Facebook Group Sends Chicken Pox Lollipops Through Mail
Written by Four Green Steps.com
Not even a week after sorting through children's Halloween candy to make sure it is safe to eat, a Facebook group has brought attention to a disturbing act of questionable parenting in which parents have been sending secondhand lollipops through the mail in an effort to transfer the chicken pox virus to their kids at an early age. While it is said to be safer to experience chicken pox at a young age, mailing infected lollipops is another thing altogether and is actually illegal.
KPHO in Phoenix reports that a Facebook group is offering parents the opportunity to receive lollipops in the mail that have allegedly been infected with chicken pox. The parents seeking these disease-riden sweets want their children to get chicken pox when they're young so they can become immune to the disease and avoid getting it later in life.
KPHO also found parents looking for people to send measles, mumps and rubella.
KJ Dell'Antonia at Slate was dumbfounded:
"Let's try this sentence on for size: 'I just gave my kid a pre-licked lollipop sent to me by a stranger I met on the Internet!'"
HuffPost Parents blogger and author Hayley Krischer wrote that "the stupidity of passing infected chicken pox lollipops through the mail is terrifying."
Dr. Wilbert Mason, a professor of clinical pediatrics at USC's Keck School of Medicine, told the Los Angeles Times that the strategy of sending infected lollipops is unlikely to work. The chicken pox virus requires cells to live in and there probably wouldn't be enough of them on a licked lollipop, Mason explains.More
