Appears to be more misinformation in reference to this, where it was originally believed the death was due to second-hand-peanuts. In fact, it was asthma brought on by other people smoking marijuana and tobacco (note: not the asthmatic smoking them).
As far as I know, by the way, banning smoking to accomodate an asthmatic would be reasonable under the ADA, as well.
Anyway, there’ve been lots of straw men set up here by people arguing against a peanut ban on the grounds that children so allergic that one molecule (or somesuch) of peanut-allergen could kill them should be locked up at home to be homeschooled in a bubble. Rather than deny other children the vital life experience of peanuts at school. Or possibly traumatize them by killing with their peanutty breath.
I don’t actually know of any case where second-hand peanut eating killed someone. Can ANYBODY cite such an event? If it doesn’t happen – this being GD and all – I think it’s a pretty poor foundation to build an argument on. So stick to contact-with-peanuts as the threat, not contact-with-someone-who-contacted-peanuts.
I won’t die if I don’t have a gun, either, but I still have a right to own one.
I can’t speak to all parts of the US on this, but if we needed a separate lunchroom here, we’d get it. Cost is irrelevant; we get our financing from taxes. If a district is strapped, then that lunchroom would be priority 1. Maybe we wouldn’t get new textbooks for a few more years etc. to offset that if necessary.
When I was in high school, the district put in an elevator for one student who needed it. I don’t know what it cost to retrofit that ancient building to do it, but I bet it was big bucks…but again that’s irrelevant: it was mandated by law.
You still have nowhere said where the basis of this right is. The beer example is weak here, because giving you beer at home as an 8 year old would not be legal. The kid with allergies has a legal right to reasonable accomodation, and I have said multiple times I might well agree that a total ban is quite possibly not a reasonable accomodation (but that isn’t a rights based argument).
Everything written here presupposes there is a right to feed your child peanut butter in school. The closest you come to saying why is:
This still doesn’t say where this right comes from. It isn’t a right I have seen expounded before. If the basis is that the law should not eliminate all affordable nutritional sources for their children, there is a valid point there, but you would then need to show that banning peanuts did this in order to show there was the right you claim present. And I don’t think banning peanut products does this at all. If the right you are speaking of is that parents have a right to send any legal food stuff to school with their child, then you get into all sorts of problems over whether schools can ban soft drinks, chewing gum etc.
In your later posts, you talk about the right to a gun, and the right of a child to have an elevator installed. Those are rights that you can specifically point to where they originate - in the Second Amendment (no intention of getting into an argument over whether that guarantees the right to gun ownership or not) and in the ADA. That’s what I am looking for from you - what is the basis of the right to send a child to school with a peanut butter sandwich. It’s not a legal right. I think you intend it to come from a non-interference type concept of rights, which I am pretty much on board with, but the fact it directly affects the wellbeing of others makes it a hard case here, and you also run into problems if you think other things can be banned from school, but not peanut butter.
Thank you! It’s not important to me that I change your mind, but I do go bonkers when I feel like I’m not even being heard! Thanks for letting me know you heard me.
There are a lot of areas that can and will handle accommodating kids with food allergies without putting an all-out ban on allergens for fear of lawsuits. When I was doing foodservice in college, there was a girl who was severely gluten intolerant, and the foodservice people made sure she had her own toaster for her non-wheat bread and was not served foods with gluten in them. The cost of one toaster that remained sterile of wheat and gluten was not much and it didn’t restrict other people’s access to foods. If, in this case, they’d banned all wheat/gluten products from campus, it would have been an overreaction to a very simply solved issue.
There are a lot of schools that are handling the more severe nut/peanut allergy issues with “nut free zones” within the cafeteria, and, honestly, I think that’s as far as they need to go. All the other kids in the school who don’t have nut allergies do not need to be concerned with eliminating nuts in their diet because Johnny and Susie in a different grade than them can’t eat or touch nuts/peanuts. If it’s more severe than an allergy that’s contact related, then it’s severe enough that they need homeschooling or a special program outside of the main school for those with severe peanut allergies. Or maybe a bubble to walk around in.
As you said, it’s not going to help the kid cope with life if everyone else around them has to make a greater effort to limit his exposure to peanuts/nuts than he does on his own. It’s a bit ridiculous for everyone else to have to become an expert on a condition that’s not necessarily super common among the general population. How many people actually have peanut allergies per capita that are more severe than “I can’t eat peanuts or peanut products” and require more vigilance than merely not eating the peanut/nut laden food?
It sounds to me as though you are a lawyer. IANAL I have explained my position to the best of my ability. If it doesn’t answer your question in a way that satisfies your requirements, I can’t help it.
IANAL but I think parents can give alcohol to their eight year olds, e.g. at communion or just because they’re at dinner and allow it. But IANAL.
