Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
I've run into an interesting ethical conundrum involving Molluscum contagiosum. It's a viral infection common among kids, where a pox-family virus causes little pale warts that usually remain from six to nine months. Once the last lesion is gone you seem to become resistant, and the complaint is rare in adults. According to Wikipedia, 17% of kids go through it, mostly between the ages of 2 and 12. There's no antiviral treatment: usually nothing is done about molluscum as removal involves the same regimen of soaking, mechanical scrubbing and mild corrosive agents as for warts, only you have tens or hundreds of them instead of a single one.
Molluscum is painless but contagious and a little ugly: typically the parents will mind it more than the child does. My son picked it up at daycare and eventually passed it on to his kid sister. Yesterday our excellent neighbour from Korea put her kid and mine in the bathtub after they had gotten themselves grimy. When she discovered the molluscum she was pretty disturbed, never having seen it before.
If I really wanted to make sure that my kids don't spread the virus I'd have to home-school them (which is illegal in Sweden) and keep them from other children for a year. But daycare centres and schools don't care at all about molluscum and impose no restrictions.
Dear Reader, what is my responsibility here? I'd really rather not tell every new parent I meet that my kid has a contagious skin condition that sticks for months, "But don't worry, it's harmless. Wanna come over to our place and play?" And I note that nobody (not even 17%) has ever said that to me.
The kid in the pic ain't mine, I lifted it off Google.
[More blog entries about molluscum, contagiosum, health, children, parenting, ethics; mollusker, barn, etik, hälsa.]
Comments
We never said anything and nobody ever said anything to us. It is just part of normal childhood as far as the mores amongst our little clique go. But then again maybe we are weird...
Posted by: ukko | July 27, 2007 10:41 AM
I've never heard of this before. Chicken pox, sure. Just about everyone I know had it as kids. The picture looks almost like skin tags which I believe are part of the mole family.
And home schooling is illegal in Sweden? Why?
Posted by: Karen | July 27, 2007 11:18 AM
Karen wrote: "And home schooling is illegal in Sweden? Why?"
Well, because in Sweden, kids have to go to school (by law) and get taught things they need to know, instead of something their parents dreamed up.
Posted by: Rien | July 27, 2007 12:25 PM
Molluscum contagiosum
Is that a skin disease, or a magic spell in the Harry Potter movies?
Posted by: derek | July 27, 2007 12:47 PM
_I and my sister had it when we were small, our dad said that the only thing that could help was whisky, so he took some...(helped him)!
Well then he cut a piece og pigskin with some fat (sv�l), rubbed us gently with it and murmured something...and then he went out in the moonlit forrest and dug the pieces down.
And "puuh" everything dried away!
Posted by: Savon | July 27, 2007 1:46 PM
Karen: As Rien said, it's a question of quality concerns. "No child left behind." There has never been an apparatus in Sweden to quality-check home-schooling. In 1842 the Swedish Parliament instructed each state-church congregation to start a school and attendance became mandatory.
Posted by: Martin R | July 27, 2007 2:29 PM
Martin,
Speaking as one with ECE training and who's spent close to 20 years working with infant-toddlers and preschoolers, I would say to you that only if someone close to the child that your child is playing with is pregnant should you have to say anything to the parent. As Ukko said, this is part of childhood, just like skeeters and no-see-ums. Now, if the local health unit or school and daycare authorities had a gripe, then yes I can see a point, but in this case, it is something you cannot treat, lasts a long time and that is not harmful to those afflicted, which puts it into a different category than, say, conjunctivitis or measles. For those diseases there are clear guidlines to follow in terms of daycares and schools etc, because they are dangerous things that can cause lasting harm or even death. As a matter of fact, it'd be more detrimental to your child's health if it were continuously pointed out to everyone that he/she had this affliction, because that DOES have a lasting effect - on the psyche. -T
Posted by: Christina | July 27, 2007 3:51 PM
I was of course joking, noone can do that kind of magic in real life. It was as the schooldoctor said to us, because we believed so strongly in what daddy did,so we cured ourselves. A friend of mine has taken nice pict. from where I come. His name is B�rje Oskarsson. http://sarfanaive.se/fullview~2.html?files/P7120032.JPG&Fj%26auml%3blltoppen+Tjahkelij+speglar+mot+sj%26ouml%3bn+Laitaure.%0d%0a
Posted by: Savon | July 27, 2007 4:25 PM
Savon: Wow! That is a place to come from. But not much of molluscs from that lake!? ;-)
Posted by: Lars L | July 28, 2007 2:32 AM
Christina: Thank you. Our neighbour with the bath tub is hugely pregnant and has been around my daughter regularly since long before conception. Googling, I find contradictory information in the top hits:
On one hand, "Molluscum contagiosum prevention during pregnancy is extremely important for both mother and baby. The health care provider will follow the pregnancy throughout the nine months, because the hormone changes in a woman’s body at this time may cause the MCV growth to escalate."
