In more proof of how out to lunch the anti-vaccination movement is at bottom, several parents are trying to immunize their children from chickenpox by shipping diseases in the mail. I wish this was snark, but according to WSMV in Nashville, it's far from snark. In fact, it's a cottage industry.
You may have heard over the years about those "Chicken Pox parties," where parents purposely expose kids to others thinking better they get exposed earlier than later or maybe they didn't want the vaccine. Well, this is that concept taken to an extreme. Mail order diseases: Experts say it's dangerous for the families involved and for the unsuspecting people around them.
For instance, on one Facebook group called "Find a Pox Party in Your Area," members offered to trade items purportedly infected with chickenpox, mumps, measles and other childhood diseases, sometimes in return for charitable donations. Facebook appears to have shut the group down, mercifully.
Needless to say, state health officials are aghast.
The group's claim: they want to build their children's lifelong immunities without vaccines, "even in the best circumstances, exposing your children to a potentially serious or even fatal disease which is virtually, completely preventable by a really safe vaccine is inexcusable. Not even talking about the other accidental risks from shipping, other infections," said the Tennessee Health Department's Epidemiologist, Dr. Tim Jones.
Jones points out that this practice can affect everyone around them, and possibly exposing their kids to other diseases--including AIDS.
According to Jerry Martin, the U.S. Attorney for Tennessee's Middle District, this practice is not only dangerous--it's illegal. Sending viruses or other infectious diseases through the mail or other interstate commerce is a federal offense. Hopefully it's a felony--can't imagine it not being one, given how unbelievably dangerous this is.
Update: Several commenters have mentioned another reason this is off-the-charts dangerous--chickenpox can lay dormant for many years, then return as shingles. And shingles has been known to kill. Catte Nappe also mentioned that the virus can go right to the brain in the form of viral encephalitis--a disease that killed his mom.