children will be restricted from peanut exposure; half will be exposed regularly between the ages of ten months and three years. When the participants reach the age of five, they will be tested for peanut allergy.
This data, which should become available in 2014, will primarily impact attitudes toward prenatal and early childhood peanut exposure. But it may also persuasively align with shifting attitudes toward treating established peanut allergies through low-level exposure rather than absolute avoidance. That is,pending the success of oral immunotherapy approaches only now being attempted. These breakthroughs glimmer as part of a more rational future.
In the meantime, we have entrepreneurs like Sharon Perry, co-owner of the Southern Star Ranch Boarding Kennel in Florence, Texas. Perry has devoted a division of her corporation to the cultivation of service animals taught to detect peanuts. Their proponents hope these companions will become as widely accepted as seeing-eye dogs. Perry claims to screen three hundred candidates for every single dog chosen for the program. Once you factor in purchase, vaccinations, and up to six months of training, the price of one of these dogs can top ten thousand dollars. In one promotional video, I watched a harnessed Labrador walk up the aisle of a public library with his master, stopping at any book that had once been handled by a childâs nut-contaminated fingertips.
I ask Lepicier what the European scientists he works with think of Americaâs peanut-sniffing dogs.
âThey are aghast,â he says.
â¢Â  â¢Â  â¢
When allergies come up in conversation, I hear one of two comments. The first is âOh, I know a person who is so allergic to [fill in the blank].â The second is âThe schools nowâyou canât serve anything. Itâs unbelievable!â Those uttering the latter follow with a guilty look, as if I wonât understand. But I do. In an effort to protect children, weâve asked everyone to join us in the briar patch. Parenting is hard enough without having to reinvent the sandwich, just for the sake of your kidâs classmate.
So people call the situation âunbelievable.â As in, âI canât believe the change from when I was a child.â Or as in, âI canât believe this is all really necessary.â
In the gap between what is feared and what is believed, folks have accumulated hostility toward those of us who claim severe allergies. You find skepticism in the comment boards for allergy-centric op-ed pieces, where anonymous voices suggest itâs all in our heads, that weâre making others abet our neuroses. You can hear the resentment in pockets of the restaurant industry. One Las Vegas chef told Ryan Lepicier, âSome people say they have an allergy when they just donât want to eat something.â
Something is awry when the news delivers stories like the 2007 incident in which a janitor at the Riverside Bakery in Nottingham, England, purposefully strewed peanuts around the facilityâusually a nut-free zoneâafter being disciplined for putting a calendar of nude girls up on the wall. The bakery, part of a larger plant called Pork Farms, estimated that they lost $1.6 million in delayed production while decontaminating the factory.
Janitor Goes Nuts
, says the link to the story I find online.
If the story was arsenic being thrown around a baby food jarring facility, no one would be laughing. Yet we do laugh. More and more, food allergies are being played in movies and television for laughs.
I grew up watching
The Simpsons
, and thereâs a season-eighteen episode in which Bart (newly revealed to have a shrimp allergy) and Principal Skinner (newly revealed to have a peanut allergy) face off on the landing of a Thai food factory inthe previously unknown Little Bangkok section of Springfield. Their weapons? A peanut tied to the end of one long stick, a shrimp tied to
This data, which should become available in 2014, will primarily impact attitudes toward prenatal and early childhood peanut exposure. But it may also persuasively align with shifting attitudes toward treating established peanut allergies through low-level exposure rather than absolute avoidance. That is,pending the success of oral immunotherapy approaches only now being attempted. These breakthroughs glimmer as part of a more rational future.
In the meantime, we have entrepreneurs like Sharon Perry, co-owner of the Southern Star Ranch Boarding Kennel in Florence, Texas. Perry has devoted a division of her corporation to the cultivation of service animals taught to detect peanuts. Their proponents hope these companions will become as widely accepted as seeing-eye dogs. Perry claims to screen three hundred candidates for every single dog chosen for the program. Once you factor in purchase, vaccinations, and up to six months of training, the price of one of these dogs can top ten thousand dollars. In one promotional video, I watched a harnessed Labrador walk up the aisle of a public library with his master, stopping at any book that had once been handled by a childâs nut-contaminated fingertips.
I ask Lepicier what the European scientists he works with think of Americaâs peanut-sniffing dogs.
âThey are aghast,â he says.
â¢Â  â¢Â  â¢
When allergies come up in conversation, I hear one of two comments. The first is âOh, I know a person who is so allergic to [fill in the blank].â The second is âThe schools nowâyou canât serve anything. Itâs unbelievable!â Those uttering the latter follow with a guilty look, as if I wonât understand. But I do. In an effort to protect children, weâve asked everyone to join us in the briar patch. Parenting is hard enough without having to reinvent the sandwich, just for the sake of your kidâs classmate.
So people call the situation âunbelievable.â As in, âI canât believe the change from when I was a child.â Or as in, âI canât believe this is all really necessary.â
In the gap between what is feared and what is believed, folks have accumulated hostility toward those of us who claim severe allergies. You find skepticism in the comment boards for allergy-centric op-ed pieces, where anonymous voices suggest itâs all in our heads, that weâre making others abet our neuroses. You can hear the resentment in pockets of the restaurant industry. One Las Vegas chef told Ryan Lepicier, âSome people say they have an allergy when they just donât want to eat something.â
Something is awry when the news delivers stories like the 2007 incident in which a janitor at the Riverside Bakery in Nottingham, England, purposefully strewed peanuts around the facilityâusually a nut-free zoneâafter being disciplined for putting a calendar of nude girls up on the wall. The bakery, part of a larger plant called Pork Farms, estimated that they lost $1.6 million in delayed production while decontaminating the factory.
Janitor Goes Nuts
, says the link to the story I find online.
If the story was arsenic being thrown around a baby food jarring facility, no one would be laughing. Yet we do laugh. More and more, food allergies are being played in movies and television for laughs.
I grew up watching
The Simpsons
, and thereâs a season-eighteen episode in which Bart (newly revealed to have a shrimp allergy) and Principal Skinner (newly revealed to have a peanut allergy) face off on the landing of a Thai food factory inthe previously unknown Little Bangkok section of Springfield. Their weapons? A peanut tied to the end of one long stick, a shrimp tied to
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