...it's far too easy to obliterate a choice or benefit for the sake of a few.
just to play devil's advocate, isn't it equally unfair to tell the minority that their only defense against the will of the majority is to "go somewhere else"? where do we draw the line and say that the minority has rights that need to be respected, too? one might say that when it is life on the line, not just inconvenience, that the line should be drawn. edit: i would think that a forum of MAC USERS would understand the demoralizing frustration of being a minority being subjected to restrictions based solely upon the fact that there are more of them than us. okay, the analogy isn't quite 100% there, since that's a discussion of power within a capitalist atmosphere -- i was just trying to capture that same feeling of "hey, just because there are more of you doesn't make you right!"
edit: please note that this thread has veered into a smoking/non-smoking avenue, where i believe the toronto-esque method works well. i am more referring to the potentially lethal exposure to peanuts, which is what brought us to this thread to begin with (imagine that, staying on topic!)
mind you, i am not saying i am siding one way or another. i know how i feel on the subject (and similar ones), but i thought it was a point worth addressing.
edit: please note that this thread has veered into a smoking/non-smoking avenue, where i believe the toronto-esque method works well. i am more referring to the potentially lethal exposure to peanuts, which is what brought us to this thread to begin with (imagine that, staying on topic!)
mind you, i am not saying i am siding one way or another. i know how i feel on the subject (and similar ones), but i thought it was a point worth addressing.
sorry, partly my fault. Should be a thread all its own.
I know that I am taking your reply out of context, kind of.
The reason is that cig smoke (and second hand smoke) are a proven cause of cancer. Breathing fresh air (assuming we're not in LA as another poster brought up) has not been linked to any form of cancer.
I'll pose a question (that is open to all smokers, I'm not attacking you personally):
Why should your preference to smoke be imposed on the rest of us who do not wish to smell that nasty smell or to increase our risk of cancer?
Do you do anything that's bad for you? Occasionally eat excessive amounts of salty or fatty foods? Consume more than the recommended number of units of alcohol for a week? Not take the recommended amount of daily exercise? Where should the state's ability to make us behave how it thinks we should begin and end? Banning Big Macs and KFC? Reinstate prohibition? Forced exercise for fatties?
The simple fact is that I should be able to smoke in any establishment that wishes to accommodate my desire to smoke. If the proprietor wishes to ban smoking I will respect that wish...but he shouldn't be forced by the state to implement a smoking ban - against his will and on his property - that damages his business.
just to play devil's advocate, isn't it equally unfair to tell the minority that their only defense against the will of the majority is to "go somewhere else"? where do we draw the line and say that the minority has rights that need to be respected, too? one might say that when it is life on the line, not just inconvenience, that the line should be drawn.
The line can be fine indeed. I think it's open for debate. In this case the minority is so small I simply cannot see banning peanuts when they do not harm 90% of the school children. That strikes me as totally backwards. It's far easier to simply ban the afflicted children from the Cafeteria. The small numbers imo don't justify the ruling.
As for smoking I believe Bars should be the ones to decide. If I don't like it I don't have to patronize that bar and I can spend my time and money at a "smokeless" bar. The key ingredient here is "Choice" and that resides with me.
School bureaucrats really are a special -- as in small bus special -- breed of bureaucrat.
I think it's a bad move to ban the product. If they want to remove it from their cafeterias, that's fine. They don't have to sell it or supply it. However, last I checked peanuts are still legal in most states, so if parents want to pack them, it's really up to the parents of afflicted children to teach/watch/guard their own children. A school shares that responsibility too, but it's a pretty piss poor lesson for kids when you start teaching them early on that so long as any one person has a complaint/problem, then they must censure their own behavior to accomodate the whiners (legitmate or not.)
It's one thing to modify behavior to help accomodate someone else and another to ban it entirely. I guess kids could still eat peanuts at home, but this really does open up a can of worms. As a kid, I had a cousin with a laundry list of allergies, a handful of which would produce a dangerous shock reaction: nuts (not just peanuts), dairy, almost any amount, even just through skin contact, some types of flour, and shell fish just to name a few, also some fruits, dust/polen etc etc... The nut, diary, flour reactions could be very violent. Needless to say, we learned about adrenalin injections at my house, yet if a school changed a menu to accomodate him, there almost wouldn't be anything left on it!
