Will the biodiesel revolution kill people with peanut/soybean allergies?
I just think the principle, “When you can drastically reduce someone’s chance of dying without seriously inconveniencing someone else, you should take steps to drastically reduce someone’s chance of dying.” is a pretty good moral principle. Since the inconvenience in this case is having to buy food different than peanut butter (the school system or people preparing Susie’s lunches), I think this does not meet reasonable standards of “serious inconvenience”. If peanut butter were one of the only foods available, then it might very well be a serious inconvenience. But it’s not. Having to accomodate someone’s unusual circumstances is a burden, but sometimes this burden is small and easy to deal with. I don’t think there’s a slippery slope here. And, I’m sorry to say hototogisu, but I think it is much more reasonable to ask people with severe peanut allergies to choose alternative restaurants than to abstain from public education. And as much as I really do want to hash this one out, I’ll
TheOnlyCoolTim, our doctor told us that there was a 25% chance of our children inheriting my peanut allergy. My first-born is allergic like me, my second-born isn’t. I guess that I’d have to have a hundred more kids before this became a meaningful statistical sample, but it’s compelling enough for me. On preview: five fresh fish, it’s not just the fact that some peple are going to be allergic to something. It’s the percentage of people that will be allergic to that something, the potential ramifications of that allergy, and the inconvenience of preventing those ramifications. That’s why we have roofs strong enough to protect us from the rain but not, on average, strong enough to protect us from nuclear explosions.
Thanks, all. It looks like the final answers are … – biodiesel probably won’t hurt anybody with allergies – peanuts for all – peanuts for none – peanuts for some, tiny American flags for others FWIW, subsequent research on my part shows that there’s a theory that peanut processing methods (prep for consumption) might be what causes allergic reactions (link). If that’s true, peanuts for biodiesel (however they’re used, processed, or refined) probably wouldn’t lead to health problems (unless, of course, the same processing method was used for the biodiesel).
