Pistachios were red because of DDT sprayed on the trees. After the ban, they went back to the natural beige color.
How did your friend figure out that she's allergic to all those things? Did she have some sort of medical testing, or was it self observation? Granted, one could carry out the latter quite rigorously, but I'd be much more skeptical of her claims in that case.
Straight Dope folks say it was a marketing gimmick.
2: I got the impression that it was a medical skin-prick test. But maybe not - I forget how she phrased it, and I didn't specifically ask.
Green beans want to go to the party in your tummy.
Pistachios are green with brown husks. They were used for the green stripe in the original Neapolitan ice cream that nobody sells any more.
I think if I weren't allergic to green beans, they'd taste better.
Neapolitan ice cream has a green stripe? I thought it was brown, pink, and white.
9. It is now, mostly. Originally it was pink (red) white and green like the Italian flag, in honour of the country's unification.
The Italian flag is green, white, and red. Maybe that's what they were going for originally? (Like heebie, I've only seen brown, white, and pink.)
The kind I get at my favorite old-school Italian restaurant in St. Louis is brown, pink, and white but also has pieces of pistachio in it.
I do love pistachio ice cream. Also green tea ice cream.
Good compromise. Honestly pistachio ice cream is a bit boring IME. Chocolate's much better.
Speaking of Italian unification, why did they call something "The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies"? It isn't like Naples became an island?
Drawing a distinction between 'allergic to' things and 'immune systems freak out and start having reactions' seems a little fine, especially at the level of explaining picky dietary choices.
Totally with you that there should be more public inquiry into and suspicion of causes for increased allergies, instead of private efforts to work around it. Ditto for breast (and other) cancers.
You don't believe that perhaps broccoli, bell peppers, citrus, etc. could possibly share some compound that causes allergic reactions?
Is there a continuum between "neapolitan" and "spumoni" ice creams?
17: But I think it's misguided to start eliminating all these sensible vegetables from your diet. I think your immune system would just next start attacking your toothpaste and butter and you'll be left with eating dust. Whereas if you located, say, the skin moisturizer and carpet cleaner that was causing you to inhale all kinds of crazy crap, all your allergies could evaporate at once.
18: I was really hoping for uninformed speculation, then an answer.
I'm allergic ... to crime. [Flexes. Does that clickety-clack thing with assault rifle the size of a six-foot hoagy.]
Also I get hay fever in early spring.
Lab allergy tests are notoriously full of false positives, which are especially harmful in this case because of the priming effect.
You don't believe that perhaps broccoli, bell peppers, citrus, etc. could possibly share some compound that causes allergic reactions?
I really don't. Or at least it does not seem like the most obvious solution. I do believe that they could be the most proximal trigger to a reaction which has several factors, where the big contributors are environmental and then the last straw is the broccoli.
Honestly pistachio ice cream is a bit boring IME.
I think it's only really tasty if the pistachios have been roasted first, and if the little pistachio bits are salted.
25: They aren't really very related in a botanical sense.
The link in 24 fabulously confirms everything I always suspected and now will believe always and forever!
28: now will believe always and forever
Or until your throat swells up and asphyxiates you after eating a pizza with green peppers.
29: Actually, I had that page open when I asked the question. I just didn't read it very carefully.
30: her throat, not mine. That shouldn't asphyxiate me.
Even if her throat swells enough that it might asphyxiate you, it probably won't expand fast enough that you can't run away in time.
I've developed allergies in the past several years to an ever-growing (it seems to me) variety of healthy foods, including apples, peaches, cherries, grapes, carrots, celery, potatoes, strawberries, pears, and probably other things. You don't have to believe me. And, ok, to be technical, the allergy is really a tree-pollen allergy -- particularly birch -- and all of these foods apparently share a protein or something like that which is similar to the evil pollens and triggers the allergic response. (Ranging from itchy mouth/throat on the mild end, to difficulty breathing at the other end.) Cooking these foods thoroughly solves the allergy problem, though ruining the deliciousness of several. It's actually, in my ever so humble opinion, a most excellent reason for eliminating these healthy foods (at least in their raw form) from my diet. (Except for the one, seductive peach I give in to each year, juicy and sweet and yielding. Preceded by a handful of Benadryl, chased by a hit of albuterol, and resulting in feeling gross for an extended period -- but worth it, alway worth it.)
30: What if she is giving you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at the time?
I met some guy who had become so sensitized to dust or some chemical when working professionally that when looking for an apartment he had to spend a night on it first to see if he could tolerate the place.
34: I'm actually not disputing the physical reaction. I'm just claiming there's a massive cover-up to pin the blame on fruits and vegetables. It could easily be that there is some pesticide run-off in the water table, which is easily absorbed by those fruits (even if they're organic), and not the fruits themselves in some pure sense, which is one of several big contributing factors.
(Ranging from itchy mouth/throat on the mild end, to difficulty breathing at the other end.)
You can't really breathe at the other end. That may be your problem.
Or, more broadly, our immune systems are flawed for some environmental reason (I'm told hunter-gatherers don't get allergies at all?) and therefore overreact to random compounds that ideally would only be a problem in huge quantities.
I'm just claiming there's a massive cover-up to pin the blame on fruits and vegetables. It could easily be that there is some pesticide run-off in the water table, which is easily absorbed by those fruits (even if they're organic), and not the fruits themselves in some pure sense, which is one of several big contributing factors.
Because Mother Nature is PURE and real toxins can only come from nasty ol' chemical factories!
37: In my case, the physical reaction is called oral allergy syndrome and it really is the particular fruits that trigger it. My grandmother, from whom I inherited this gift, suffered the same physical reactions. If specific fruits are causing a specific reaction, I don't really understand why you would doubt that the fruit itself is the problem but would instead speculate that pesticides absorbed by those fruits (but not others?) are the secret culprit.