That's a realy extreme case, they discovered the milk allergy after my uncle (a cheese maker) picked my cousin and played with him immediately after returning from work one day, a scene that ended with my family at the hospital and my cousin's throat swelling dangerously close to the point of choking. Luckily, many of his allergies have abated/lessened in adulthood. Anyway, you won't find too many cases like that, but if you add the kids with a milk allergy, those with wheat, or certain meat/fish products, then the cafeteria menu shrinks down very quickly.
And for the parents of children with severe allergies, I would think it more important to teach their own children to avoid [ALL] foriegn foods, than it is to give them a false sense of security about what is or isn't safe to eat.
That i have no problems with, most products or restaraunts do that themselves.. I am wondering where this is coming from, when i was younger you never heard of all this crap.. its probably from feeding babies fake milk, fake food ect, when growing up, in my day, babyfood was used only on trips,ect. most of the time ma and grand ma just ground up what everyone else had in a blender.
Actually, one leading theory is that too many parents keep their babies and small children too clean. (Link: Too Clean For Our Own Good?)
There are two main immune systems in the human body: A "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" immune system (Th2) that attacks apparent threats with histamine and other chemical carpet bombing, not worrying too much about "friendly fire" casualties, and a more targeted immune system (Th1) that creates specialized responses to specific threats.
When a baby is born, Th1 isn't functioning yet, because it would attack the baby's own mother and kill the baby in the process. Th1 is activated over time, and apparently learns how to do its job by being exposed to environmental contaminants. When babies are kept in very clean environments, Th1 doesn't learn how to do its job as quickly or as well, so Th2 fills in.
An over-active Th2 has been linked to increased rates of asthma (as a result of lung damage caused by Th2 attacking respiratory infections for which Th1 would have been better suited), and to increased rates and severity of allergic responses, due to Th2 developing outsized and ever-escalating responses to normally harmless substances that it mistakes for signs of infections that aren't being handled by Th1.
It has become fashionable for some people to blame many modern ailments on man-made "unnatural" things, like artificial ingredients in food and chemicals used in textiles and building materials. But how many people would stop to worry that one of the most unnatural things we might be doing is being too clean? For the most part modern sanitation has been a great blessing, but it looks like too much cleaniless might be too much of a good thing.
Actually, one leading theory is that too many parents keep their babies and small children too clean. (
actually that is my other theory.. people withi all this antibacteria soap and all this stuff. (they say sure the soap kills bacteria, but also gets rid of oils and does stuff to the skin that makes it easier to get bacteria through it,ect). but all that processed babyfood, it isnt natural either, and that could contribute, grind up some steak and totors instead of giving your kids nothing but peas and carrots and apple sauce...(I say babies dont get a balanced meaal either, dont see many eating meat, and they can and should, just blend it up!)
There are two main immune systems in the human body: A "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" immune system (Th2) that attacks apparent threats with histamine and other chemical carpet bombing, not worrying too much about "friendly fire" casualties, and a more targeted immune system (Th1) that creates specialized responses to specific threats.
In all the years that I spent in the medical field, I never heard this described better.
Air conditioning, insulated houses, city living do (at least from the studies that I have read) appear to have statistically significant relationships with the incidence of asthma (esp. evident in the rates of asthm in the urban black population) and the world wide rise in incidence of severe allergies (of course, there could just be more reporting of severe allergies--I don't know).
One of the primary ways the immune system is built up is through breast milk. But I think it's true that there are many more "allergies" then true allergies. I think a great deal of it may be a kind of mass hysteria or psychosomatic illness. "Multiple chemical sensitivity" comes to mind.
But peanut allergies are very real. And I don't really see the big issue with giving it up if it's a big enough problem. There's plenty of other food to eat, and I don't recall any basic constitutional or fundamental human right to be served peanut products by your school.
The worst part is, the parents probably *caused* the allergy because you're not supposed to give infants peanut-based foods (or certain types of berries among other things) until they reach a certain age. Otherwise, they're much more likely to develop a severe allergy to the same.
