I have to wonder how much of the increase is due to increased recognition of what is going on, and more widespread public acceptance of the fact that food allergies can in fact kill you.

I dunno about the public recognition part. Parents older than me can comment, but my brother was allergic to what seemed like everything in the 1980s (dairy and-- citrus?). Though I don't remember epi-pens being in our lives.

Dammit. Am now earwormed with "American Pie".

Eight miles high and falling fast....

Totally parenthetically, I must say that b.org is just awesome today with the earworms. I spent the earliest part of this morning awash in "Starfish and Coffee," and now I'm swooning back and forth between "Frank Lloyd Wright" and "Little Red Corvette." So happy right now.

Except for the fact that Brown hasn't been sacked outright. And that the latest Zogby poll shows that, given the chance for a do-over, the American people would still re-elect Bush rather than go for Kerry (by a thin, thin margin, but still). It's at least comforting to see that when pitted in a do-over against any recent actual president, including Carter and his own father, he'd lose (go to the middle of the page for this result).

u had a pocket full of horses / Trojan and some of them used

ew ew ew ew ew

ita and Betsy, you're putting me in mind of Willow in Lie to Me, when she finally got the lyrics to I Touch Myself.

Where've ya been?

and that the latest Zogby poll shows that, given the chance for a do-over, the American people would still re-elect Bush rather than go for Kerry

I roll my eyes FOREVER.

Poor little dudes. I knew a couple of children with juvenile diabetes when I was a kid, and their lives were hard (though I guess diabetes treatment and technology has improved a lost in the past 20 years). But peanut-allergic kids have lower quality of life than child diabetics (see below). What I can't seem to find is, while up to 1.5% of children are peanut-allergic, how many are so severely allergic that anaphylaxis is a risk?

Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2003 Oct;14(5):378-82. Assessment of quality of life in children with peanut allergy. Avery NJ, King RM, Knight S, Hourihane JO. Division of Infection Inflammation and Repair, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.

Children with a peanut allergy (PA) are faced with food and social restrictions due to the potentially life-threatening nature of their disease, for which there is no cure or treatment. This inevitably impacts upon their quality of life (QoL). QoL of 20 children with PA and 20 children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) was measured using two disease-specific QoL questionnaires (higher scores correspond to a poorer QoL). One questionnaire was designed by us and the other was adapted from the Vespid Allergy QoL questionnaire. We gave subjects cameras to record how their QoL is affected over a 24-h period. Response rates for both questionnaires were 100%. Mean ages were 9.0 and 10.4 years for PA and IDDM subjects, respectively. Children with a PA reported a poorer quality of life than children with IDDM: mean scores were 54.85 for PA subjects and 46.40 for diabetics (p = 0.004) in questionnaire 1 and 54.30 and 34.50 (p

I dunno about the public recognition part. Parents older than me can comment, but my brother was allergic to what seemed like everything in the 1980s (dairy and-- citrus?). Though I don't remember epi-pens being in our lives.

On the other hand, bon bon, I have a lot of much more mild food allergies. When I was growing up neither my parents or my doctor connected the dots well enough about what I was allergic too. They ruled out all the animals and then decided it was either hay fever or a persistant tendency towards colds. (I think with the doctor, he may not have been given enough information).

Man, I guess I underestimated the Kerry hate.

We had an epi syringe in the 70s, in case my brother ever had another reaction to whatever it was he had a reaction to when he was about a year and a half. Possible spider bite. We never did figure it out, and he's still around.

Random thought: I've always wondered how humans ever sorted out which plants were good to eat, and which ones weren't. You know, without testing them to see which ones killed you, made you sick, or provided nourishment. Because no sane person is going to go into the forest and go, okay, let's try THIS leaf today! Now it occurs to me that maybe that's why humans evolved such that our babies want to eat everything. They're our food testers. And now we know what to eat and what not to, but the instinct is still there, so we have to be ever-vigilant over our curious, smart, omnivorous babies.

I'm evil, aren't I?

I don't mean to be mean, but I know peanut allergic kids and Juevenille Diabetics, both. From an outsider's perspective, it's much more difficult to be a Juevenille Diabetic. I wonder what is at the root of this finding--what the questions are like, and where we have a problem with our attitudes about health issues.