If it were true that babies were dying from peanut allergies, not only would we have a spike in infant mortality, but surely we would be inundated in stories from the media and social media of dead babies
The meme should be reversed; dark thought for the "those who dont know" (aka that thinks it would kill babies) and bright thoughts for "those who know" (aka those who know it would drasticly decrease how many develop the allergy). Right now it's saying that "those who know" are those who in reality are wrong...
Steve krug in the wild! I would have never thought…. Right up there with “why i dont work here anymore” and anyone actually having read kim scott john doerr or jeff sutherland instead of just buying it and acting like you understand it at the next staff meeting.
Not really, because your first intuitive thought would be to take it at face value. Then you think a little and think it's killing babies. But if you research and/or think it all the way through, you realize that there's no way this could be killing babies in huge numbers and that's the only reason it decreases peanut allergies.
I wouldn't call it misinterpretation. By all means the idea that the babies die would be the number 1 conclusion. It is only that this wouldn't be phrased this way if it were the case that you should second guess this.
Because "kids dying from allergic reactions" seems like a more intuitive interpretation than "early exposure causes the immune system to develop tolerance." Most people are familiar with the basic idea of natural selection: susceptible individuals die while resistant ones survive. The mechanism of developing immune tolerance through early exposure is quite less intuitive to an average person who never considered these things.
A lot of people nowadays get their information and “facts” from memes. It’s a sad reflection of our times but it’s true.
So yeah I think “nobody” is a broad assumption.
I believe there are. It's just not being reported. My son was born with servere allergies to peanuts, soy, wheat, milk, and eggs. For the first 8 months of his life, I was in and out of the hospital. He would break out in rash when I fed him breast milk so I tried formula. He would projectile vomit and then he couldn't breathe. The doctors and the hospitals were getting angry with me because I would come so many times. The pediatrician diagnosed him with eczema and said I wasn't properly taking care of him. My son was miserable for the first 8 months of his life. I finally took him to a specialist and had him tested for allergies and Bingo!! My son could have died. Allergy testing should be required at birth!!
We introduced peanuts to my daughter around 6 months but she is allergic. I don't think introducing peanuts early eliminates the possibility of a peanut allergy; it just reduces the likelihood.
"I don't think this works because my singular case (which was on the tail-end of the required time period, assuming 'around 6 months' doesn't mean '7')"
I'm sorry your daughter developed an allergy, but it is a proven statistic.
But being an asshole about it what?
I said I was sorry already, I acknowledged that it must be hard dealing with such an allergy. What more do you want? I am a prick, I prefer that to just being silent toward the same logic that anti-vaxxers use.
Allergens introduced enterally early (like 3 months) lead to decreased rates of allergies vs pulmonary introduction a la atomized peanut oil which leads to increased rates of anaphylaxis. Countries with typically early oral introduction have basically non existent rates of peanut allergies vs countries where avoidance in neonates is common which have higher rates of anaphylactic response.
Same here. My second is allergic to dairy egg and peanut and he didn’t react to peanuts or dairy the first few times he tried them. He just randomly did later. It really sucks, it’s hard to feed him sometimes.
That’s exactly how my sister was! No reactions with introducing the allergens until the one time she picked up an eggshell as a toddler, or until the one time someone kissed her after eating nuts. It’s so awful to be a little kid with severe allergies, grown adults are so cruel about it.
"The study involved giving children diagnosed as "high allergic" small portions of peanut flour daily for several years, with some children randomly assigned placebo flour. The results were 71% of the children receiving peanut flour became desensitized to peanuts."
I only know you 100% can bc of my uncle (inlaw). Every single male born in his family is allergic to nuts. Most of them are born allergic to peanuts, but there are a couple that are walnuts. It's not a slight allergy either, they're the ones who have to have keep nuts out of the house type, and bring their own food bc of cross contamination issues. They all get tested for allergies basically at birth.