Of course, they could've been allergic from birth but... either way this is retarded. And believe you me, this isn't about being sensitive to allergy sufferers. This is called "school districts and schools covering their asses from potential law suits". The real enemy here are greedy parents with good lawyers (and nothing better to do then sue the crap out of junior's school because his face swelled up like a melon one day.
actually that is my other theory.. people withi all this antibacteria soap and all this stuff. (they say sure the soap kills bacteria, but also gets rid of oils and does stuff to the skin that makes it easier to get bacteria through it,ect). but all that processed babyfood, it isnt natural either, and that could contribute, grind up some steak and totors instead of giving your kids nothing but peas and carrots and apple sauce...(I say babies dont get a balanced meaal either, dont see many eating meat, and they can and should, just blend it up!)
You raise a few points here:
1. anti-bacterial soap. We (the world) are fighting a losing battle with bacteria. A large number of our antibiotics are being rendered useless by resistent bacteria. Using antibacterial soap is just one more (very easy) way for bacteria to develop some more resistence.
2. processed babyfood. The rate of breast feeding in the US is very low. Most people use "formula". While formula can meet the nutirtional needs of a baby, it does not meet the immuno, mental or social needs of an infant.
The mental and social needs of breastfeeding are not relivent to this topic.
To put it simply, brestmilk helps pass the mothers antibodies to the immunodepressed infant. These antibodies are very important in helping the infant survive the first few years of life (not much of a problem in developed countries) and helps build up the infants immune system.
Brestfeeding can also help expose the infant to whatever the mom had to eat. This exposure can help the infant (its thougth) tolerate different types of foods and may decrease the incidence of severe food allergies.
Nah. It's not even top 10 material Until someone mentions the evils of peanut-farming and its residual effects on the environment. At which point Jimmy Carter will be introduced, taking us into the Democrats vs. Republicans thing, and finally on to "you're all going to burn in hell, Pat Robertson told me so!"
if the allergy is that severe as dscrbed in teh example, how are those kids supposed to live untill they are adults? you walk from school to the car, and somebody has walked on that place 15 mins ago eating a payday, and you die because there is some dust in the air. ban peanuts from anywhere, right?
why are there no registered cases of nut allergies in places like jamaica?
i am allergic to onions. ban it. i get fever, joint, muscle and bone pain, get red and my stomcah hurts like a dell for even few days. ban the gddmn onions. ban milk and wheat too as i'm not 100 % digestive about them and ban meat as i'm a vegetarian. ...and resolve all the obesity problems of the nation on the same.
Nah. It's not even top 10 material Until someone mentions the evils of peanut-farming and its residual effects on the environment. At which point Jimmy Carter will be introduced, taking us into the Democrats vs. Republicans thing, and finally on to "you're all going to burn in hell, Pat Robertson told me so!"
see, this is where a city actually got it right, in my humble opinion. toronto banned smoking in any establishment that wasn't registered as a bar, OR had set up separate facilities to handle smokers versus non (and not just "smokers on the other side of a large room" kind of separation, either -- completely separate rooms.
so you had options as a business owner to either be JUST a restaurant, or a bar, or a combination of both. yes, there was a lot of complaints at first, but as time wore on, i saw very few people having a problem with the new city by-law.
new york's zero tolerance, on the other hand, is just dumb.
Maybe so, but Toronto is working towards zero tolerance. And all the bars that installed $50K+ of separate room ventilation are going to get screwed for the cost. Although with all the SARS going around, the bars have asked for this decision to be extended. Seems the bar owners know that this decision will drive business away.
So it seems, private businesses that would be more than happy not to take non-smokers' dollars have no say in the manner, other than beggin the govt.
But back to the schools... How about smoking? Some high schools have designated areas setup - does this make sense?
There's plenty of other food to eat, and I don't recall any basic constitutional or fundamental human right to be served peanut products by your school.
I believe this isn't just a matter of what the schools are allowed to serve. It sounds like the ban is a total ban on peanut products being in the school from any source at all, meaning that it would even be against the rules for a kid to bring in a peanut butter sandwich his mom made for him at home.
While I appreciate how severe peanut reactions can be, even deadly, worrying hypothetically about little Johnny's peanut butter sandwich leaving a smudge of peanut butter on a cafeteria table that little allergic Mary later touches just before sticking her finger in her mouth... that seems to be going a bit too far for me. It sounds a lot like the hypothetical infection scenarios people used to fret about in the early years of AIDS while trying to ban students with AIDS from attending classes with other children.