I'm told hunter-gatherers don't get allergies at all?
Sure, hunter-gatherers get allergies, but the ones that do are quickly picked off by lions alert to the sound of their sneezing.
I have allergies to nearly every airborne act of plant sexual relations*, but I've never had issues with any food ingested.
*I was once informed by a doctor that the pollen you can see with your naked eyes is too big to produce an allergic reaction but I'm not sure I believe him. He was a psychiatrist, not an allergist.
41: Sure, I'll grant you your allergies then. The mechanism in your case seems very well-understood, compared to the typical person.
Sure, I'll grant you your allergies then.
The portions of "The Wizard of Oz" that didn't make it into the movie were really strange.
44: So the ignorant can't have allergies, then?
Because Mother Nature is PURE and real toxins can only come from nasty ol' chemical factories!
Because we did actually evolve eating fruits and vegetables? And pretty much all animals on the planet have a standard diet that they don't develop allergies to? And we really have recently introduced a shitload of poorly understood chemicals into our food in the last hundred years?
Or I'm fanatical hippie freaking out about fluoride in the water. It's hard to say.
Also, 17.1 is right.
immune systems freak out and start having reactions to ordinary foods
How is that not a description of allergies?
And we do know that entities like Komen spend money suppressing research linking pollution and breast cancer. And that what gets researched is highly politicized and dependent on who has money to pay for the research. But you're all right - it's probably the eeeeevil broccoli!
44: A lot of typical people have the same allergy as I do. Only a few, I imagine, are sufficiently passionate about the peaches to go to any lengths to find out what science says about it.
47: Because we did actually evolve eating fruits and vegetables
Not the same mix we eat today. And people in different places ate different things. And there were probably lots of poorly understood deaths back then, some of which may have had to do with allergies.
And (this argument is somewhat more suspect) arguably with the advent of sanitation, we've forgone some of the hormesis that in the past would have prevented allergies, just as with our sedentary lifestyles we've forgone much healthful exercise.
47: Most of the fruits and vegetables were eat are fairly recent developments, though decedents of related plants that we probably ate. Strawberries, for example, were domesticated only in 1976.
How is that not a description of allergies?
The food is the proximal trigger but not the underlying cause. And the underlying cause could be causing a whole host of other problems. Avoiding broccoli is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and I'm willing to say that even though I know that phrase annoys people here, because I have convictions.
My current allergy annoyance is people trying to be helpful. It is that glorious month of the year when there is really nothing I can do, short of spending 24/7 in a sealed building, to avoid allergies. Upon observing my allergy symptoms, people will often ask if I'm taking anything, or skip straight to volunteering the Claritin they have in their purse. Thanks, but I'm already on a pill, eye drops, and a prescription nasal inhaler!
And yet quabillions of dollars spent suppressing research couldn't possibly have any negative fallout?
Because we did actually evolve eating fruits and vegetables?
I'm pretty sure there were no broccoli farms on the veldt. I know there were any bell pepper and potato farms on the veldt, because those are native to the New World.
55: You are mixing apples and oranges.
54: I used to make medications, but stopped about ten years ago as the side effects of the medications started bothering me more and the allergies less. I'm not sure why that happened but possibly the pollen of Pittsburgh is just better for me.
Strawberries, for example, were domesticated only in 1976.
Hence their nickname, "the bicentennial fruit."
49: I don't think anyone here is claiming that the broccoli is morally culpable. Just that some people don't respond well to it.
54: My current allergy annoyance is people trying to be helpful.
Oh, god, I know! The worst is when I sneeze, and some nearby stranger pipes up "bless you!" And then I sneeze some more, and they keep blessing me.
Dammit, I don't need anyone's blessing, I don't need anyone to draw attention to the embarrassing fact that I'm sneezing, I need people to let me suffer in peace.
57: How so?
Some allergies are real, and have always been around. Independent of that fact, companies spend zillions of dollars suppressing research onto the environmental impact of their pollution. People end up consuming tons of chemicals unintended (or at least poorly studied) for consumption. Your immune system deals with everything unexpected that enters your body.
I'm speculating that these chemicals might kick our immune systems into hyper-freak-out mode, and then eating an ordinary food triggers a reaction. Eliminating the ordinary food doesn't address the fact that the immune system is going nuts.
I tend to believe that people like your friend (particularly if they don't have any sort of third-party medical confirmation) are often (not always, there are real allergies) being superstitious. It's very natural, if you feel ill, to start looking for correlations in what you ate earlier in the day, but even a couple of hits (ate broccoli, felt bad) doesn't mean that the one caused the other. And once you've got a theory, it's even more natural to start overweighting confirming evidence, and underweighting contrary evidence.
This is the kind of belief that's hard to express without sounding like a jerk, of course -- believing that anyone else is mistaken or irrational about something where they're working from their direct experience is a problem. But I do think that sort of problem -- some condition that shows up irregularly, and you're trying to deduce the cause from looking at things that happened immediately before -- is something that people are generally very bad at, unless the causal connection is so immediate in time (allergen touches your mouth and you start swelling up or whatever) that it's obvious.
I don't think anyone here is claiming that the broccoli is morally culpable. Just that some people don't respond well to it.
If she had a stray allergy to broccoli, then whatever. A spontaneous allergy to ten vegetables and fruits, in your mid-thirties? Or at least elevating reactions to a long-standing problem, of a dozen very common fruits and vegetables?
(I have no opinion about the 'pesticide overload' portion of the theory. Or at least, it doesn't sound impossible, but it doesn't sound particularly plausible to me.)
Strawberries are red becaus they're warning us that they are poisonous. Likewise, apples. Ask me about my beige food diet.
