Sound familiar?
How Pediatricians Created the Peanut Allergy Epidemic
By recommending that children avoid exposure to peanuts until age 3, doctors inadvertently turned a rare issue into a major health problem.
". . . “What’s going on here?” Asonganyi asked. “We have no peanut allergies in Africa.”
I looked at them and smiled. “In Egypt, where my family is from, we don’t have peanut allergies either,” I said. “Welcome to America.”
Deaths from peanut allergies are real, and living with the problem can be terrifying. Compounding the tragedy is knowing that America’s epidemic of peanut allergies is a largely avoidable consequence of our policy of peanut abstinence.
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What had changed wasn’t peanuts but the advice doctors gave to parents about them. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wanted to respond to public concern by telling parents what they should do to protect their kids from peanut allergies. There was just one problem: Doctors didn’t actually know what precautions, if any, parents should take. Rather than admit that, in the year 2000 the AAP issued a recommendation for children 0 to 3 years old and pregnant and lactating mothers to avoid all peanuts.
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When modern medicine issues recommendations based on good scientific studies, it shines. Conversely, when doctors rule by opinion and edict, we have an embarrassing track record. Unfortunately, medical dogma may be more prevalent today than in the past because intolerance for different opinions is on the rise, in medicine as throughout society.Dr. Marty Makary is a surgeon and public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University. This essay is adapted from his new book, “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health,” published by Bloomsbury.
https://www.wsj.com/health/how-pediatricians-created-the-peanut-allergy-epidemic-952831c4