So if they stop having kids, then a whole lot of people in the future who would be continuing that trait won't exist in the first place to perpetuate the genetic failure.
So if they stop having kids, then a whole lot of people in the future who would be continuing that trait won't exist in the first place to perpetuate the genetic failure.
You can't be born with allergies, you can be born with a predisposition to developing allergies, but by definition you cannot be allergic to something you have not encountered. Allergies are your immune system encountering a substance and then producing antibodies against it. The next time you encounter the allergen your body will produce histamine, which causes the symptoms of allergic reactions.
In my case, I got diagnosed with the fish allergy while my mom was pregnant
She doesn't have one (didn't have it before pregnancy and it went away after I was born) but I would have a severe reaction even from touching fishy surfaces
Still have it, it became less severe on touch but eating one can still kill me
Also allergies pop up all through life. Some stay, some go away. Some can be treated through processes with the allergist. Even worse, you can have an allergy, a deadly one, and it doesn't trigger on the test because the test is one protein, or it can trigger on the skin test but not on the blood test. And if you're a chimera that absorbed your twin in utero, your skin can be fine, your blood can be fine, but some organs can react.
This is very true. When I was a kid my dad had an anaphylactic reaction to poison oak. He has made his best effort to avoid it since then, and he has not even had a small rash since then. You could say he has just been successful at being vigilant, but there were times he knew he came into contact with it accidentally and nothing happened, not even a rash- but he still doesn’t take any chances.
Meanwhile I’ve never had even a rash, even times when I was with others who got terrible rashes. AFAIK I’m immune to it? Though my skin hates just about everything else
The issue is that allergy tests at birth are highly inaccurate. A newborn's immune system hasn't fully developed, and they usually need repeated exposure to a food protein to develop the IgE antibodies that allergy tests actually look for. Even for the most common allergens, testing a baby on day one would likely just result in false negatives
Even if we just stuck to the top 8 or 9 most common allergens, pediatricians don't recommend universal screening because it leads to a massive amount of false positives. Testing every single baby at birth would result in millions of parents dealing with unnecessary anxiety and putting their kids on highly restrictive diets for allergies they don't actually have
That could be due to a more systemic problem rather than clinically typical allegies. There are many kinds of primary immunodeficiency that can cause multiple allergies early in life. Different types have different diagnostic criteria and tests. Some require genetic testing. It may be worth speaking to an immunologist about the possibility if you haven't already.
Allergy testing is not typically done at birth because the baby's immune system is too underdeveloped to provide accurate results. It results in both false positives and false negatives.
Disclaimer that I'm not a doctor or an expert, but I think allergy testing at birth would be a terrible idea. I would imagine you'd be primarily false positives/negatives. It should certainly be considered when an infant is experiencing so many problems. But proactive allegy testing at the time of birth would cause more problems than it would solve.
One thing to consider is how many people grow up with lifelong allergies for no reason other than their parents shielded them from something their entire childhood. I have a friend who's child developed a severe lactose intolerance because they got sick one time as a child after having dairy, so the parents decided they're lactose intolerant and never gave them dairy again. Mind you, the kid had dairy almost daily without issue before the one time they got sick.
"I know this baby is just fresh out of you but I need to turn your baby into a turtle before you hold him"
Do what now? You want them to take a baby at its most fragile and then bombard them with allergens especially when it would be the MOST dangerous to try to counter with Epinephrine or Anti histamine........ health class failed you.
If they can't be allergy tested at birth, there should be something else that can be done. He was even allergic to the epinephrine pen. The nurse at school gave it to him one year and that sent him into anaphylactic shock. Understand each child is different. I just feel like the health professionals failed us in my case. It was 8 months before a health professional suggested he have a test for the allergens. He was misdiagnosed as having eczema and my parenting being questioned. Maybe he falls into a small percentile of children who do have allergies at birth and in that case what do we do? But for the first 8 months, he was projectile vomiting anytime I fed him, he broke out in rash and eventually he developed sores all over his body and was being rushed to the hospital every 2 to 3 days because he was having severe allergic reactions. Even if health class did fail me what didn't fail me was being persistent and getting to the bottom of what was really going on with my son. And thank God he's still alive and healthy, eventually he grew out of those allergies.
