Quote:Originally posted by TwokidsNJ:
[b] Do you know if she, or her kid(s), personally have food allergies? What was her motivation for founding FAAN?
[/b]
As far as I recall, her daughter (now a teenager) is milk allergic.
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Cheryl, mom to Jason (9 MFA including peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish and egg)
Joey (7 NKA)
Allison (4 milk allergic, suspect shellfish, avoiding PN/TN for now)
Ryan (1) nka *knock on wood*

I have to comment on this "false positive" issue. My dd had a positive skin test to peanuts. She had never been exposed as far as we knew, so she had had no reactions. The allergist did not even consider a challenge. Sure enough, the day came that I gave her something on shared equipment with peanuts and not stated and she had a reaction. I believe that most of these positives with no known exposure are real positives.
About the person who posted that their child can be on an airplane with all the passengers eating peanuts and not have a reaction, I would say maybe yes and maybe no. Sometimes reactions are so minor that they are not recognized until they become major. There was a child in dd`s school who got diagnosed pa at age 10. The reactions were so minor that the mother did not notice until the child had an anaphylactic reaction. We also have an adult member on this board who did not realize she was pa because her reactions were so mild. Eventually they became more severe and she realized it.
Also, I have read numerous places including articles on the AAAAI website that the majority of pa fatalities occur in people who had no history of a severe reaction. That is really something to think about. Reactions are just so unpredictable.

Quote:Originally posted by BriandBrinasmom:
[b]1) My son has had several reactions, including hospitalization for one.
2) I do not believe in peanut-free schools. I think they give a false sense of security.
3) I think peanut oil can be a safe choice for some peanut allergic individual.
4)I do not believe that everyone on my child's flight has to avoid peanuts for him to be safe. He's flown on approximately 40 flights in his life with his peanut allergy.
5) I think AMF does the right thing to concentrate on the average response instead of the exception. There are people who perhaps have exquisite allergies who will react in 20 seconds, and will die from sitting next to peanuts on an airplane, or from eating peanut oil. But there are not many of them, and people who think they fall into this category do not all fall into this category.
I think people and the media take food allergies less seriously because some mothers go around flapping their arms, telling everyone in a shrill voice that their child will die if he even touches a peanut wrapper at a grocery store. This does not help our cause. It's better to concentrate on things that can be changed like the food labeling laws that were a major achievement of FAAN.
I'm sure they've approached the milk lobby for money.[/b]
I was just thinking....Perhaps you would feel differently if your child was not "average"? Perhaps you would feel differently if your child was contact or airborne sensitive? My child has had a reaction from attending a parade where free peanuts were handed out. Once thousands of people started opening their bags of free peanuts we were off to the hospital. Thank God we were not trapped on an airplane 10,000 feet up. Perhaps FAAN should look at the entire group of people they are advocating for to make sure, minimally, they are not saying things that are "advocating" AGAINST children like mine.

First, KateDe, you didn't create any drama, so don't worry. Even though I too had problems with the article, it was a good one to post. Articles like this perhaps help us to see how people without food allergies might see things...unfortunate as that may be.
Regarding false positives, are they possible? I belive some are, yes. My ds had false positive RASTS to wheat and soy in addition to his true allergies to milk, egg, and peanuts. This summer, he had a false negative to milk.
My ds was diagnosed with a peanut allergy due to a high positive RAST score after he had a serious reaction to milk, at age 1. He had never consumed anything with peanuts. We got the epipen and the whole avoidance speech.
Fast forward 6 months, he had a hive reaction to shampoo residue in the tub -- undeclared peanut protein. Fast forward 2 years, he had a reaction after someone who had eaten pb hours before took a drink out of his cup and then he did.
So...I guess the good news is...I don't question his peanut allergy any more. We've never had a severe reaction to peanuts, but we don't eat 90% of commercially prepared food either due to his other allergies. And, we go to a peanut free preschool, very successfully I might add [img]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/smile.gif[/img]
If you receive a positive allergy diagnosis without a reaction at a young age, what do you do? [b]If your allergist tells you to avoid and carry an epipen, what are you supposed to do BriandBrina's mom?[/b] If keeping my ds safe and following my allergist's orders makes me a Munchausen by proxy mother , then so be it.
I could see where if diagnosis was given at a young age, and no reactions followed for years, perhaps a challenge in a medical setting would be a possibility if your allergist recommended it. But there are some big IFs there IMO.
I understand how you'd feel confused after reading the article KateDe, and I think Daisy's post presented the article in the best context to think about it [img]http://uumor.pair.com/nutalle2/peanutallergy/smile.gif[/img] Meg
[This message has been edited by mommyofmatt (edited February 02, 2007).]