On the other, "Molluscum contagiosum will not affect your pregnancy in any way."
Posted by: Martin R | July 28, 2007 5:34 AM
Savon: Wow, what a place to grow up in! Right by the famous Sarek national park. I happened to look up that name the other day and found that sarek means "weak reindeer bull who gets chased off by a stronger one".
What does savon mean? There's a Finnish town named Savonlinna. Its Swedish name (which may or may not have the same meaning as the Finnish one) is Nyslott, "newcastle". And, of course, un savon is a soap in French.
Posted by: Martin R | July 28, 2007 5:42 AM
Hi Martin and Lars! I´m a little "slow" now (This "Elvis-story" is too fun), but what I hope is that I´m not a soap!!!
"Sávon" is sámi, and means "still waters" especially when it comes from a river and flows widely over a flat land, when it is from a smaller water it is a "vielma" (the place Vilhelmina, I guess comes from this...)
I wrote about it to comfort Martin, even children brought up in rather solitude can get this molluscs (in school and from a cousin).
And the pic it is a "ale, ala or alet" place (a holy place high up, often to the west), and if you look at it you see why. But don´t do it. It´s beaty can be completely ruined, better not know.
Posted by: Sávon | July 28, 2007 9:24 AM
Never heard of this - but then, after you get kids you start realizing there are dozens of weird skin afflictions out there. Sounds like this is just like warts, but with the bonus that it clears itself up within a fairly short time without painful treatments (unlike the true warts I had as a high school student - now that was torture!).
Being a kid means going thruogh about a 1000 or more biological testings during childhood, from 200 different types of colds to weird and potentially dangerous viruses. I would inform parents of kids who are playing very closely with my own kid and who notices the warts. Just to explain. But not inform just about every kid your kids run into at playgrounds or even daycare. The daycare personel can inform parents in general if they feel it is needed. Like you said, we parents would probably be the ones to react, while the kid will barely register it after the first curious examination. There are eye, ear and throat infections, lice and coughs and whatnot that truly affect both child and adults to worry about.
Speaking as a parent, I am WAY more concerned with car accidents, falling out of trees, choking hazards and the poking out of eyes, than some warts. It's life.
Posted by: ArchAsa | July 29, 2007 4:09 PM
Thank you! I think it's kind of cool though that it's AD 2007, and we still find insects living in our kids' hair.
And about cars -- one of the things the 1960s architects who designed Fisks�tra did right was this. They closed off the entire ground-surface of the housing development to cars, letting them instead roost in subterranean garages reachable by the lower ends of the same elevator shafts and staircases that us dwellers use to reach our apartments. This means that every street here is a safe playground. In addition, every kitchen window, many of which are equipped with Turkish grannies, face the streets. This means that our area is absolutely lethal to child-molesters, who prefer instead to cruise affluent villa-burbs with low population density in their cars.
Posted by: Martin R | July 29, 2007 4:34 PM
You can apply for permission to home-school. I am not sure how often the application is granted but I have myself been involved in granting an application for partial home-schooling.
Posted by: Johan Richter | July 31, 2007 1:50 PM
I just hope It will go away...my fear Is that It wont go away,I can't go to friends,cousins,family's house because I don't want to give It to my loved one's.I don't want my baby to have these thing's on his face.I feel horrible,and don't know who to tell because people might freak out.so what I'm trying to say Is,Is there any hope?
Posted by: Darla Winters | June 24, 2008 4:59 PM
Hello!Thanks for posting this source of information,as parents we learned so much because as of now our children have this kind of disease.At first we just thought that it is just normal warts where it appeared on the trunk under the armpit of our child,but we became aware and worried when we noticed that it began to multiply and my child began to scratch as he felt the itchyness around.Then his brother also started to have it on his arm.I don't know where it come from,Only then we learned about this disease when we see a dermatologist,we still need to comeback for the medication.