There was a woman on Dan Savage recently talking about phthalates in sex toys. Apparently the cut-off for children's toys is .1% of the toy may be phthalates. She had some sex toys chemically analyzed, and found they were 60% phthalates. That's a lot of phthalates.
Hearing that right before eating lunch with this friend linked environmental toxins to allergies in my head. But I'm equally happy to explain away her allergies using the link in 24.
Or at least, it doesn't sound impossible, but it doesn't sound particularly plausible to me.
Doesn't sound impossible to me, but needs evidence. Occam's razor leads me to go with the food-allergy explanation.
53: The food is the proximal trigger but not the underlying cause.
How does that make it not an allergy?
Webster defines an allergy as:
1 : altered bodily reactivity (as hypersensitivity) to an antigen in response to a first exposure
2 : exaggerated or pathological reaction (as by sneezing, respiratory embarrassment, itching, or skin rashes) to substances, situations, or physical states that are without comparable effect on the average individual
Wikipedia quotes Dorland's medical dictionary defining an allergy thus:
An allergy is a hypersensitivity disorder of the immune system.
In both definitions the allergy is a problem of the immune system, not of the food.
What would be an example of an allergy where the allergen was in fact the underlying cause?
In both definitions the allergy is a problem of the immune system, not of the food.
Ok, have fun explaining this to the next person who tells you that they're allergic to peanuts.
Omg Spike's totally a sneezer.
Not as bad as I used to be. Turns out that growing up in a house with a moldy basement, with a cat, surrounded by trees and lawn, probably contrubuted to the fact that I could hardly breath for the first 18 years of my life. Now that I live in an antiseptic apartment, cat free and far from nature, its not so bad.
I do miss having a cat, though.
Doesn't sound impossible to me, but needs evidence. Occam's razor leads me to go with the food-allergy explanation.
See, for me Occam's razor points to the money suppressing research. I obviously don't have any evidence, either, but corporations are highly invested in suppressing any evidence.
62: "I am allergic to X" is not the same as "X is a complete explanation of my allergic reaction."
Occam's razor has a handle that is 55% phthalates.
71: I'm not the one saying that the people swelling up and asphyxiating are making it up.
And the person I know with a potentially fatal nut allergy has no problem distinguishing between the true statement "nuts are terrible for me" and the false statement "nuts are terrible."
If they're swelling and asphyxiating, they must understand the underlying factors really well?
62: "I am allergic to X" is not the same as "X is a complete explanation of my allergic reaction."
Comity, I guess. The second is what I assume people mean when they say they're allergic to X.
See, for me Occam's razor points to the money suppressing research.
What specific research is being suppressed? Is there a dungeon at the Monsanto headquarters where all the allergy scientists get disappeared to? Because I totally wouldn't put that past them...
The second is what I assume people mean when they say they're allergic to X.
I assume it's something functionally more like, "By avoiding X I seem to be able to avoid those terrible allergy symptoms."
79: So your interpretive strategy is the exact opposite of the principle of charity?
I know that Komen has sabotaged funding for research linking environmental toxins and breast cancer. Is it really a stretch that Dow Chemical wouldn't fund research carefully studying the longterm effects of Dow chemicals?
When you say sabotaged, do you mean they didn't fund it or that they used leverage to stop somebody else from funding it?
83: Yes. I'm happy to attribute charitable motivations to my friend, but I'm not going to claim that she's free from trends and biases and advertising campaigns that have drug companies pushing allergy testing kits onto doctors.
My comment failed to post. I suggested that your friend's broccoli might have been genetically modified and that she could be allergic to whatever genetic material was introduced.
85: IIRC, around 2003 they successfully lobbied against a congressional proposal for money to study the link between environmental factors and breast cancer. And that they consistently do that kind of thing. It was from a story that Snarkout linked to, back when Komen defunded Planned Parenthood, about how consistently horrible they've always been.
Heebie seems to be badly conflating the two very different claims (1) "these are not real allergies from which you suffer, they are superstitions in your head" and (2) "these real allergies from which you suffer, let me explain them to you, your immune systems is getting trigger-happy from overexposure to the poisons of Big Chemical, if you ate broccoli pure like our forefathers you would have no issues with it, so be mad at Republicans (and Democratics who bow to industry pressure), not at the broccoli."
I mean, all allergies are inappropriate immune system overreactions. That's the definition. "What has changed in our environment that is causing all these new food allergies?" is a different question from "Why have all these people been duped into thinking they have food allergies?"
68 to 89. I'm aware of the two different claims.
90: 68 is nonresponsive to 89. Are you "explain[ing] away her allergies using the link in 24" or are you claiming that her allergies are real and are caused not by broccoli fucking with her immune system, but by Big Chemical fucking with her immune system in a way that causes her to react adversely to broccoli? You're bouncing back and forth between the two.
Can I throw in a third claim -- "You have real symptoms that occur on an irregular basis; that doesn't mean that they're necessarily literally allergies, nor does it mean that you've necessarily accurately identified the immediate cause."
89 assumes facts not in evidence. Where are these people who are supposedly mad at the broccoli?!
Intuition is awful here. Immunology is not my field, but it is not at all intuitively obvious that peanut allergies would get more widespread in the US over a couple of decades, but that has happened. There are a bunch of weak studies that suggest various causes (chlorine, insufficient childhood exposure to animals are the two I monitor), but no strong explanation.
From the point of view of nasty chemical exposure, deindustrialization in the US since 1970 suggests that most problems now should be less serious now than 30 years ago. Also, environmental toxins usually have geographical hotspots-- look at the geography of bladder cancer or mesothelioma.
92 does seem plausible to me in many cases, but perhaps it is the same mechanism, and we are only now getting good at identifying subtler allergies.
92 seems like a restatement of "Why have all these people been duped into thinking they have food allergies?"
But the important thing here is that broccoli is not a moral agent (no matter how brainlike it appears), and cannot be held culpable for anyone's allergies.
