I’m going to pass on writing about healthcare reform in this issue. Two of our columinsts – Michael Martorelli and Derek Lowe – have offered up their takes on it, and I’m sure we’ll have plenty to talk about in the months ahead. But this issue, you get to read about lunch with Rabbi Zvi.

A few weeks ago, I went to lunch at a kosher barbecue place with a Hasidic rabbi. Sadly, this isn’t the setup for the awesomest punchline ever; we’d met at the High Holidays for the past several years, and he wanted to get together to find out more about me and my family. (And see if he could get me to be a little more Jewish, I assume.)

Rabbi Zvi and I shot the breeze over schawarma. It turned out that we’re the same age and have somewhat similar family histories. We sure did head in different directions. As we finished our platters, he said, “So, you’re the editor of a pharmaceutical magazine.”

I paused. This statement tends to fill me with dread and trepidation, since it usually precedes such questions as, “Why do prescriptions cost so much?”, “Why do doctors have no time for patients?” and, “What do you think this rash is?”

Instead he asked, “Have you heard about what’s going on out here? With the children?”

“The mumps?” I asked. I’d read in the New York Times that there’d been an outbreak of mumps among the kids in several Hasidic communities in the area. The outbreak was apparently tied back to an 11-year-old kid who’d contracted it on a trip to the UK last June. In close quarters with other kids at summer camp later in the month, before he developed symptoms, the boy inadvertently passed it on. As his camp-mates returned to school, where they spend an awful lot of time together – 14 hours a day, according to the Times much of it face-to-face with study partners – it exploded, with more than 1,500 cases documented by the end of January.

The rabbi told me that his son is among the infected kids, most of whom range from seven to 18 years old. “How does this happen?” he asked me. “We vaccinated our kids like they told us! We did what they wanted!”

I’d read that the CDC now thinks that the mumps portion of the MMR vaccine “isn’t as effective” as the measles and rubella components, and that more than 800 of the 1,500+ cases reported occurred in kids who had received two MMR doses. Vaccination status was unknown for 400 of the patients, so it may be an even greater number who’d received complete vaccinations but came down with anyway. Of course, it’s no comfort for the parents of infected children to tell them, “How about that? We thought it worked fine!”

“And now,” he said, “they want us to bring in our children to get re-vaccinated? Why? It didn’t work before, so we’re supposed to trust that now this time it will?”

He thumped the table. I’d seen him this vituperative once before, during Yom Kippur last year when he told a story of Maimonides that implicitly shamed congregants who only show up to pray during the High Holidays. (That’s our version of the Christmas-and-Easter-only crowd.)

“And where’s the uproar over this? The government runs these vaccination programs, we comply with them, we risk our children becoming autistic -“

I was going to interject, “Actually there’s no link between vaccines and autism,” but he was rolling.

“- and you barely read a word about it in the newspaper! Nothing on the TV!”

I said, “Zvi, we both know the reason for that. People see black hats and coats and payess, and they don’t look much deeper. You’re . . . different.”

“We’re so different, we should send our children to public school for a month and see what the reaction is!”

So . . . like I said, I’m going to hold off on writing about greater government involvement in healthcare for the moment. I’m sure we’ll have more to talk about soon.

Gil Y. Roth has been the editor of Contract Pharma since its debut in 1999. He can be reached at [email protected].