Massachusetts Citizens for Vaccination Choice

According to the American Medical Association?s Encyclopedia of Medicine (1989), chickenpox is a “common and mild infectious disease of childhood” and “all healthy children should be exposed to chickenpox...at an age at which it is no more than an inconvenience.” The American Academy of Pediatrics states in its brochure on chickenpox (1996) that “Most children who are otherwise healthy and get chickenpox won’t have any complications from the disease."`

Of the approximately 4 million cases of chickenpox in the United States each year, the death rate is only .0025%, with a hospitalization rate of .23%, making it one of the most benign diseases in existence.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “when an adult gets chickenpox, the disease usually lasts longer and is more severe, often developing into pneumonia. Adults are almost 10 times more likely than children under 14 to need hospitalization from chickenpox and more than 20 times more likely to die from the disease.”

Yet despite these facts, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health mandated universal vaccination for all children, not adults. This blanket policy can be expected to move the incidence of this mild childhood disease into the adult population where it generally poses a greater threat.

The natural disease typically offers lifetime immunity, while vaccine effectiveness wanes. No one knows exactly when or how a booster schedule can be successfully implemented.

“Many primary care physicians either do not recommend the vaccine or suggest that children be immunized only if they have not developed the chickenpox by 12 years of age” (Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov., 1997).

The varicella (chickenpox) vaccine is a live-virus vaccine. It is made from the Oka/Merck strain of live, attenuated (weakened) varicella virus. The virus was initially obtained from a child with natural varicella, then introduced into human embryonic lung cell cultures (aborted fetal tissue), adapted and propagated in embryonic guinea pig cell cultures and finally propagated in human diploid cell cultures. The vaccine contains sucrose, phosphate, glutamate, neomycin, fetal bovine serum and processed gelatin (Merck & Co., Inc., 1995; Fisher, 1997).

Scientists are concerned about the long-term effects of viral DNA, from live-virus vaccines, being incorporated into human genes.

The marketing of this vaccine by both the manufacturer, Merck & Co., and the American Academy of Pediatrics, is mainly focused on the economic consideration of parental work loss, or the inconvenience of a child missing a soccer game or birthday party (images used in corporate advertising), rather than on any pressing health issues facing the public. The chief of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Department of New England Medical Center, who also participated in the development of the chickenpox vaccine, has stated, “Studies suggest that widespread use of the varicella vaccine will be cost effective, primarily through a reduction in the number of work days missed by parents caring for sick children.”

For further information, visit the National Vaccine Information Center’s chickenpox webpage.

You can also visit the Center for Disease Control’s chickenpox webpage.

View the vaccine package insert (Merck’s Varivax).

Visit the state DPH site for information regarding the exclusion of unvaccinated children from schools where cases of chickenpox have been positively identified.