96: There's a difference between saying "You're imagining your symptoms" and "You're misinterpreting your symptoms", isn't there?
93: Right here.
98: Yes, but both urple's claim 1, and your comment in 92, are about misinterpretation.
98: Oh, I didn't think anyone thought anyone was actually imagining symptoms. Just imagining/misdiagnosing the causes of those symptoms.
After all, the problem with superstitions is not that bad things never happen to you - it's that bad things don't happen more often if you encounter a black cat.
Your immune system deals with everything unexpected that enters your body.
Your liver does a pretty good job at chewing through things that aren't really supposed to be there. [Sometimes that's the problem (benzene, etc.).] But it's not your immune system fighting all by its lonesome.
91: I'm saying:
Case A: There are real symptoms in reaction to food. Then either it's a straight-forward allergy, or my environmental toxin priming the immune system allergy, and I believe the latter.
Case B: The symptoms are not in reaction to food. Then it's probably the explanation in 24.
104: It could be a reaction to the food that isn't an allergy. If it actually is envirnomental toxins, then you wouldn't call the reaction to a toxin an allergy.
Okay, but my point is "Bitch, just eat the fucking broccoli" is an appropriate response to Case B, but not to Case A. Case A and Case B are very different.
Right -- I don't know what you call it formally, but I certainly know people who say, e.g., that they consistently get an upset stomach after eating green peppers. That's not an allergy, although it is a symptom triggered by food.
107: I had this about green peppers when I was little, and called it an allergy, though it was obviously not an allergy. I was four, though.
If she had a stray allergy to broccoli, then whatever. A spontaneous allergy to ten vegetables and fruits, in your mid-thirties? Or at least elevating reactions to a long-standing problem, of a dozen very common fruits and vegetables?
This is more or less how oral allergy syndrome showed up for me, though. (Not that it involves broccoli, mind you.) I mean, if I think it through, I realize apples had been making my mouth itch for awhile and my hands get all reactive when I cut up certain fruits/veg. But I didn't have oral allergies when I was 10. Then one summer I ate a peach and WHAT THE FUCK? In my 30s. And the more I kept trying for "Well, I'll just try this fruit instead," the more I discovered that I have this spontaneous(-seeming) allergy to 10 vegetables and fruits.
The fact that chemicals of all varieties are omnipresent and undoubtedly problematic doesn't mean the chemicals are responsible for ever health problem everywhere.
The fact that chemicals of all varieties are omnipresent and undoubtedly problematic doesn't mean the chemicals are responsible for ever health problem everywhere.
Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying. Thanks for clarifying how one-sided and extremist I'm being.
88. NCI publishes maps of cancer incidence and mortality over time, (here: http://ratecalc.cancer.gov/) and the PubMed query "environmental breast cancer" returns about 500 articles/year.
I don't know any of the individuals involved in steering this research, but the claim that big chem is stifling everything is bullshit. Choosing what to follow is complicated, and people who steer resources have biases, sure, but the population of medical decisionmakers are not a bunch of shills for industry, at all.
NCI's budget is $5B, Komen's is $300M.
51
And (this argument is somewhat more suspect) arguably with the advent of sanitation, we've forgone some of the hormesis that in the past would have prevented allergies, just as with our sedentary lifestyles we've forgone much healthful exercise.
I think I agree with this. For years I followed a theory of sanitation and hygiene I think of as the inoculation theory: smoke socially, dust, vacuum and clean the sheets maybe once a month, clean dishes and kitchen utensils before they get furry with mold but otherwise don't worry about it, and keep the kitty litter in an easily reached place for convenient cleaning. When I lived with roommates, their habits were similar to mine or even worse. I had no allergies I was aware of and got sick maybe once a year at most.
But these days I live with my girlfriend, we have no pets, I don't smoke, we clean the apartment regularly, dirty dishes don't linger more than two days, and I've been sniffling a bit since allergy season started.
Stay away from bath salts. Apparently, they make you go into urgent-cannibal mode.
The thing about 92 as a claim, is that it's kind of rude unless you have some concrete reason for suggesting the person is wrong about their own health.
113 was sort of to 109, 110. But mostly it's just news you need to know.
I also have oral allergy syndrome, although for me it developed mid-to-late 20s.
114: Well, it's rude if you're rude about it. Believing someone's mistaken is right or wrong, manners don't come into it until you're expressing it to the specific person who you think is making the mistake. Given the number of people who, e.g., buy homeopathic remedies, I'm pretty sure lots of people are wrong about their own health.
If your friend had skin pricks done alone, she should know that those tests have a lot of false positives. But it's also possible that she's been feeling like crap for thirty years and has only now traced it to food.
Or that there's something new in her environment that's causing previously-had food sensitivities to register. I'm sensitive to pollen, mold, and dander, but I'm not in agony unless I'm hit with all three at once, or with something new that causes my immune system to just freak out at everything for the day.
(I also suspect from observing my life that I'm mildly sensitive to coffee but I'm just going to pretend I'm not.)
Given the number of people who, e.g., buy homeopathic remedies, I'm pretty sure lots of people are wrong about their own health.
You wouldn't believe how much soda some people drink.
I am under the impression that the increase in allergies has more to do with growing up in a super-clean environment that deprives your immune system of the kind of learning and workout it would have had on the veldt than with environmental toxins. IME people who grew up filthy as children tend to have far fewer allergies than people who grew up in more sterile environments. There's no reason it couldn't be both, I suppose. Immune systems are complicated.
IME people who grew up filthy as children tend to have far fewer allergies than people who grew up in more sterile environments.
The sacrifices I make for my children's immune systems...
Bell peppers and potatoes are nightshades (along with eggplants and tomatoes) and are mildly poisonous, which is kind of what gives them their zing. Totally plausible to me that someone could have a reaction to them, if not technically an allergy?
