I Wouldn’t Wish Allergies on Anyone

by Kelley Lindberg


Back in January of 2009, Joel Stein wrote an essay for the LA Times proclaiming that food allergies are made up by hysterical parents who crave attention. It caused a lot of controversy, obviously. (“Nut Allergies – A Yuppie Invention,” LA Times, Jan. 9, 2009. )

Understandably bothered by his misinformation, I responded by writing my own article on my blog. My article began with “Dear Joel, I’m glad no one you love has a severe food allergy. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” ("Countering Hysteria," Food Allergy Feast blog, Jan. 19, 2009)

You’ll never guess what happened. A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Stein wrote an essay for Time magazine. Turns out, his one-year-old son has developed nut allergies. Read his new essay here: “A Nut Allergy Skeptic Learns the Hard Way,” Time, Aug. 14, 2010.

In this latest essay, he describes how many people wrote to him after his earlier column, saying they wished he would have a child with food allergies someday. What a hateful thing to wish. Why is it human nature to lash out violently, rather than try to educate and reach a mutual understanding? After all these thousands of years, we’ve got a pretty impressive track record showing that throwing bigger and bigger rocks doesn’t really have the effect we were looking for.

So Joel was throwing rocks, parents of allergic kids were throwing rocks right back at him, and no one made any progress, unless you count progress towards more reactionary and poisonous backlashes on both sides. Gee, I’m underwhelmed with surprise.

I didn’t wish for Mr. Stein to become intimately familiar with a parent’s fear. I DID wish for him to become more informed, more aware, and less inclined to propagate dangerous misinformation. Of course, his career is based on writing amusing, barbed commentary skewering anything he feels like. Being a big fan of the First Amendment, I don’t have a problem with that. My only problem is when writing those opinions might cause a child to be put in a life-threatening situation. We writers sometimes walk a blurry line between informing and harming, and it's important to approach that blurry line with a deep sense of responsibility.

Now, Mr. Stein has written this new essay admitting that his son has developed nut allergies, and that he’s having to eat some crow. That takes a big man to do that. It takes an even bigger man to do that in a national spotlight, like in Time magazine, for example. I’m sure there are plenty of small-minded people out there who are taking some sort of sick satisfaction out of this unfortunate turn of events in the Stein family’s lives. But the fact remains there’s a small child who’s affected here, and that child’s safety – like all of our food-allergic children’s safety – is all that truly matters.

So here’s my response to Mr. Stein’s latest essay:

Dear Joel,

I’m so sorry to hear that your son has developed food allergies. This will add a layer of worry to the already worry-filled job that we call parenting. But fortunately, there are many resources, both online and in your own community, that offer education, nut-free products, school action plans, recipes, and tips for making your child’s experiences with everything from playdates to school to birthday parties to dating (yes, that will be here before you know it!) safe and “normal.”

I’m sorry you’ve had to join the ranks of parents of allergic kids, Joel. But we welcome you to our ranks, too, because here is where you’ll find the information and strength to absorb this new aspect of life into your routines of daily living. We’re all in this together, and we are happy to help.

Sincerely,
Kelley Lindberg
Mom of a peanut-allergic kid

“Why We’re Going Nuts”

Last week, Time magazine printed a great article about peanut allergies, called “Why We’re Going Nuts Over Nut Allergies), by Alice Park. (Read it here.) It’s one of the more balanced, informative, and all-encompassing articles I’ve read in a while. It goes through each aspect of food allergy one by one – what it is, what might be causing it, who is suffering from it, possible on-the-horizon therapies, the hysteria backlash, how airlines are reacting, and how schools are dealing with it, and so on.

If someone you know doesn’t understand much about food allergies, showing them this article would be a good place to start. And the fact that it’s in Time gives it a little more credence for those who are a tad skeptical.

One of the things I like about the article is its moderate voice and impartial stand. It simply states that yes, it’s a real concern, and there are things we can do about it. But in a year when there’s starting to be huge backlash, it breathes a nice sense of calm into the debate.

