It seems that peanut allergies are growing both in the populations affected and severity of the reactions. Now, as I seem to recall, they used to treat bee sting allergies by giving such people increasingly large doses of bee venom until they could tolerate a bee sting without an emergency room trip. (Bee-keepers are stung so much that many are not bothered at all by even multiple stings.) Now parents of such hyper-allergic children are creating peanut-free environments for their children. One even has required students in his child's classroom to wash their hands and rinse out their mouths three times a day to thwart any peanut-allergy reaction by his daughter (see Peanut Dad.)
This leads me to the following hypothesis -- I wonder if such serious peanut sensitivities are caused by such hysterical parental behavior rather than in spite of it?
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