The Medical Establishment Closes Ranks, and Patients Feel the Effects
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/opinion/medicine-allergies-research.html
Pamela Paul:
You probably know about the surge in childhood peanut allergies. Peanut allergies in American children more than tripled between 1997 and 2008, after doctors told pregnant and lactating women to avoid eating peanuts and parents to avoid feeding them to children under 3. This was based on guidance issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2000.
You probably also know that this guidance, following similar guidance in Britain, turned out to be entirely wrong and, in fact, avoiding peanuts caused many of those allergies in the first place.
That should not have been surprising, because the advice violated a basic principle of immunology: Early exposure to foreign molecules builds resistance. In Israel, where babies are regularly fed peanuts, peanut allergies are rare. Moreover, at least one of the studies on which the British advice was based showed the opposite of what the guidance specified.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/opinion/medicine-allergies-research.html
Pamela Paul:
You probably know about the surge in childhood peanut allergies. Peanut allergies in American children more than tripled between 1997 and 2008, after doctors told pregnant and lactating women to avoid eating peanuts and parents to avoid feeding them to children under 3. This was based on guidance issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2000.
You probably also know that this guidance, following similar guidance in Britain, turned out to be entirely wrong and, in fact, avoiding peanuts caused many of those allergies in the first place.
That should not have been surprising, because the advice violated a basic principle of immunology: Early exposure to foreign molecules builds resistance. In Israel, where babies are regularly fed peanuts, peanut allergies are rare. Moreover, at least one of the studies on which the British advice was based showed the opposite of what the guidance specified.