Comments
Originally posted by hmurchison
...it's far too easy to obliterate a choice or benefit for the sake of a few.
just to play devil's advocate, isn't it equally unfair to tell the minority that their only defense against the will of the majority is to "go somewhere else"? where do we draw the line and say that the minority has rights that need to be respected, too? one might say that when it is life on the line, not just inconvenience, that the line should be drawn. edit: i would think that a forum of MAC USERS would understand the demoralizing frustration of being a minority being subjected to restrictions based solely upon the fact that there are more of them than us. okay, the analogy isn't quite 100% there, since that's a discussion of power within a capitalist atmosphere -- i was just trying to capture that same feeling of "hey, just because there are more of you doesn't make you right!"
edit: please note that this thread has veered into a smoking/non-smoking avenue, where i believe the toronto-esque method works well. i am more referring to the potentially lethal exposure to peanuts, which is what brought us to this thread to begin with (imagine that, staying on topic!)
mind you, i am not saying i am siding one way or another. i know how i feel on the subject (and similar ones), but i thought it was a point worth addressing.
Originally posted by rok
edit: please note that this thread has veered into a smoking/non-smoking avenue, where i believe the toronto-esque method works well. i am more referring to the potentially lethal exposure to peanuts, which is what brought us to this thread to begin with (imagine that, staying on topic!)
mind you, i am not saying i am siding one way or another. i know how i feel on the subject (and similar ones), but i thought it was a point worth addressing.
sorry, partly my fault. Should be a thread all its own.
Originally posted by podmate
I know that I am taking your reply out of context, kind of.
The reason is that cig smoke (and second hand smoke) are a proven cause of cancer. Breathing fresh air (assuming we're not in LA as another poster brought up) has not been linked to any form of cancer.
I'll pose a question (that is open to all smokers, I'm not attacking you personally):
Why should your preference to smoke be imposed on the rest of us who do not wish to smell that nasty smell or to increase our risk of cancer?
Do you do anything that's bad for you? Occasionally eat excessive amounts of salty or fatty foods? Consume more than the recommended number of units of alcohol for a week? Not take the recommended amount of daily exercise? Where should the state's ability to make us behave how it thinks we should begin and end? Banning Big Macs and KFC? Reinstate prohibition? Forced exercise for fatties?
The simple fact is that I should be able to smoke in any establishment that wishes to accommodate my desire to smoke. If the proprietor wishes to ban smoking I will respect that wish...but he shouldn't be forced by the state to implement a smoking ban - against his will and on his property - that damages his business.
just to play devil's advocate, isn't it equally unfair to tell the minority that their only defense against the will of the majority is to "go somewhere else"? where do we draw the line and say that the minority has rights that need to be respected, too? one might say that when it is life on the line, not just inconvenience, that the line should be drawn.
The line can be fine indeed. I think it's open for debate. In this case the minority is so small I simply cannot see banning peanuts when they do not harm 90% of the school children. That strikes me as totally backwards. It's far easier to simply ban the afflicted children from the Cafeteria. The small numbers imo don't justify the ruling.
As for smoking I believe Bars should be the ones to decide. If I don't like it I don't have to patronize that bar and I can spend my time and money at a "smokeless" bar. The key ingredient here is "Choice" and that resides with me.
I think it's a bad move to ban the product. If they want to remove it from their cafeterias, that's fine. They don't have to sell it or supply it. However, last I checked peanuts are still legal in most states, so if parents want to pack them, it's really up to the parents of afflicted children to teach/watch/guard their own children. A school shares that responsibility too, but it's a pretty piss poor lesson for kids when you start teaching them early on that so long as any one person has a complaint/problem, then they must censure their own behavior to accomodate the whiners (legitmate or not.)
It's one thing to modify behavior to help accomodate someone else and another to ban it entirely. I guess kids could still eat peanuts at home, but this really does open up a can of worms. As a kid, I had a cousin with a laundry list of allergies, a handful of which would produce a dangerous shock reaction: nuts (not just peanuts), dairy, almost any amount, even just through skin contact, some types of flour, and shell fish just to name a few, also some fruits, dust/polen etc etc... The nut, diary, flour reactions could be very violent. Needless to say, we learned about adrenalin injections at my house, yet if a school changed a menu to accomodate him, there almost wouldn't be anything left on it!
