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This is a really tough one. My daughter has a peanut allergy, but, thankfully, so far, she has to ingest it to have a reaction (or rub her eyes with peanut oil on her hands, like when they made pinecone bird feeders with peanut butter in kindergarten then called me to tell me she had pink eye.. it was allergies). I also have a son who won't eat any sandwich except peanut butter and jelly (won't eat lunch meat). That puts me totally on the fence! I do think that if my daughter's allergy worsened to that point, I would have to find someone to home school her. I wouldn't want to take the risk of exposing her and I wouldn't feel it was fair for 300 kids to have such severely restrictive diets because of her.
I talked to one of the epidemiologists at work a few weeks ago about when she's going to start studying peanut allergies. She currently studies allergy triggered asthma. She said there is a clinical trial out now for a medication that allows these people to ingest up to 9 peanuts with no reaction, even if they have one of the really severe cases. Hopefully they will get that medication approved by the FDA soon!
Dee
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