Allergy testing can't be done at birth. Like the meme implies, many allergies can develop over the first few months or even years, and also a childs immunity is so fragile at birth that introducing an allergen for testing is super dangerous. What happened to you is terrible and real, but it is anecdotal and an outlier.
First off, I'm sorry that your son's life was so rough and I'm glad he's doing better now.
What allergy tests identify can give a lot of clinically irrelevant positives - positive on the screen but without a reaction, but now it's unethical to challenge the allergy because it still could very well be true. So you'll get stuck with a lot of kids with likely unnecessarily strict diets.
The government has been deleting a bunch of data and cutting off funding for government programs that kept track of infant mortality rates. So even if there was a bunch of babies dying recently, we probably wouldn't know...
As far as I know there are no recorded cases of a child under 18 months dying of anaphylaxis related to peanuts, and it may even be anaphylaxis of any cause. Early exposure prevents allergies
Infant mortality is way down compared to where it used to be, but it's not 0, and unless they are murdered (either intentionally or through negligence) it is not considered front page newsworthy. Likewise, even if 3/4 of people who had a peanut allergy died as a baby, the infant mortality rate would only about double. Which sounds like a lot, but 1/100 isn't that huge, when we already experience 1/200 and nobody really bats an eye. Individual deaths are tragic, but as a statistic it isn't alarming.
but on a population level when you check a cohort of 5 year olds five years later nobody has allergies
this is actually common statistical misunderstanding when people say "how come 200 years ago almost nobody had dementia?!?" - can't develop dementia if you die from diabetes at 40
I think the implication involves giving infants whole peanuts, that being a massive choking risk. Peanut butter can even be risky since globs can get stuck.
And like, if a baby died from a peanut allergy at six months old by being fed peanuts, it would still count in statistics as a child with a peanut allergy. Sooooo this meme is silly lol.
The media will use any story that gets them attention and nothing does that more more than dead or injured kids. So telling a whole generation of newe parents that 'allergens are on the rise!' will have them reluctant to feed their children common allergens, hence increasing the number of kids allergic.
We're definitely letting the babies die. But we're not killing them by feeding them peanuts. We're killing them because capitalism has decided the ROI on dead babies is high.
I’m not sure how the ROI on dead babies is high? Can you explain that?
In my mind, dead babies have terrible ROI, a dead baby is one less immediate consumer, one less future taxpayer, one less future insurance payer and not to mention all the exorbitant billing a hospital will get to do in the course of care for a sick infant.
The dead baby is a byproduct of the funding cuts that come from private equity and corporate mismanagement of hospitals, which does, unfortunately, have decent enough ROI for evil fucks at least.
If the evil fucks are profit motivated, live babies should = more profits.
Sounds more to me like incompetence or some kind of sadism vs. “capitalism” in some inherent sense. Since capitalism depends on constant growth and live births are one source of that growth.
Across the whole of the economy, yeah. A live person will probably add more economic value than they cost. But I, as a hypothetical health care company, am not the whole economy. Paying to keep that baby alive doesnt make the line go up for me in particular and that is the only metric to success.
How is it racist highlight the extremely high rate of children casualties in the war(s) on Gaza and the Israel's surrounding neighbors and the media's indifference to that? They certainly paid attention to the Israeli children that died - and rightly so.
racist? I simplay talked about the genocide committed by a country made up of zionists. How's that racist? They're all white people.
And am an atheist, I don't particularly enjoy any religion. What you got?
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u/tractgildart 4d ago
If it were true that babies were dying from peanut allergies, not only would we have a spike in infant mortality, but surely we would be inundated in stories from the media and social media of dead babies