So our ped and ourselves have been going around about this new Chicken Pox vaccine for the kids (5 and 1, respectively).
He’s hesitant about giving it to the kids as he says that it’s new enough that he’s unsure about its long range effects (efficacy and side effects) because the first kids to get it are still only about 10 years old.
For me I have no real opinion because I…well…don’t know dick about the subject. But Lady Chance asked me to ask you fine people about your knowledge, experience, and so forth with this vaccine.
Well, I got it as a teenager when they judged it “safe” because I proved immune to chickenpox despite being sent to play with infected children. I wouldn’t want to get chicken pox as a teenager, of course, but as a kid I don’t see the harm. I myself am kind of concerned about getting shingles when I’m older - my dad had them and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anybody so miserable for so long. If it were my kid I’d see if he/she gets the disease on their own, and by a certain age if they haven’t, get the vaccine. Of course that might be complicated by other parents vaccinating. But I wouldn’t give it to a kid just on general principle unless the kid was at special risk.
While most kids who contract chicken pox “naturally” do fine, there is a significant number that develop serious complications.
Prior to the wide spread use of the vaccine, chicken pox killed about 50 children a year. I know, that’s not many, but when its your kid, its way too many.
The three most common complications are varicella pneumonia and varicella encephalitis and Necrotizing Fasciitis.
Any of these can kill, but even if they don’t, the recovery is long and arduous, leaving the individual with life long disabilities.
If I had a small child, I would have them vaccinated. My opinion.
Here’s a link that may be helpful in your decision-making. http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4070chi.htm
As more and more kids are vaccinated the rate of natural disease will decline, making it less likely that non-vaccinated kids will get the disease as children, and the older you get the natural disease the more severe it can be.
My daughter is nearly 11, so she must have been among the first to get it. I was told at the time that it had been given to Japanese children for about ten years and no problems had been observed.
The vaccine, as does the natural disease, protects against shingles, a nasty disease to get as an adult, too.
No, natural chickenpox does not protect against shingles. You cannot get shingles unless you have had chicken pox in the past. Shingles is reactivation of virus particles alive in your nerves.
I, personally, was glad that all my kids got chicken pox before the vaccine became widespread. It is clear that in almost all cases having chicken pox provides lifelong immunity, although that may at least partially due to repeated reexposure throughout life. No one knows how long immunity from the vaccine will last. And one of the last things you want to do is come down with chicken pox at age 60.
The (low-level but inevitable number of complications) from any vaccine has to be weighed against the burden of the disease.
What I don’t understand is why chicken pox is considered such a threat that we have to vaccinate kids against it? Sure, having chicken pox was terrible, but it’s certainly nothing that I would have spent tens of millions in R&D and production in order to eliminate.
A few kids die of Zoster every year, and many more suffer permanent neurological damage. The numbers are quite small vs. the total cases, but they are there.
Even more profoundly, adults who get Zoster have a far higher rate of morbidity and mortality than children do.
The aim of the vaccine is to make the disease exceedingly rare, thus saving thousands of lives and preventing tens of thousands from having debilitating chronic conditions from their infections.
Whether that will be achieved is open to speculation, but the experts feel the concept is doable, and worth doing.
We’re taking the “wait and see” approach with our daughter. If she doesn’t get chicken pox by the time she’s 11 or 12, we’ll get the vaccine then - the risks of the disease are pretty low until then (although bad complications, including death, can occur. But she’s at higher risk every time I put her in the car.), but the risks after then are pretty high. And, as has been mentioned, no one’s sure how long the immunity from the vaccine lasts or if a booster is possible.
Our doctor, who is *very *young, has never seen a case of chicken pox in her practice because she immunizes everyone. While she was in med school, she saw only one case - and it was a bad case with severe complications, so she’s terrified of it. Nonetheless, I explained my reasoning, and she’s accepting it with good grace, but with dire warnings. She claims I’m the only parent she’s had refuse it and that means that it’s unlikely my daughter will catch it naturally - because all her classmates will have been immunized. So, in her mind, I’m doing nothing but delaying the inevitable. Perhaps. We’ll see.
(Frankly, I think she’s just happy she got me to agree to any vaccinations at all! I started out very anti, but have come around to all but a few.)
Suppose that the vaccine has a similar rate of lethal complications. Would we even know it yet? Chickenpox is a very common disease, meaning that 50 deaths a year is a very low fatility rate. Which means that any medication with the same rate would have to be tested very extensively (far more extensively than most medications are tested) to show that rate. It may well be that the chickenpox vaccine has twice the lethality of the natural disease, or ten times as much, but the statistics just aren’t there to show it. And it may even be that the vaccine has side effects that are both common and serious, but which have a long incubation time, and therefore wouldn’t have yet shown up. So yes, you’re taking a risk by not getting the vaccine, but you’re also taking a risk by getting it, and it’s as yet unknown which risk is greater.
