Somebody asked me my opinion of this vaccine the other day and I emailed back a response. It’s probably badly written, but you’ll get the gist of it, anyway…
Very interesting issue(s), and gives you some insight about the politics involved even in this area - immunizations. Chicken pox (varicella) is usually a mild illness, and acquiring the illness gives lifetime immunity to the disease. Well, that’s not exactly true, as you then have latent virus that can re-emerge in the form of shingles/herpes zoster later on - usually in elderly, really stressed-out, or immune-compromised persons. Chicken pox is actually a type of herpes virus. Just about all of us got it as kids, and it is a milder illness in children than in adults. A friend of mine got varicella during pregnancy and had a miscarriage. She could have had a baby with birth defects because of it too, I’m guessing. Adults, as a general rule, get sicker and are more likely to have complications when they acquire the disease in adulthood.
So why immunize? Until now, almost all of us got it as kids and were done with it, and the disease was self-limiting - no big deal.
(I thought about immunizing Olivia because I didn’t want her to end up with scars on her face like I did and because we had some vacations planned and I didn’t want to get kicked off the plane. Sure enough, right before I made up my mind and right before our vacation, Olivia got it and ended up with a pock mark scar right between her eyes like an Indian bindy.)
Okay, so here’s the issue(s) about immunization. The shot is safe, but we don’t know if it confers lifetime immunity. Which means if you get the shot instead of the disease, you may need a booster so you don’t get varicella as an adult when it’s a worse disease (and can cause problems in pregnancy, etc.). But the pharmaceutical company (that served to profit from this vaccine) really pushed for universal immunization. Since some/many people are getting immunized against varicella, unimmunized kids are less likely to come in contact with the disease and get it early, so they are more at risk for acquiring it later in life when it’s more dangerous, too. So now we’ve artificially created this situation where we HAVE to push immunization because the disease is less common in kids and people won’t get it over with early. It has even become a state requirement for school entrance in many states now. I’m not saying it’s a bad shot… just that it wasn’t a really dangerous disease for most people IMHO. And many other vaccine-preventable diseases (measles, pertussis, etc.) ARE dangerous.
That’s a complicated answer - or maybe even no answer? I would immunize in infancy just so you won’t face the school entrance requirements later, or else plan to somehow purposely expose the kid to disease at some point if that’s possible so s/he will have better immunity later and won’t possibly need a booster.
You can find more info. at http://www.cdc.gov, where you will find a link to the national immunization program.