A teenager who unsuccessfully attempted to sue his school after he was banned for refusing vaccination has contracted chickenpox.
Jerome Kunkel, 18, along with other unimmunised students, was barred from Our Lady of Sacred Heart/Assumption Academy in Kentucky after an outbreak of the disease that sickened at least 32 students.
The Northern Kentucky health department quickly reacted to the outbreak, barring all unvaccinated students from participating in classes or extracurricular activities.
Mr Kunkel contested this ban in court, calling the vaccine "immoral, illegal, and sinful", but a Kentucky judge ultimately sided with the state and the school and upheld the ban of unimmunised students.
He has now contracted chickenpox, after first showing symptoms last week. He is hoping to have recovered within a few days.
Now that he has had chickenpox, and is therefore immune to it, he will be allowed back into the classroom.
Laura Brinson, a spokeswoman for the Northern Kentucky Health Department, said: "Encouraging the spread of an acute infection disease in a community demonstrates a callous disregard for the health and safety of friends, family, neighbours and unsuspecting members of the general public."
Mr Kunkel said he had refused the chickenpox vaccine on moral and religious grounds as the family objects to the vaccine, which they claimed was "derived from aborted foetuses".
In the 1960’s, two electively aborted foetuses’ cells were used to grow viruses to produce some vaccines, although no human cells have been used since.
The Catholic church has told its members that using these vaccines is morally justifiable, but would also like to see new, alternative treatments developed that don’t require "cell lines of illicit origins".
