This Year, Give Health

Stephanie Zvan

DrRubidium is a powerhouse. She’s finishing up her first semester of teaching, putting out weapons-grade snark at the JAYFK, and now she’s whipping up a vaccination campaign in the science blogosphere for the winter holidays.

Still looking for a Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, holiday-yet-to-be-invented gift for a loved (or tolerated) one?  Skip the damn tsotchkes.  Go with measles vaccines.  Yes, measles vaccines.

It turns out that the Red Cross allows you to donate to a campaign that provides vaccinations overseas. Cost is a dollar a shot, delivered.

This is a charitable gift, but it’s also a practical one. Here in the U.S., we have reached the point where even people whose parents forgo vaccination–for good reasons and specious ones–rarely pay the price in illness. However, when there is a measles outbreak among the unvaccinated and those with wonky immune systems, the source is generally someone who has just stepped off a plane.

Giving the gift of vaccination doesn’t just protect children in countries hurt by our colonialist pasts, though it does do that. It also protects the most vulnerable among us here. That’s a gift worth giving or receiving.

Forget getting your best friend Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3!  Get 50 vaccinations instead.  In that holiday card to your boss, let them know they’ve vaccinated 25 kids.  Splurge on that flats screen TV with you tax return.  For now, vaccinate a village — A WHOLE VILLAGE!

Listen to the woman. Go save some lives.

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This Year, Give Health

About the author

Stephanie Zvan is one of the hosts for the Minnesota Atheists' radio show and podcast, Atheists Talk. She serves on the board of Secular Woman. She speaks on science and skepticism in a number of venues, including science fiction and fantasy conventions. Stephanie has been called a science blogger and a sex blogger, but if it means she has to choose just one thing to be or blog about, she's decided she's never going to grow up. In addition to science and sex and the science of sex, you'll find quite a bit of politics here, some economics, a regular short fiction feature, and the occasional bit of concentrated weird. Oh, and arguments. She sometimes indulges in those as well. But I'm sure everything will be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
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4 thoughts on “This Year, Give Health”

  1. julian
    1

    Freethought Blogs really is into this whole charity thing lol

    Thank you for the link. Will definitely donate some cash. Can’t find an end date on the red cross webpage. Is this a year round thing?

  4. Francisco Bacopa
    4

    If you know any preteens, boys too, buy them an HPV vaccination.

    Lets make the next generation not have to face this problem. And donate to Planned Parenthood. They really helped me out with my personal HPV crisis.

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