A scientist/physician addresses peanut allergies: NUTS

[mycrofft]

http://christakis.med.harvard.edu/pdf/publications/misc/023.pdf

More than twice as many people (not just kids) are allergic to seafood as are to nuts. 120 total fatalities annually, adults and children, out of 3,000 hospitalizations, versus 10,000 a year hospitalized with sports related TBI; 2,000 dead from drownings; 1,300 dead from firearm "accidents"; 150 bee stings and lightning strikes fatalities combined (2008).

So schools need to ban milk, seafood (tuna), contact sports, landscaping that attracts bees, swimming events, then promote firearm safety, to get a much better yield than banning peanut products.

The study which yielded the oft-cited "six percent" prevalence figure used a sample of only 512 babies already identified as having food allergies, and of the allergic reactions reported 8% were peanut related*.

Read the article , has more about epidemiological hysteria.


* Most reactions were to milk (42%), egg (21%) and peanut (8%)
http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/aug2012/capsule1

 

[Bullets]

Is there a question here?


Society is moving towards an increasing reliance on other providing for the masses. This doesnt surprise me

Id send my kid to school with a PB&J every day

 

[IslandTime]

Society is moving towards an increasing reliance on other providing for the masses.

Sadly it's worse than that. Our society, at least in the USA, is of the increasing mindset that if anything could have been done to foresee and prevent a problem than it should have been done, and if it wasn't done than you are liable. Shakespeare had I right I fear.

 

[mycrofft]

The school district had a fatality this summer at their camp. There were dim lights in the dining hall on parents night/end of camp, the kid tasted a rice crispy bar, spit it out. Her urologist dad gave her a benedryl and thought it was fine. 20 min later she decomped, was given a total of either three or four epi pens (???), paramedics took her to Tahoe and she was declared two hrs after arrival.

It is so HARD to explain to either grieving, angry, scared or manipulative parents that these are such rarities that draconian measures cannot succeed nor will they be effective, despite the absence of deaths despite kids still bringing in peanut items to school.

 

[Carlos Danger]

The school district had a fatality this summer at their camp. There were dim lights in the dining hall on parents night/end of camp, the kid tasted a rice crispy bar, spit it out. Her urologist dad gave her a benedryl and thought it was fine. 20 min later she decomped, was given a total of either three or four epi pens (???), paramedics took her to Tahoe and she was declared two hrs after arrival.

It is so HARD to explain to either grieving, angry, scared or manipulative parents that these are such rarities that draconian measures cannot succeed nor will they be effective, despite the absence of deaths despite kids still bringing in peanut items to school.

It's not hard, it's impossible. Emotion overrides logic every time when a tragedy involves a child.

It's the same exact mindset that thinks schools will be safer from psychotic mass murderers if we just make it harder for normal, law-abiding citizens to defend themselves.

 

[mycrofft]

It's not hard, it's impossible. Emotion overrides logic every time when a tragedy involves a child.

It's the same exact mindset that thinks schools will be safer from psychotic mass murderers if we just make it harder for normal, law-abiding citizens to defend themselves.

"1,300 dead from firearm 'accidents' ". On that note, theoretically we can save ten times as many people by utterly banning guns. Or at least requiring training and recerts. The 1,300 is not including purposeful (well, admittedly purposeful) discharges and probably includes a number of suicides.

My old highschool has has two shootings in over 90 years and one was an accidental discharge when a kid who was packing (and got past the half-assed security of LA Unified) was doing something in his backpack.

We've put this one to bed too many times, despite what TV shows you, the risk of getting shot in some sort of school, theater, hospital; or ambulance invasion is less than someone you know shooting you accidentally or in a heat of the moment incident.

Same psycho-epidemiology. Good example, thanks for bringing it up.