Mayim Bialik

[Mama Mia]

I wouldn't make as extreme of choices in some areas, personally. But I know plenty of people in my little radical hippie corner of California that would parent exactly like that. She would definitely fit in with a large segment of mom's in my community and wouldn't seem out of place at all.

I think it's kind of funny that some people would say it's because she has "issues" that she parent's differently than they, personally, would. And she is hardly the only person who has concerns about vaccines. Many people have legitimate concerns about the sheer volume of vaccines that kids have now. My kids got all of the ones available at the time, but on a delayed schedule as my doctor suggested.

[luckystone]

Re science - while it's true that having a background in science can give you the tools to evaluate studies, IME the fact that people have knowledge in their particular field doesn't necessarily translate to other fields. She did her Ph.D. in neuroscience, not immunology. I suspect her position on vaccines came from mothering.com.

And the bold part is what I was expecting, even if you don't study immunology at great depth, with some scientific background I would have thought you would understand enough about the scientific method and published literature to not get something so blatantly wrong.

[darareaksmey]

My mom had a similar experience. 2 kids with chicken pox and she'd never been known to have it. And she is a piano teacher and has been exposed to various children with the chicken pox as well. Our pediatrician said that she could had a very mild case a child, one so mild that it was written off as a inconsequential rash that came and went pretty quickly and had immunity that way.

I don't know if it's possible, but I believe I must be immune, too. I never had it as a child. Despite that, I was an emergency babysitter for a three-day period when I was about 16 for my sister's three kids, all of whom were home from school with chickenpox. This was in the mid-1970's. Anyhow, I"ve been exposed many times since then and I've never had it, and I'm now almost 52. Actually, I'm feeling quite lucky. My mother and her sister, both in their late 80's, suffer terribly from shingles. I f I can avoid that, I"m good.

[1004srs]

I had terrible chiken pox when I was a kid. I still have a scar or 2. I do get shingles.

My brother never got chicken pox, but he did come down with scarlet fever and I did not.