As with all situations, hysteria and cries for extreme measures do nothing to help our cause. Instead, they incite the other side to react just as strongly the other direction, just as unreasonably. But taking a calm, practical approach, with an eye towards seeing that both sides are able to live with reasonable precautions makes everyone more willing to work together to find a compromise.

Politicians, lawyers, and religious extremists have been proving this to us for thousands of years – scream, and the world will scream back at you. Smile and offer ideas, and the world might just listen. It takes a lot of smiles and a lot of patience, but usually lasting change happens slowly, with reasonable people having reasonable ideas, not through violent people insisting we think their way.

Some folks might say that you can’t get anyone’s attention until you scream. They’re entitled to their opinion. But that’s never worked for me. Being helpful and reasonable, yet steadfast, has gotten me a lot farther. Look at Trace Adkins last year – he raised a huge amount of awareness last year by choosing the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network as his charity on “The Apprentice.”

And the only time he raised his voice was to sing.

Countering Hysteria

On January 9, 2009, Joel Stein wrote an opinion column in the LA Times about his belief that peanut allergies in children are nonexistent, a result of mass hysteria by affluent parents who want to feel special. (Read his column here.) On January 15, the LA Times printed a “blowback” response from Robert A. Wood, professor of pediatrics and director of pediatric allergy and immunology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and member of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network's medical advisory board, who explained that the disease is an actual disease that affects children regardless of their parents’ financial status or emotional desires. (Read Dr. Wood’s response here.) I’m very glad the Times printed that response. But I also think Joel Stein should hear from some of us “hysterical” moms, too. Here is my own response to Joel Stein.

Dear Joel,

I’m glad no one you love has a severe food allergy (LA Times, “Nut Allergies – A Yuppie Invention,” 01/09/09). I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. The 1 in 20 kids who’ve developed food allergies aren't suffering from hysteria. They're suffering from a condition where a food protein attaches to IgE antibodies on mast cells, causing the mast cells to explode, releasing histamines into the body. This causes a reaction ranging from a mild rash to the shutting down of several body systems, including respiratory and digestive systems. In other words, eating a peanut might give you a rash. Or it might make you stop breathing. It’s unpredictable, even within the same person from one time to the next.

I wish you had been with me last Sunday night at the doctor's office, watching a ten-year-old boy I love swell up and turn red and cold from head to toe. By getting him the medicine he needed immediately, we turned the reaction around and he was fine in a few hours. I suppose we could have told him he was being hysterical and to just get over it. But I'm glad we chose to administer quick medical help instead. I’m not sure your approach would have saved his life.

I'm sorry you think we're inventing numbers. We wish we were. No one knows why our bodies are now identifying normal foods as allergens or why it’s occurring more frequently now -- it probably has little to do with fast genetic mutation, and everything to do with how the chemical environment we live in (which is significantly different than it was thirty years ago) has simply altered our immune systems. That probably also explains the variation between countries, and possibly the increase over the same time period in diseases like autism and hormonal problems in young men.

We didn't choose this disease. Most of us try to minimize our children's risk while minimizing impact on everyone else. But we truly appreciate it when others are willing to accept a few inconveniences to ensure they don't accidentally kill the kid sitting next to them. A few hysterical people, as usual, cloud the issue for everyone else – and those hysterical people can be found on both sides of the issue. Some choose hysteria to get attention from doctors, so their influence is limited to a handful of immediate family and friends. Some choose hysteria to sell columns, so their influence amounts to thousands of readers. Neither is beneficial to those millions of us in the middle who have to find ways to live with the truth of a disease that is scary, but manageable as long as the hysteria is controlled.

Thank you for giving topics like this a little more thought in the future. Lives depend on taking diseases seriously and discussing them rationally.

Sincerely,
Kelley
Mom of a peanut-allergic kid