I'd never heard of a prick test for broccoli, but there is one. Salicylates! Huh.
The immune system is pretty freaky. I really really want mine to always work fine.
114. Yeah, chinstroking speculation about population health pisses off people who are affected or who care about someone affected. Also usually less well informed than speculation about interstellar dust.
The counterweight to the claim that not enough antigens in pregnancy/early childhood lead to an overactive immune system is asthma, which correlates with poor urban neighborhoods rather than exurbs. It's possible that exposure to chlorine and animal bacteria explain both, but not at all convincing.
IME people who grew up filthy as children tend to have far fewer allergies than people who grew up in more sterile environments.
My brother and I are allergy-free, except for occasional hay fever (noted above). Score one for generally negligent, frequently actively hostile mothering.
The whole allergy thing has been a long time coming. I remember my dad in the early 60s being told he might have a dust allergy, and he was all, "Whoever heard of being allergic to dust?". And it was true, at that time most people hadn't heard of it. I wonder if we're in the exponential phase of a sigmoid expansion of immunological issues where the root causes go a lot further back than we generally look.
The immune system is really really complicated. Anyone, like heebie, who thinks that it's obvious what can or can't happen to the immune system for what reasons is trolling you. Furthermore, "nature" is full of crazy chemical warfare. Trees, bacteria, fungus, etc. are all producing crazy chemicals all the time. Many pesticides, antibiotics, etc. that people are happy to blame for things (cause they're "unnatural chemicals") come straight from nature.
What we "evolved to eat" is neither here nor there, because what you're allergic to is not primarily caused by genetics, but instead by interactions between your immune system and the environment. There's just no reason why you couldn't develop an allergy to a fruit or vegetable.
I think the hygiene hypothesis is one that gets tossed around a lot but isn't terribly well-supported at all.
I don't work with the allergy side of the immune system and the whole topic seems like we have very few answers. What makes something an allergen? Usually it's a protein. Sometimes it's a small molecule that needs to be carried by a protein. Occasionally it isn't a protein at all, like penicillin or the nickel allergy.
Some allergies are real, and have always been around. Independent of that fact, companies spend zillions of dollars suppressing research onto the environmental impact of their pollution. People end up consuming tons of chemicals unintended (or at least poorly studied) for consumption. Your immune system deals with everything unexpected that enters your body.
First of all, a lot of research is done into the environmental impact of pollution. Sure, companies don't want to create the bad news themselves, but I think they are more focused on blocking the regulations that should naturally follow from the bad news than blocking the bad news itself. I mean, even in the cases where we know things are dangerous, like BPA, things progress at a snail's pace and are mostly ad hoc and done for marketing reasons, and we hear the usual wailings that the costs of banning something would outweigh the benefits.
Second of all, it's hard to get any conclusions from environmental research because in the real world people are exposed to everything all at once. What we want is to know what combination of things is more dangerous than the individual things themselves. That's almost impossible to figure out.
Finally, you may be operating with an overly broad definition of "the immune system". Most noninfectious things don't activate the immune system at all, unless they're accompanied by physical damage or "insults" to the body (abrasions, other wounds, inhaling things that break the alveoli). The immune system "deals with" most things we encounter by ignoring them. When it doesn't ignore a new thing, and the new thing is not a dangerous pathogen, it's almost always bad for the body when the immune system gets turned on. Clearly when we encounter new things there is usually no immune activation.
Most of the worries I've seen about environmental contaminants are about their effects on the endocrine system (early puberty, low sperm count, things that make us fat, other things that mimic hormones) or the effects on cancer.
Maybe that's just because literally any molecule out there could theoretically be an allergen so no one hypothesis is much stronger than any other hypothesis.
It's all very depressing looking at the mysterious profusion of allergies throughout the population, with no good theories of why it's happening other than our knowledge about the properties of each individual allergen.
94. 126: This really does freak me out. Whatever you say about people who believe themselves to have mild allergies to a broad spectrum of stuff, there really does seem to be a serious increase in the number of people with life-threatening, e.g., peanut allergies. And as far as I know no one has much of an idea what the cause is or if something can be done about it.
Second of all, it's hard to get any conclusions from environmental research because in the real world people are exposed to everything all at once. What we want is to know what combination of things is more dangerous than the individual things themselves. That's almost impossible to figure out.
This is a much better way to say what I meant when I said "there are several factors at play, and food is the most proximate one."
Anyone, like heebie, who thinks that it's obvious what can or can't happen to the immune system for what reasons is trolling you.
I may troll, but I wouldn't do it in such a dumb way as you're implying here.
Huh. I've never encountered the dyed pistachio thing before, and I eat a lot of pistachios. Over here they just sell them as is. Well, roasted and salted, and sometimes with lemon juice (not nice, by the way), but not dyed any colour.
The post says you're sure that she isn't actually allergic to, e.g. potatoes. How could you possibly know that? Then you make some claim about how if they're allergic to potatoes it must be for certain reasons which accord with your politics. Again, how could you possibly know that?
I remember seeing red-dyed pistachios rather more often than the plain ones when I was a kid.
136: Yeah, they would be dyed Christmas red or Christmas green. Now I only see them beige.
Sure, she might be allergic to all those things. I've said in a half-dozen comments that people can be conventionally allergic. I'm accusing her in order to say that on the whole, I hear this kind of thing not-infrequently, and I don't believe that so many people develop allergies to ten ordinary foods without there being something else going on.
128. For Asthma, both farm animals and pet exposure in early life seem to have a protective effect, but not general filth. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18285428
I don't know about peanuts.
Was the red dye banned? I have a Christmas memory of hives due to those things, but it turns out it was the dye and not the pistachios.
34 to 138.
