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.

But peanut-allergic kids have lower quality of life than child diabetics (see below).

I imagine things may get somewhat better for insulin dependent child (and adult) diabetics now that there's an inhalable version of insulin coming out.

You know, I'm not very proud of the American spirit at the moment.

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In an interview with UPI, Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed that his department shut down the bridge to pedestrians: "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."

Burn in hell, Arthur Lawson, you cold-hearted motherfucking son of a bitch. You and Barbara Bush. Just go and fucking rot.

Jesus wept.

Now there are rumors that Brown is completely out.

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What Plei said.

I still can't get into gmail. All I get is a page that says "loading...", but it LIES. It's annoying.