VACCINE: THE CONTROVERSIAL STORY OF MEDICINE'S GREATEST LIFESAVER

When I was six days old, I nearly died of chicken pox. This was explained to me almost casually by my mother six years later as she commanded me to sleep over at a friend's home, where another child was suffering from the rubella form of measles. Itwas just possible, Mother said, that I got chicken pox because she had been exposed to the disease during the final days of her pregnancy but had no immunity to the virus -- and thus failed to pass on protective antibodies to poor little me. To makesure that I would not one day give birth to a rubella-damaged baby or miscarry, Mother sent me to that dreaded sleep-over. I did indeed become infected. And for several miserable days, I lay in quarantine, delirious, dehydrated and bored, covered inred blotches and angry as heck that Mother had put me through the ordeal.