Measles parties

[HGray]

I keep hearing about measles parties as a way to immunise your child. Is this a good idea?

[vittoria]

There was an article on The Guardian about this recently. In short, the answer was: no, it is not a good idea. You should be able to retrieve the article from The Guardian website. It was on 26 July 2001, page 15 of the G2 section. The author was Luisa Dillner, the headline 'Don't be tempted to take your children to a so-called measles party. The risks are far too high'.

[moorby]

Immunisation is a way of exposing your immune sytem to the disease antigens (surface markers used by the immune system to recognise friend from foe) without exposure to the dangers of the disease organism. Therefore immunisation uses either killed viruses ( still have the surface markers but can't multiply) or strains that have lost their virulence (ability to make you ill) or close relatives with similar antigens ( eg cowpox virus mimics smallpox virus). Exposing your child to the actual disease is not immunising but a gamble that they won't be the child who gets really unwell from the disease eg with brain damage from post measles encephalitis

[moorby]

I should have said that once your immune system can recognise a disease antigen it can remove anything displaying this very rapidly. Some antigens are easily forgotten by the immune system so this is why boosters are occassionally required, and why you can't immunise effectively against some diseases

[SMILL48]

There is an artcile about measles parties on Answerbank - just click http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Article.go?id=1514