138: I've said in a half-dozen comments that people can be conventionally allergic. I'm accusing her in order to say that on the whole, I hear this kind of thing not-infrequently, and I don't believe that so many people develop allergies to ten ordinary foods without there being something else going on.
34: And, ok, to be technical, the allergy is really a tree-pollen allergy -- particularly birch -- and all of these foods apparently share a protein or something like that which is similar to the evil pollens and triggers the allergic response. (Ranging from itchy mouth/throat on the mild end, to difficulty breathing at the other end.)
Impossible! Dyes and chemicals can't cause allergies because companies are virtuous and broccoli is actually toxic.
138. How's this: People with immune systems that hinky would have died young even 30 years ago. If the cause is environmental, geographic clustering or relocation-related onset or cure would be easily detectable signals. This isn't something where hunches without facts are going to be productive.
145:
Anyone, like heebie sarcastic heebie, who thinks that it's obvious what can or can't happen to the immune system for what reasons is trolling you.
People with immune systems that hinky would have died young even 30 years ago.
That seems really unlikely given what people die of.
Also, I have no idea what "dyes and chemicals" mean which couldn't include the things that make oranges orange and the stuff that oranges are made of. Everything in the world is a chemical. It's not a useful category.
The words "allergenic" and "toxic" have very little to do with each other. Toxins are things which when they encounter cells, they encourage the cells to die. Basically it means "poison".
An allergen is a molecule that leads to sudden production of IgE antibodies which then leads to activation of mast cells and basophils, leading to histamine production and inflammation, pain, vasodilation.
OT: a friend unexpectedly recieved a subpoena this morning to appear in court this Wednesday to testify in a custody hearing in another mutual friend's divorce. She has no idea what to expect and asked me for any advice or information about what to expect/how the process works/etc. She has a good guess what they might want her to talk about, but doesn't know anything beyond that. (She was once in a relationship with the man with whom the divorced woman is now in a relationship.) She has no lawyer and cannot afford one. Honestly, I know very little about the process, and don't know what to tell her. Any help?
If the cause is environmental, geographic clustering or relocation-related onset or cure would be easily detectable signals.
I would like to see studies disproving or proving this.
I remember a friend being diagnosed with allergies to tomatoes and milk when we were kids. He could eat them but they caused his eczema to flare up, and that was a relatively new thing, then. I'd never heard of it, and it was years before I heard of anyone else with a similar thing. Nowadays, it's of course common, but as people have pointed out above, the incidence [rather than the diagnosis] may not have changed as much as all that.
So will eating local honey help me or not?
I mean, I'd like to see studies addressing that. I agree with the statement.
151: Maybe I'm naive here, but shouldn't just showing up and truthfully answering the questions be enough? I don't see why she'd need a lawyer.
141: Popularly, it tends not to be a claim about not hanging out with farm animals but about whether a suburban mother should use Lysol or dust daily.
134: I don't actually know myself, but aren't some foods massively more common allergy triggers than others? I wouldn't be rude about it to someone who told me about allergies like H-G's friend, and I don't know enough about allergies to be accurately informed about the odds, but surely there are combinations of foods to which an adult claimed to have suddenly become allergic that would trigger a "That's really unlikely" response from an informed listener.
Were the food allergies connected to her dropping out of contact -- i.e. she was trapped in immune-system hell and had no energy left for details like calling people back?
I've had a couple of friendships drop away because the women slowly morphed into what I thought of as "professional patients". There were genuine medical issues, in both cases, but a growing blindness to anyone else's problem that wasn't health-related.
156: I'm just an unfrozen caveman nonlawyer who is new to your legal system, so I got to wonder who asks for the testimony of the ex'es of their ex'es current partner unless they are going to allege that said person is unfit to have around their kids as part of a custody battle that of the sort that makes newspaper headlines?
141. Only if she's wearing something attractive and agrees to scientific monitoring.
I'm all for be skeptical about people's allergies in general, I just think one can't be very sure about it in any particular case. I'd think the better way to figure out whether a person is making it up is to figure out if it's the sort of person who tends to make up illnesses, rather than trying to guess how common that particular constellation of allergies is.
whether a suburban mother should use Lysol or dust daily
A gift subscription we were given to Real Simple migrated from mildly amusing to straight-into-the-recycling when some article on cleanliness recommended weekly cleaning of remote controls with Q-tips and rubbing alcohol, paying particular attention to spaces between the buttons.
Most of the things her friend is claiming to be allergic to are related! It makes for an impressive list, but you wouldn't find it surprising that someone who was lactose intolerant had to avoid, like, mozzarella *and* cheddar.
unless they are going to allege that said person is unfit to have around their kids as part of a custody battle
Yes, best guess is that this is exactly what is going on.
164: We just run ours through the dishwasher every other week.
166: You could tell her to be afraid, but that's not really helpful advice.
165: Peppers and potatoes are the same thing, or at least closely related, but broccoli and citrus seem botanically fairly far apart from each other and from the nightshade family.
Need legal help! Lawyers wanted! See 151. Where's will?
Broccoli allergies without mentioning any other brassicas is kinda weird.
170: What's she worried about? I mean, it doesn't sound like anything that has much potential to damage her. Does she have a side in the custody battle that she cares about, is she trying to protect her ex's good name, what's her fear if she just goes in and answers everything she's asked truthfully?
Being grilled about that type of stuff would have to be stressful even without anything at stake for you. Not that I've ever been questioned on the stand to know for certain, but I'd be nervous about it.
My biggest complaint about allergies (real and phantom) is not the accuracy of the claim, but the purpose to which it's deployed. Most of the time people tell me about allergies, it's to get attention, either in the form of sympathy or in the form of special accommodation. Strangely, the people who do this do not have life-threatening allergies. Most of the people who actually have life threatening allergies are just trying to survive and would rather not mention it.