I’m not crazy about that logic above. Chicken pox has a known very high risk of about 2 weeks of misery + scarring + contagion to others, and a known small risk of death. The vaccine has a not clearly identified risk of minor side effects and potential eventual fatalities. How do you get out of that that the vaccine is probably the greater risk?
I object mostly to the millions of dollars in R&D that could have been used to treat a more serious (albeit less money-making) disease. Same goes for ED drugs. I fail to see a problem that’s worth the cost of a remedy.
For what it’s worth, a good friend of mine from college was part of one of the first US human trials of the vaccine, back in the mid-eighties. She said she was about 5 at the time, which would make it 1984-85. Her Mom worked for Merck and that’s how they got signed up. She’s 26 now, still showing immunity on her annual blood test (they’re still being followed).
(I had the chicken pox at 17 and ended up in the hospital. My 10 year old sister weathered it without batting an eyelash. I think I’m in the vaccinate if they haven’t gotten it by puberty camp)
Illogic. The tremendous amounts of money that are earned on a Viagra or a Cialis more than pay back the research money that went into them. Where do you think drug companies get money to do new research? From successful drugs.
I only quoted the number of children in the U.S. that died per year proir to the vaccine, adult deaths were a bit higher. So, total deaths were over 100/year.
According to this site the risk of serious complications are higher.
As far as having an adequate population sample for vaccine risk, the vaccine has been in general use in the U.S. for about 20 years, 25 in Japan, with over 2 million recipients.
Not only do they pay back the research money, they also pay back the marketing money, the production and the administration, and then there’s plenty left over. Big pharmaceutical companies typically spend as much on marketing as they do on research (by their own figures; outsiders claim they spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research).
Pfizer (which I selected for its size; if you consider it an atypical company I’ll look up one of your choice) reported a profit margin of $11 billion; gross sales of Viagra were $1.6 billion. They don’t need Viagra to float their other programs (which have already been subtracted out in expenses), and many of the other important programs are equally profitable if not more so – Lipitor, Norvasc, Neurontin, Celebrex, Zithromax. These are programs that are driven by clinical need, while other programs are driven by marketing (Viagra, Zoloft).
I see the chicken pox vaccine as pretty much the same thing – it’s a relatively mild disease, and the researchers who spent their time developing it could have been working on a more important disease at exactly the same cost. The profits that would be given up are significant, but it’s not the difference between life and death for the company. It’s the difference between an extremely luxurious life and a very luxurious life.
For giving up 1/10th of their profit ($1.6 billion * 0.8 / $11 billion, since their profits are taxed at a 20% rate), the same team of crack scientists at Pfizer who teamed up to give people boners could have cured, say, malaria, given away the product for free, and saved 7 million lives (1 million deaths per year x 7 years Viagra has been on the market).
Those people at Merck, who worked so hard to save those 50 children annually from dying from chicken pox (2000 if you count shingles), could have spent their time developing a vaccine for tuberculosis, given the product away for free, and saved 20 million lives (2 million deaths per year x 10 years Varivax has been on the market) … for giving up about $300 million out of their 2004 profit margin of $8 billion.
I work at a pediatrician’s office, occasionally in medical records. As school started, shot records became my life. Varivax has become pretty much standard protocol in our office. Proof of Chicken Pox disease or vaccination is also required to enter public(and I’m sure most private) kindergartens. Those with religious concerns or an allergy to one of the vaccine component are exempt. For the record, two of our doctors are older, certainly prevaccine, but they’ve accepted it just as well as the others.
-Lil
Meh. After you’ve seen a few young folks who got the disease in their early teens end up horribly scarred by it, you’ll have more sympathy for how it can devastate even when it doesn’t maim and kill. I’ve seen over 50 folks like that just in my career. Add in the 3 cases of Zoster encephalitis I’ve seen, and one understands how a case can be made for reducing the scourge of the disease. I just hope the vaccine confers immunity well into adulthood, and we’re not priming an entire population for massive Zoster infections much later in life.
Besides, Zoster a relatively easy virus to make a vaccine for. Much simpler than trying to make an effective vaccine for TB. They’ve been trying and failing at that for decades. BCG (the vaccine to prevent TB) may protect infants, but not adults. Even if they were vaccinated as infants. And if one has had the vaccine, one can’t ever get a TB skin test to screen for asymptomatic infection, when it’s easiest and most cost effective to treat, as the skin tes will always be positive after vaccination.