Posted by: Mrs Vidal | September 22, 2008 3:39 AM
There is no medication that I know of. Please enlighten us! My kids' molluscum healed well and disappeared, though it took time.
Posted by: Martin R | September 22, 2008 12:33 PM
My son had Molluscum and his Pediatrician had no answers. I decided to try something that I learned while studying to be a Nutrition Counselor. I used a safety pin to pierce open liquid garlic capsules and saturated the infected area with the liquid garlic each evening before putting my son in his sleeper and to bed. The smell was not the most pleasant, however, the Molluscum was gone in less than a matter of weeks. I hope that this method may work for others as well. I also agree, the parents are more bothered by the Molescum than the child. My son never complained!
Posted by: jennuh | November 13, 2008 12:50 PM
Hey! I am offended by the homeschooling comments! I am a home school Mom w/a BS in Elem. Educ. and I certainly do not "dream up" what to teach my kids...we follow state standards and get our kids tested yearly by the local school...they take the same standardized tests public school kids do and their scores are higher! Please don't lump all of us into a "category"! Thank you! Oh...and thank you for the info. on the rash...very helpful! :D
Posted by: Marcia Roberts | January 6, 2009 11:06 AM
Marcia, I think the outside world largely associates US home schooling with religious fundamentalism, where kids are home-schooled not because it's a long ride to the municipal school, but because the parents want to control their access to religiously unvetted information.
Hope your kids lose the molluscum quickly!
Posted by: Martin R | January 7, 2009 2:57 AM
My daughter has this condition right now. She is 3 and attends pre-school full time. I don't know who she caught this from, but they are under her arm and the doctor says they spread if one of them opens. My daughter had one get large and it almost looked like a white head. I tried to clean it out and that made it spread. DO NOT pick or try and pop these! LEAVE THEM ALONE. The doctor says there is medication but it's rarely used since it's heavy medication. They can spread but usually go away on their own.
Posted by: Heather | January 8, 2009 2:25 PM
I'm a 17 year old girl and honestly i think i have this....
initially i thought i had genital warts (={ but then when i started lookin at stuff online i realized that what i had couldn't be that - i found this molluscum skin thing and honestly it looks just like what i have.... but i'm afraid of the doubt and i wanna know for sure ya know? it is on my vagina and initially i thought it was from shaving but it hasn't gone away. i'm beginning to be a little frightened by it. but it looks just like that image and other images i've seen
thx
Posted by: holli | March 31, 2009 10:43 PM
Holli, better see a doctor. Sounds like it might be genital warts. They're contagious but treatable.
Posted by: Martin R | April 1, 2009 3:14 AM
This image is NOT genital warts. Genital warts appear 3-6 months after sexual contact with an infected individual. They are painless, have a heaped up appearance and usually occur in small clumps around the vulva or penis in numbers of 6-10. Molluscum contagiosum has two groups of people it affects. 1) children, spread by direct contactwith another child and toys and stuff 2) adolescents and adults can get it through sexual contact and should be tested for HIV b/c molluscum in an adult often signifies an immunocompromised state. In children this is typically self- limiting, but can be treated by removal or less invasively with trichloroacetic acid (vinegar).
Posted by: brandi | April 9, 2009 9:09 PM
Holli,
If it is on your vagina it is very unlikely to be molluscum, sorry. It is most likely to either be genital warts caused by the HPV virus, or secondary syphillis. Both are very treatable but if left untreated may cause later cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and ultimately infertility. Seek treatment. Syphillis is treated with Penicillin G and genital warts are treated with acyclovir or valtrex. Just ask your provider to examine the area. Good luck!
Posted by: brandi | April 9, 2009 9:19 PM
My daughter got this in January and is just now finished with her last bump...unfortunatly her little brother just popped up his first one. (which is frustrating because the pediatrician says they can just pass it back and forth for years) Short of keeping them both in a sterile bubble, not much we can do short of the obvious like no sharing baths or towels, etc. My Pediatrician has us using Aldara which eats the skin up (and costs $140/~month in the US) Doing research it looks like if I just wait it may just go away rather than go through the pain of this horrible medication. Grrrr... Member of the 17% club
Posted by: Sadie | June 23, 2009 1:49 PM
Yeah, I think this is one of those things where the treatments are really more about the parent's needs than the kid's. Hope your little boy gets through it swiftly.
Posted by: Martin R | June 23, 2009 2:05 PM