Take that, principle of charity.
General tip for witnesses is go slow. It's not a conversation, and if you're doing things right it should feel awkward. Listen carefully to the question, think about it, ask for clarification if you're at all confused, think through your answer inside your head (someone once suggested to me visualizing your answer written out on a blackboard) and only then say it. Trying to testify as if it were a normal fluid conversation is a good way to say something you didn't quite mean but can't correct after the fact.
But this is more Will's wheelhouse than mine.
If you learned about testifying in court by watching Perry Mason, you probably wonder when is the right time to confess to murder.
171: heebie mentioned "other vegetables." It wouldn't surprise me if someone who had a couple of sensitivities ended up with a whole list of things that they believed they were allergic to based on skin prick tests. According to a couple of docs I know, the only way to tell really is to remove it from the diet, introduce it, and see what happens but I suspect her friend hasn't done this with all of the veggies she mentioned.
If the cause is environmental, geographic clustering or relocation-related onset or cure would be easily detectable signals.
Why "easily"? Some changes to our chemical environment are pretty widespread and homogenous (eg. phthalates), and detection of geographic clusters relies on uniform diagnosistic standards. I'm doubtful the latter exists across countries.
So, genuine question - you all are not concerned about the amounts of chemicals we indirectly ingest? Or directly?
I'm not asking if you think that the increase in allergies is connected - that's obviously complicated/unknown/wrong/secretly right. Just whether or not there's a prevalent anxiety here about BPA, phthalates, carpet cleaners, antibiotics in the animals, pesticide run-offs, stain-resistant sprays, and all the other stuff that we get an awful lot of exposure to. Specifically about the effect on our health, aside from other environmental impact.
130: I read in Harper's a few years back that life-threatening peanut allergy rates have not been greatly increasing. I don't know if that argument has stood up. I believe the article debunks the scary story of that girl who died after kissing her boyfriend who'd eaten a PB&J -- she also had asthma and had just smoked weed with him, triggering an asthma attack; the peanuts were not actually implicated.
173: Right. You'd be worried about potentially fucking over your friend/acquaintance, or in this case, perhaps being asked fairly intimate questions about a past relationship.
180: I'm not much concerned. I mean, concerned enough that I want the EPA to keep doing its job and all that, and if something particular shows up as harmful I want it off the market or no longer used. But we had a hundred years or so of weird industrial poisons all over the place with very little environmental regulation, and while all sorts of people got sick, the sky didn't fall. And now we have much better regulation, and therefore presumably lower levels of, um, toxic load? chemical insult? I don't even know how to phrase it in an unsilly way.
Mostly, I figure that if something hasn't been unambiguously identified as a problem, I'm not going to worry about it much.
So, genuine question - you all are not concerned about the amounts of chemicals we indirectly ingest? Or directly?
I certainly am. We don't have a very good history of avoiding environmental damage before it's screamingly obvious.
Antibiotics in animals, I worry about. I like having functioning antibiotics available to the medical profession.
Also, I want to commend Heebie for demonstrating that liberals can be worried about the purity axis as well.
I'm torn between 184 and 185 because they both seem right to me. Mostly, I'd rather not think about it all because then you get paranoid.
Mostly, I'd rather not think about it all because then you get paranoid what the hell can I do about it anyway.
And now we have much better regulation, and therefore presumably lower levels of, um, toxic load?
Is this true? Some things, like lead, we've reduced but we've also come up with a lot of new compounds, and are using a lot more of others.
172: First, she just knows nothing about the process and what to expect. More importantly, she is to this good day friends with both former spouses and her own former lover* (now in a relationship with the former wife). She doesn't want to say anything that's going to cause any problem for any of them, although former husband (the one who issued the subpoena) is in her mind currently the most sympathetic party . Also, the former lover was once a teacher at the school where she works, and was fired from the school for reasons separate from but not entirely unrelated to her relationship with him, and the circumstances of that dismissal are the subject of a confidentiality agreement negotiated between the school and the former teacher/lover, and she's worried about saying something that might somehow violate the terms of that agreement and get the school in trouble (or even possibly get her in trouble as a result).
*I don't like this word but I'm not sure what better word to use. I don't want to say "partner", because she was married to someone else at the time she was having a relationship with him.
One of my friends in high school claimed to be allergic to broccoli, but she only said it because she didn't like broccoli but was afraid of telling my dad "no thanks" at the dinner table. So now I assume everyone who claims to be allergic to a thing just doesn't like the way it tastes.
186 is right.
The hormone and near-hormone stuff seems reasonably worrisome. Possible environmental causes of autism (or any other things that have rapidly increased recently) seem potentially scary.
Personally, I worry more about unknown infectious causes. Especially in early development.
190: I really don't know in detail. But there have certainly been toxic chemicals being produced industrially and dumped in rivers since the 19th century, and we've cut down massively on the volume of dumping.
What are unknown infectious causes? Zits? minor cuts that you don't notice?
Dammit, now I'm worried that these should be pseudopresidential.
he circumstances of that dismissal are the subject of a confidentiality agreement negotiated between the school and the former teacher/lover, and she's worried about saying something that might somehow violate the terms of that agreement and get the school in trouble (or even possibly get her in trouble as a result).
She should go to the principal/HR/whoever and get put in touch with the school's lawyer.
Nobody wants to talk about the horrors of GMOs? I thought that heebie would jump on that one.
GMOs seem like a genie in a bottle, and therefore it's generally a bad idea to uncork it, but it's less obvious to me that they must be bad for us.
196: In my mind, you look just like LBJ.
She talked to the school adminstration and the school views it as her personal thing--she was subpoened as an individual, not a reprentative of the school. They're trying to stay out of it. Also, the school doesn't really have a lawyer. (It's a tiny independant school.)
