By Katherine R. Elder

One fateful Sunday on the way home from church, I asked my mom why the mumps were bad. To my 9-year-old brain’s knowledge, they just made your face swell and made you look like you were playing that disgusting “Chubby Bunny” game. Well, for those of us too young to have lived before the MMR shot became a standard routine for school admissions, one of the negative effects of this disease is that it can lead to an inflammation of the testicles that can, on occasion, lead to male sterility. My mom’s simple answer to my query was, “Because, if a man gets them, he may not be able to have babies.”
Read More…