I’m a lawyer, but I am not asking you a legal question. I specifically said this isn’t a legal right - you don’t don’t have a right protected under the law in the US to feed your child peanut butter.
But I don’t think I’m going to get an answer. It’s a shame, because I think you have a good case that schools are going too far, and the costs outweigh the benefits. But dressing it up in the language of a non-existant right devalues both your argument and the worth of rights. I’ll drop it now.
>The manufacturers want to pass off the legal responsibility. The schools want to pass off the legal responsibility. It all falls on the parents and kids.
Wow, Lily, this says a lot. I think it means that manufacturers and schools have various kinds of infrastructure and staffing available to them, like legal departments and spokespeople and public relations representatives, and what they are using these resources for is not preventing allergic exposure accidents - they’re using them to toss this hot potato to the parents, the one group in all of this that is not organized and does not have infrastructure and staffing available.
I did some research on this a while back. Very few people in the U.S. die of food allergies each year (the Harper’s article says 12 and references the CDC - which I recall being fairly close to the number I had). When I did the research, the majority of deaths were adults, and overwhelmingly, it was shellfish allergies, not peanuts. Can people die from a peanut allergy? Sure. Do they? Almost never.
While it is possible to have a reaction from peanut dust - it seems to be most common with “in the shell” peanuts. Peanut butter has no dust.
The biggest reaction the medical literature shows about reaction to touching peanut butter is a very slight contact rash.
This was a while ago, I’d be interested if any Dopers can find more recent medical information that contradicts it.
In what alternate universe is a peanut butter sandwich going to be the “only lunch another family can afford?” Please, come on… :smack:
Nut allergies are getting more and more prevalent. The whys of this are unknown. The results are dramatic, and are not the result of over-reacting hysterical parents imagining things. On a daily basis, we restrict the use of substances in society that have the potential to kill people. Why should peanut butter be any different?
Complete bans have the advantage of not needing a “judgment call.” You simply don’t allow the substance in at any time. That way, the school doesn’t have to worry about what parents know about the student population at any given point in time. The parents, the administrators, the teachers, and the students: all know that peanut butter isn’t allowed.
Alcohol isn’t allowed, either. You don’t hear parents complaining because little Susie can’t bring in a rum baba.
But we don’t restrict everything that could kill people. In fact, school is full of potential child killers - playgrounds, baseball bats, school buses, swimming pools - those four things alone - items that are part of many children’s school year - kill more people each year than food allergies do. We don’t say “no one can have recess because Betsy has a bee sting allergy and could die.” Why are peanuts being held to a higher standard?
This universe. My family.
If it weren’t for the government-provided commodities we received when I grew up in Idaho, we would have had bread for lunch.
Which, at least as far as primary schools are concerned, is idiotic. The parent who chooses not to let their child’s teacher know of a potentially life-threatening medical condition that could easily arise while s/he’s at school (& the teacher is in local parentis) is a moron.
It depends on the state. Some states (Wisconsin for example) even go so far as to allow minors to drink in bars if accompanied by a parent/guardian/spouse of legal age. It is legal in every state for to consume alcohol as part of a religious ritual.
If you identified yourself as a lawyer prior to my IANAL remark, I missed it. It seems only fair for you to state that, since the argument came down to you requiring me to find someplace in the legal code to defend my statement. Had I known I was being held to that standard, I wouldn’t have bothered typing my interpretation of rights because I know legal definitions are much stricter than common usage.
As a lawyer, you can guide and inform the conversation but it felt like a game of “dangle the bone above the dog’s head.” Had you gone on to say, “It isn’t a right…it’s X” and shown me/us the signicance, I would have appreciated it. Maybe you did and I just didn’t recognize it.
All right. You’re a lawyer. These things are decided by lawyers. What could I add, based on what appears to be a faulty understanding of rights and such, that would make any difference in the debate? I’ll probably keep reading but I don’t know what else to post.
I defy you to establish that a peanut butter sandwich is the only lunch menu item that can be afforded. To do so you would have to establish that there is no other source of protein that is as cheap or cheaper. Which is patently incorrect.
There are always other alternatives. They may not be as neat and easy as slapping sugar-laden mashed peanuts on bread with some jelly, but they are available.
I believe what he is saying is that he was given “government peanut butter” - a good friend of mine got “government cheese” - you don’t get a choice when you are the beneficiary of the government’s pantry in what sort of protein is being handed out.
Granted anyone qualifying nowadays for government cheese would also qualify for free lunch in the schools. But when you shop at the food shelf or get your groceries from the state, you don’t always get the full range of “maybe we’ll have tuna salad or egg salad today.”
That’s true, but the amounts present in products bearing that disclaimer are traces, if they’re there at all - so are not so likely to pose a problem through accidental transfer (accidental ingestion of the product, yes) - whereas peanut butter in sandwiches is a comparatively large, easily spread amount - far more likely, I would think, to present a risk.
