No, not what I write (although I certainly get enough emails suggesting otherwise… and I’m sure another round of interesting emails is going to be coming at my way shortly).

In the past, and even sometimes still today, public health has had to deal with the phenomenon of having "chickenpox parties." These are events held by well-intentioned but grossly-uninformed parents who deliberately expose their kids to a child with chickenpox in order to "get it over with." Yes, the children will get chickenpox and yes, the children will become nicely immune to the disease thereafter. Most of the time, it’s not really a problem, but then there are the times when a child develops serious (and potentially fatal) complications from chickenpox. Or when one child picks up chickenpox and spreads it to a high-risk child who then develops complications. It went so far at one time that at least one person was selling lollipops laced with chickenpox over the internet (until it was pointed out that this was essentially a bioterrorism activity).

We now have the analogue being recommended in dogs. The basic idea is to take young puppies to an area where distemper virus or parvovirus is likely present, so the puppy will be exposed and vaccination won’t be required.

Sure, it might work.

• The puppy might get exposed to enough virus to develop an immune response but not cause disease.
• Or the puppy might get sick and require expensive veterinary care.
• Or the puppy might get sick and die.
• Or the puppy might do any one of the three above and also spread the virus to other susceptible dogs, whose owners didn’t make the conscious – and dumb – choice to purposefully expose their dogs to these potentially fatal viruses.

Do vaccine reactions occur?

• Of course.

Are animals vaccinated more often than needed?

• Probably. Vaccination intervals are increasing so progress is being made. However, confusing the debate about how long we can go between vaccines with whether dogs should be vaccinated at all is dangerous. There’s no doubt that young animals need proper early-life vaccination to prevent these potentially fatal infections.

Does the benefit outweigh the costs?

• Absolutely. Vaccination has controlled some incredibly important infectious diseases.
• Choosing not to vaccinate in response to internet rumours isn’t logical and it puts lots of animals at risk.
• Also, decreasing population vaccination rates increases the disease risk to the dog and cat population overall, since fewer protected animals means more chance of disease circulating from animal to animal to animal before it can be stopped. It’s like the “Wakefield effect”: the surge in some vaccine-preventable diseases attributed to the now-discredited (and former doctor) Andrew Wakefield, whose flawed and unethical research fed the anti-vaccine movement with since-retracted data.

Vaccination of young animals is critical for the control of certain infectious diseases. Recommending otherwise is illogical, and when it’s done by people who should know better, it’s unethical. Hopefully this doesn’t get to the point where we need to start tracking the animal equivalent of the Jenny McCarthy Body Count.