches. Fever swelling. Death blotches. Problem solved. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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