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The Sitcoms Got It Wrong: Why Mumps Is No Laughing Matter
The Brady Bunch may have laughed at mumps, but the complications are no joke.
In the fourth episode of the fifth season of The Brady Bunch, an all-American family faced the threat of an infectious disease with wholesome humor and not much else. The year is 1973, and the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine is in its sixth year of being licensed. The plot of the episode involves Bobby kissing a girl who informs him she may have mumps. Worried he may have been infected, Bobby slowly discloses his exposure status to the family. At the end of the episode, the girl tells Bobby she is mumps-free, and everyone has a good laugh about the whole thing.
This wasn’t the only episode of The Brady Bunch that touched on a vaccine-preventable disease. Their season one episode “Is There a Doctor in the House?” dealt with a measles outbreak among the Brady family. Anti-vaccine activists and others have used that 1969 episode and the one on mumps from 1973 to state that these diseases are not a big deal. Apparently, fictional television shows from over 50 years ago are — in their view — more reliable than the data.
I wonder if this particular “physician to the stars” feels the same way about the current epidemic in Texas and New Mexico. That outbreak has claimed…
