This just in from Fox News: a group of soon-to-be canonized scientists have done some promising work on a treatment for peanut allergy, that great looming specter of anaphylaxis that threatens to kill 1.5 million Americans (including me) at any moment. Apparently we're still a few years away from a publicly available treatment, but my nipples are all a-tingle nonetheless.
My favorite paragraph from the article is this:
Before [15-year-old Allison Rush's] first treatment, the equivalent of one-60th of a peanut made her throat start closing up, her skin break out in hives, her face swell, and her blood pressure drop, said her mother, Bonnie Rush. After four monthly injections, it took the equivalent of six peanuts to bring on such an anaphylactic attack.
This brings up some methodology questions. I'm picturing the girl sitting on the examination table, the doctor sitting across from her with a jar of Planters, and a nurse behind her with an Epipen drawn and ready. And then it goes:
Doctor: You dying yet?
Allison: No, I'm good
Doctor: Have another. (Gives Allison a peanut.) How about now?
Allison: No, still okay.
Doctor: Have another. (Gives Allison another peanut.) Anything?
Allison: (Begins the overture of a slow, excruciating death.)
Doctor: DO IT!!!
(Nurse jabs her with the Epipen, Allison passes out, Doctor writes the number "6" in his notebook.)
As promising as this research is, I can't help but mourn for the impending loss of peanut allergy humor. I'll also have to bang that script out sooner than I thought.
please write that script, please.
an incredibly ironic thing just happened when i went to check my email. there was a message from one "jennifer" titled, "this is nuts" and which was about obtaining access to my FBI files. a hoax, sure, but the nuts?
I still maintain that few people who are allergic to peanuts are truly going to be invested in getting monthly shots so they can enjoy the wonders of a 5 peanut snack. I don't mean to be harsh, but it's hardly the cure for cancer. All's I'm saying is, who wakes up one day and says, I'm going to devote my professional life to defeating the appalling societal ill of Peanut Allergies! (insert crechendo of dramatic music)
i think the people who can't fly on airplanes and the kids who have to sit at separate tables in the cafeteria would go for the shots, but people with more mild allergies like me probably won't. it's not so much about being able to enjoy peanuts as being able to be around peanuts without going into shock.
Presumably it would also allow you to eat things like candy bars which contain traces of peanut residue even though they are not intended to contain peanuts. Or at least, it would allow you to accidentally eat something like that, and you would only realize you shouldn't have after reading the wrapper more closely, instead of realizing it while dying.
How was it I could go through nearly 40 years of life - through the 70s, 80s, and most of the 90s, not hearing or knowing of a single peanutphobe? Until peanut allergies and other assorted maladies, such as ADD, hit the liberal media, the world seemed fine! Nobody ever heard of them. Soon enough, we will be living in sealed bubbles, because everything will be a toxin of some sort!
i love these people who think that peanut allergy is some kind of liberal conspiracy. yes, mr. brittle, my anaphylaxis is just a clever ruse to take away your gun rights, raise your taxes, and murder unborn children.
i'll admit that food allergies are relatively rare, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of cure and treatment.
more on this subject.
middling large online ad campaign: $1,000
salary for house boy to bring you drinks while you program: $8/hr
"just, soma": priceless
Thankfully the peanut allergy hoax seems to have run it's course. I still can't believe anybody bought into that crap, I guess it's mostly people who grew up in the 90's when the hoax first began who fell for it.