That's a realy extreme case, they discovered the milk allergy after my uncle (a cheese maker) picked my cousin and played with him immediately after returning from work one day, a scene that ended with my family at the hospital and my cousin's throat swelling dangerously close to the point of choking. Luckily, many of his allergies have abated/lessened in adulthood. Anyway, you won't find too many cases like that, but if you add the kids with a milk allergy, those with wheat, or certain meat/fish products, then the cafeteria menu shrinks down very quickly.
And for the parents of children with severe allergies, I would think it more important to teach their own children to avoid [ALL] foriegn foods, than it is to give them a false sense of security about what is or isn't safe to eat.
Originally posted by The General
That i have no problems with, most products or restaraunts do that themselves.. I am wondering where this is coming from, when i was younger you never heard of all this crap.. its probably from feeding babies fake milk, fake food ect, when growing up, in my day, babyfood was used only on trips,ect. most of the time ma and grand ma just ground up what everyone else had in a blender.
Actually, one leading theory is that too many parents keep their babies and small children too clean. (Link: Too Clean For Our Own Good?)
There are two main immune systems in the human body: A "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" immune system (Th2) that attacks apparent threats with histamine and other chemical carpet bombing, not worrying too much about "friendly fire" casualties, and a more targeted immune system (Th1) that creates specialized responses to specific threats.
When a baby is born, Th1 isn't functioning yet, because it would attack the baby's own mother and kill the baby in the process. Th1 is activated over time, and apparently learns how to do its job by being exposed to environmental contaminants. When babies are kept in very clean environments, Th1 doesn't learn how to do its job as quickly or as well, so Th2 fills in.
An over-active Th2 has been linked to increased rates of asthma (as a result of lung damage caused by Th2 attacking respiratory infections for which Th1 would have been better suited), and to increased rates and severity of allergic responses, due to Th2 developing outsized and ever-escalating responses to normally harmless substances that it mistakes for signs of infections that aren't being handled by Th1.
It has become fashionable for some people to blame many modern ailments on man-made "unnatural" things, like artificial ingredients in food and chemicals used in textiles and building materials. But how many people would stop to worry that one of the most unnatural things we might be doing is being too clean? For the most part modern sanitation has been a great blessing, but it looks like too much cleaniless might be too much of a good thing.
Originally posted by shetline
Actually, one leading theory is that too many parents keep their babies and small children too clean. (
actually that is my other theory.. people withi all this antibacteria soap and all this stuff. (they say sure the soap kills bacteria, but also gets rid of oils and does stuff to the skin that makes it easier to get bacteria through it,ect). but all that processed babyfood, it isnt natural either, and that could contribute, grind up some steak and totors instead of giving your kids nothing but peas and carrots and apple sauce...(I say babies dont get a balanced meaal either, dont see many eating meat, and they can and should, just blend it up!)
Originally posted by shetline
There are two main immune systems in the human body: A "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" immune system (Th2) that attacks apparent threats with histamine and other chemical carpet bombing, not worrying too much about "friendly fire" casualties, and a more targeted immune system (Th1) that creates specialized responses to specific threats.
In all the years that I spent in the medical field, I never heard this described better.
Air conditioning, insulated houses, city living do (at least from the studies that I have read) appear to have statistically significant relationships with the incidence of asthma (esp. evident in the rates of asthm in the urban black population) and the world wide rise in incidence of severe allergies (of course, there could just be more reporting of severe allergies--I don't know).
But peanut allergies are very real. And I don't really see the big issue with giving it up if it's a big enough problem. There's plenty of other food to eat, and I don't recall any basic constitutional or fundamental human right to be served peanut products by your school.
Of course, they could've been allergic from birth but... either way this is retarded. And believe you me, this isn't about being sensitive to allergy sufferers. This is called "school districts and schools covering their asses from potential law suits". The real enemy here are greedy parents with good lawyers (and nothing better to do then sue the crap out of junior's school because his face swelled up like a melon one day.
