Should the treatment for peanut allergies be present very soon?
In recent years, the media has reported several cases of serious injury and death of students and others resulting from allergic reactions to peanuts and other foods. While such events are relatively infrequent, they are alarming, and educators are justifiably concerned about the possibility of having to deal with a life-threatening allergic reaction in their schools. In addition, an increasing number of schools have to deal with parents who are making what may appear, at first blush, to be unreasonable demands on schools to accommodate their children who have allergies, life-threatening and otherwise. “Reasonableness” from both legal and medical perspectives should drive any attempt to formulate policy or procedure to address these concerns. For example, under human rights legislation, schools must reasonably accommodate students with disabilities. The term “disability” is broadly defined and would include life-threatening allergic conditions. Under the law of negligence and liability
A medically supervised daily dose of peanuts may help children with peanut allergies greatly increase their tolerance to the food, according to two new studies that raise the possibility of a cure for this potentially life-threatening condition. The findings, presented on Sunday at a meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in Washington, suggest that a treatment for peanut allergy may be developed in two or three years, said Dr. Wesley Burks, the chief of the division of pediatric allergy and immunology at Duke University Medical Center, who helped conduct the research. An estimated 12 million Americans suffer from food allergies, including about 2.2 million children. About 3.3 million people are allergic to peanuts or tree nuts. While drugs can be used to treat an allergic reaction, there are no approved treatments for food allergies. Because even a minor exposure can set off a reaction, many people at risk strictly avoid foods that contain an allergen or wer
