Parents coordinate trading of chicken pox-laced goods via Facebook

re no need for a hypothetical aids vaccine (or the cervical cancer one) if you don't "sleep around" or take drugs:

I assume that you've never heard about rape? Or for that matter coming into contact with HIV positive blood in an accident, or any other infection vector?

"jab things into your body" is not the only such vector. There is also "having things jabbed into your body" (a subtle but important distinction).

Your post implies that if someone is infected with the HIV virus it's their own fault. This assumption is toxic, and makes people more hesitant to apply resources towards trying to treat and cure people with this disease. It's like telling a person with lung cancer that "It's your own damn fault for smoking" when it is perfectly possible to develop lung cancer without ever having a smoke.

Same here.

After researching it, in most of Europe, children do not get vaccinated from chicken pox. We have no special higher rate of incidence of the disease either in totality or as adults.

The only time the vaccine is ever given out here is for those at special risk, e.g. adult healthcare workers who are not already immune or those who live around people with compromised immune systems.

Also, ironically, where the chicken pox vaccine is widely used, e.g. in the US (unlike most places in the world), there is no natural external boosting of immunity from being exposed to others with chicken pox, so therefore MORE injections may be needed later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_vaccine

Mailing contagious items: Not cool.

Local "pox party": I have no problem with it.

My ex caught chicken pox from our children around the time he turned 32. Chicken pox in adults is much more serious than in children. I finally dragged him to a doctor against his will after watching his fever go up 0.8 degrees a day every single day until it was over 104F. Above 105 is dangerous. It was on track to hit that mark within the next 24 hours. Years later, he swore it was never really that bad (ie his life was never really in danger). I suspect he partly just didn't remember how bad it was. He wasn't lucid for much of the time. He was left with much worse scars than the kids. He had fantasies he would stay home from work and play computer games, like the kids. For at least a week, he laid on the couch, unable to sit up for long. I had to leave meds in a covered candy dish to get any sleep. His hands were swollen and his palms had spots on them, so he couldn't open his medication bottles.

It's called the hygiene hypothesis, not the vaccine hypothesis. Let's take a look:

>In medicine, the Hygiene Hypothesis states that a lack of early childhood exposure to infectious agents, symbiotic microorganisms (e.g., gut flora or probiotics)

Okay, so if you've had the chicken pox vaccine, your immune system has been exposed to infectious agents -- just inactivated ones! The kind that don't cause shingles. Vaccines do stimulate an immune response, after all.

The article you linked contains precisely one reference to vaccination.

>Th2 immune disorders such as asthma and other allergic diseases are probably related to the hygiene hypothesis. A baby has many Th2 cells, which stimulate the production of antibodies. When not sufficiently stimulated with early life diseases, the immune system will have too many Th2 cells present, leading to a greater risk of Th2 immune disorder. If a child is exposed to infection diseases then the cell defense will be stimulated via Th1 cells causing a reduction of Th2 cells and subsequently a reduction of antibody stimulation by Th2 and therefore a lower risk of developing an allergic disease such as asthma. Unfortunately, vaccination only uses the Th2 mechanism.

Interesting. I wonder if there's some data to back this up?

http://journals.lww.com/pidj/Abstract/2002/06000/Childhood_v...

>There is no association between diphtheria, tetanus and whole cell pertussis vaccine, oral polio vaccine or measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the risk of asthma. The weak associations for Hib and hepatitis B vaccines seem to be at least partially accounted for by health care utilization or information bias.

This was a study with n > 100000. That's a good study. Apparently vaccines don't cause athsma.

On the other hand, there actually appears to be some hope that vaccines can fight athsma:

http://www.jimmunol.org/content/166/2/959.short

>Vaccination with Allergen-IL-18 Fusion DNA Protects Against, and Reverses Established, Airway Hyperreactivity in a Murine Asthma Model

http://www.jimmunol.org/content/167/7/3792.short

>Active vaccination against IL-5 reduces key pathological events associated with asthma, such as Th2 cytokine production, airways inflammation, and hyperresponsiveness, and thus represents a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of asthma and other allergic conditions.

"The miracle of modern medicine."