Originally posted by The General
actually that is my other theory.. people withi all this antibacteria soap and all this stuff. (they say sure the soap kills bacteria, but also gets rid of oils and does stuff to the skin that makes it easier to get bacteria through it,ect). but all that processed babyfood, it isnt natural either, and that could contribute, grind up some steak and totors instead of giving your kids nothing but peas and carrots and apple sauce...(I say babies dont get a balanced meaal either, dont see many eating meat, and they can and should, just blend it up!)
You raise a few points here:
1. anti-bacterial soap. We (the world) are fighting a losing battle with bacteria. A large number of our antibiotics are being rendered useless by resistent bacteria. Using antibacterial soap is just one more (very easy) way for bacteria to develop some more resistence.
2. processed babyfood. The rate of breast feeding in the US is very low. Most people use "formula". While formula can meet the nutirtional needs of a baby, it does not meet the immuno, mental or social needs of an infant.
The mental and social needs of breastfeeding are not relivent to this topic.
To put it simply, brestmilk helps pass the mothers antibodies to the immunodepressed infant. These antibodies are very important in helping the infant survive the first few years of life (not much of a problem in developed countries) and helps build up the infants immune system.
Brestfeeding can also help expose the infant to whatever the mom had to eat. This exposure can help the infant (its thougth) tolerate different types of foods and may decrease the incidence of severe food allergies.
Best Thread Evar!!!
You can't beat going from
School Bans to Smoking Bans in Bars to the effects of an environment that is too clean on Allergen. Amazing
THEN it will be the best thread EVaR!¡
why are there no registered cases of nut allergies in places like jamaica?
i am allergic to onions. ban it. i get fever, joint, muscle and bone pain, get red and my stomcah hurts like a dell for even few days. ban the gddmn onions. ban milk and wheat too as i'm not 100 % digestive about them and ban meat as i'm a vegetarian. ...and resolve all the obesity problems of the nation on the same.
Originally posted by Moogs
Nah. It's not even top 10 material Until someone mentions the evils of peanut-farming and its residual effects on the environment. At which point Jimmy Carter will be introduced, taking us into the Democrats vs. Republicans thing, and finally on to "you're all going to burn in hell, Pat Robertson told me so!"
THEN it will be the best thread EVaR!¡
Full circle: I'm allergic to Pat Robertson.
Originally posted by rok
see, this is where a city actually got it right, in my humble opinion. toronto banned smoking in any establishment that wasn't registered as a bar, OR had set up separate facilities to handle smokers versus non (and not just "smokers on the other side of a large room" kind of separation, either -- completely separate rooms.
so you had options as a business owner to either be JUST a restaurant, or a bar, or a combination of both. yes, there was a lot of complaints at first, but as time wore on, i saw very few people having a problem with the new city by-law.
new york's zero tolerance, on the other hand, is just dumb.
Maybe so, but Toronto is working towards zero tolerance. And all the bars that installed $50K+ of separate room ventilation are going to get screwed for the cost. Although with all the SARS going around, the bars have asked for this decision to be extended. Seems the bar owners know that this decision will drive business away.
So it seems, private businesses that would be more than happy not to take non-smokers' dollars have no say in the manner, other than beggin the govt.
But back to the schools... How about smoking? Some high schools have designated areas setup - does this make sense?
Originally posted by BRussell
There's plenty of other food to eat, and I don't recall any basic constitutional or fundamental human right to be served peanut products by your school.
I believe this isn't just a matter of what the schools are allowed to serve. It sounds like the ban is a total ban on peanut products being in the school from any source at all, meaning that it would even be against the rules for a kid to bring in a peanut butter sandwich his mom made for him at home.
While I appreciate how severe peanut reactions can be, even deadly, worrying hypothetically about little Johnny's peanut butter sandwich leaving a smudge of peanut butter on a cafeteria table that little allergic Mary later touches just before sticking her finger in her mouth... that seems to be going a bit too far for me. It sounds a lot like the hypothetical infection scenarios people used to fret about in the early years of AIDS while trying to ban students with AIDS from attending classes with other children.
Originally posted by Giaguara
why are there no registered cases of nut allergies in places like jamaica?
I'm sure there are registered nut cases in Jamaica
Sorry, couldn't resist.