Notnutty, you've missed the point. I would not feel differently if my child were contact allergic because it's not effective to approach food allergy advocacy concentrating on the worst case scenarios. IMHO, one of the reasons food allergies is taken less seriously is because the general public associates them with a very small majority of hysterical moms. (And again, I'm not saying that anyone in this thread falls into that category - everyone has to judge that for themselves.)
Having a child with anaphylactic milk allergy already puts my son in a very high risk situation - perhaps as high as a contact peanut allergy. I still don't think I should tell everyone in his school they can't drink milk.
And regarding misdiagnosed peanut allergy - what I posted was about the *article*. It said there was a lot of false positive diagnosis of peanut allergy going on - I agree. If this were the situation with my child, I would have undergone a food challenge at 5. We have been doing food challenges for foods he's tested allergic to for six years now, some at home, some in the office, a few in the hospital. But this is obviously up to each parent.
I'm still p*ssed about this thread. I was talking about the article, and none of the regulars missed the opportunity to pile on here.

I read the article but not all the responses. I thought it was interesting and if backed up by research probabably accurate. But the fact of the matter is we cant do much about it with the current tests cause no one is going to test it on their kids.
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Lalow
James 5 yrs, NKA
Ben 4 yrs, PA and MA

Brianb..mom
I apologize for posting a personal attack toward you. I try very hard to not criticize other people in the way they handle their child's allergies.
I will say that I do not agree with much of what Ann Marie from FAAN says regarding handling of food allergies and I think the original article is troubling for the reasons I stated before. I do not agree with most of what you said, but fine, I'll agree to disagree with you and leave it at that.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, this article was first published a year ago. I and several others wrote to this doctor back then. He sent us all the same reply which I have posted below. Apparently the Globe was in need of a filler or maybe they needed something to stir the pot. Anyway, here is the good doctor's response:
Troy
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dear Mr. :
Thank you for your thoughful email.
In retrospect, I did not adequately express how frustrated parents of
truly allergic children must be when trying to convince the lay public
of the severity of their child's condition. Many people are very
insensitive to the needs of these children, and my article did not
address this problem well. I didn't mean to imply that all allergies
are not "real"--I wrote in the article about the dangers of some
severe allergies--but apologize if my article suggested that.
My goal in writing this article was to explore the data about whether
allergies are really on the rise, and the complexity of diagnosis
since I have seen several children mis-labelled as peanut allergic
without proper testing, which is problematic. I hoped to provide
parents with godo information, so that they could ask their doctors
hard questions when their child was given a diagnosis of peanut
allergy.
Please let me know if you hear of any instances where my article is
misused to justify policies that may harm any children.
Warm regards, Darshak Sanghavi

Thanks, Sajnk, I appreciate that.
I am a communications manager for a medical company, so perhaps I look at things in a slightly different light. I think Anne M-F's efforts are rather extraordinary, given that she's only been at this 15 years. Anne M-F has:
- Successfully lobbied for labeling legislation
- Funded food allergy research
- Placed hundreds of articles, including behind-the-scenes partnerships with journals like Parents.
- Established a contamination warning network
- Created a school education and advocacy program, including continuing education credits for nurses
- Convinced the food industry that it was in their best interest to get behind all this and fund it!
I admire her as a professional, and I'm grateful to her as a parent. And yes, to whoever asked the question, she does have a daughter with multiple food allergies. (And no, I'm not getting paid for this personal endorsement: I've never met her.)
I stand by what I originally said: anyone who doesn't like her approach should try it themselves. They'll quickly find that there are positions that will get no airtime, like "peanuts need to be taken out of schools". The most important part of succeeding with PR is concentrating on the battles that will help the largest group of people and that *can actually be won*, rather than trying to push the most extreme viewpoint.