There are really measels parties? I've heard of chicken pox parties, which makes sense because there's no vaccine and the adult form is vastly worse than the infant form. But measels parties, that's just medieval.
EDIT: apparently there is a chicken pox vaccine, but it isn't administered to the general population in the UK, only NHS workers. Interesting.
That's interesting, the MMR vaccine is a normal vaccine here in the U.S. as part of the normal shots infants get. There's usually a booster shot as a young adult and again in middle-late age.
edit apparently I forgot reading comprehension, I see now that you were talking about Chicken Pox vaccines.
I didn't know either, I just know the MMR. AFAIK people just have Chicken Pox parties for their kids and make sure they get exposed. I remember when I was about 4 or 5 my mother was so thrilled when the lady who owned a store down the way had two kids who got Chicken Pox. The next day she took me out of school and I "met" their kids for about 30 minutes. Got the Pox sure enough right after that.
My Uncle somehow missed it and ended up getting it in his 40s. I think he spent part of it in the hospital. The difference between adults and children's responses to it is quite remarkable.
IIRC it's fairly common nowadays to administer the vaccine to children in Canada/US.
The main trade-off I've seen is that a small percentage of people who get the vaccine end up with pox at the age of 20-30 where the complications (pox on internal organs) can require hospitalization and/or cause death. The flip side being, of course, that a small percentage of people infected with chicken pox as kids also require hospitalization and/or die.
Are you talking about something other than shingles? This study seems credible enough (the Web MD article even manages to discuss how they dealt with several obvious confounding factors):
Yeah, there are measels parties, just like the old days. Though regarding Chicken Pox, to be honest, I'm real surprised that chicken pox isn't on the list of mandated vaccines at this point. I had them a tiny bit on the late side -- at age 8 -- and I still had a pretty miserable time with them, with a 104 degree fever, etc. Making the vaccine just available to health workers seems silly; it's a dangerous disease, even in childhood.
EDIT: apparently there is a chicken pox vaccine, but it isn't administered to the general population in the UK, only NHS workers. Interesting.