Maybe people we're getting sick all the time back then, and just didn't notice it because so many people died from cholera and untreated infections from tiny scratches.
Then the school's not worried, and she shouldn't be on their behalf (although she should email or something to confirm that she told them and they blew her off). If she's not a party to the confidentiality agreement, she shouldn't worry on her own behalf.
191, 201: She shoud probably get an agent, not a lawyer.
But isn't is possible the school should be worried? She would be very unhappy if she inadvertantly caused negative consequences for the school, even if she's weren't really personally culpable in doing so.
Sure, anything's possible, but there's not much she can do about it.
So, okay, what should she expect? Show up in court at the appointed time, wait patiently until she is called (which could be... who knows how long?), take the stand, swear on the bible even though she's heathen, answer truthfully the questions aked, and then go home? Is there any way to ballpark guess how long the whole process might take? Can she refuse to answer something if she thinks it's too personal and not relevant? (I'm guessing not...)
Is it legally permissible for her to o.d. on anti-anxiety medication beforehand?
unknown infectious causes
I think he is referring to the possibility that a lot of our diseases (cancer, for one) actually have infectious causes, though we don't currently popularly think of them that way. Like the relationship between HPV and cervical cancer, or h. pylori and some stomach cancers.
Can she refuse to answer something if she thinks it's too personal and not relevant? (I'm guessing not...)
Ask the judge if she has to -- if the lawyer's harassing her, the judge should rein him in. If the judge won't help, then answer.
LB's 175 seems like very good advice, that I'm tempted to pass along, but it runs a bit counter to 156's attitude of "just show up and truthfully answer the questions". Which implies just show up and be honest and it will be fine. 175 seems instead to imply that you could easily say the wrong thing, in a way that you'll regret, if you're not careful. I suspect that's closer to the truth, but I think telling her that will elevate her stress about the whole situation all the way to 11. So, I'm not sure what to say.
If she's reasonably friendly with the party who subpoenaed her, she should call up either him personally or his lawyer and ask straightforwardly but in a friendly way why she's been subpoenaed and what to expect. The lawyer will give her some information, she can then gauge the purpose of the subpoena and what she's being asked to do. There's a nonzero chance that the lawyer or the friend won't speak to her, but it's worth a shot.
177 -- You just listen to the soundtrack. The music come up when you're supposed to confess.
There's nothing wrong with calling the party who issued the subpoena and asking what they are after. And to ask the party's lawyer what sort of cross examination can be expected. If her testimony is helpful to the side that called her, the other side is going to want to minimize the impact of the testimony by attacking her powers of observation, recollections, reasoning skills, proximity, bias, whatever comes to mind. That's a whole lot less pleasant than just showing up and answering the questions posed by the issuing party.
LB's 175 is universally correct and advice you should give her no matter what.
It's hard for a witness to know what's "relevant" -- the term has a legal meaning, and it's quite broad. And all sorts of things are relevant to questions of powers of observation, recollection, and bias.
For Asthma, both farm animals and pet exposure in early life seem to have a protective effect
OTOH exposure to farm animals seems to be correlated with Crohn's, so you pays yer money and you takes yer choice.
Yeah, 210 is what I'm talking about. Cancer's not the only thing, basically anything health-wise could potentially have an infectious cause. Probably most don't, but probably a lot do that we don't know about yet.
Speaking of allergies, I've always been the designated poison ivy remover in the family due to generally low sensitivity, but apparently I've passed a threshold as I've just gotten over one hell of a case (at its peak with my ankles and lower leg pretty well inflamed, I actually experienced some general edema of the lower extremities). Presumably this means I'm all teed up for future sensitivity; I wonder if there is any research on immune system "unlearning"? Urushiol seems to be an interesting substance--apparently only humans and a few other of our primate buddies are sensitive. I can say that Tecnu* seems to work if used quickly enough; I wish I'd thought to use it beyond my forearms/wrists where I knew I'd been exposed.
*Originally developed in the early '60s for washing off radioactive dust.
pretty widespread and homogenous (eg. phthalates)
Used as dyes since the 1930's, so dye-plant workers and regions affected by concentrated effluent exist, not just in the US but also in China and India. Dyeworks and tanneries have been interesting to medical researchers for over a century.
PCB concentrations, orders of magnitude worse for health, are IMO the thing to watch, heavy metals second. A decaying transformer in a lake nearby is much worse than all of the packing material in the whole country. Politically, I have no sympathy for the large chemical companies, but don't see much point in fighting about marginal compounds.
You're not worried?
Antibiotics in food production are unpleasant. Personally, I pay double for organic beef, buy antibiotic-free chicken whenever possible, and avoid ground beef unless I know that it came from a single animal.
Environmentally, mercury emissions from dirty coal-fired plants worry me a lot more than plasticizers. I'll avoid miking food in a takeaway container if there's something else available, but am not worried about ambient-temperature storage.
220: Prednisone is the only thing that worked for me.
Maybe this has been solved unthread. But cal the friend and/or the lawyer to find out . Preferably the lawyer. Bc the lawyer might find out that she is not helpful and realize her.
A decaying transformer in a lake nearby is much worse than all of the packing material in the whole country.
At least until Michael Bay makes a movie about packing material.
I'm kind of creeped out by various pharmaceuticals that, after passing through people's bodies, wind up in the water supply, leading to transsexual fish and whatnot.
I disagree with 175. She should make sure that she testifies about what she wants to testify. Springboard from the question to her own topics. Show lots of cleavage. Furry flip flops would be a nice touch.
Also: argue with the lawyers. Smirk. Roll her eyes. Use hand gestures.
Also, I had a workmate with a pet theory that synthetic hormones in milk was leading to a situation where girls have bigger breasts these days.
225: That's why I save all my urine in jars that I keep in the basement.
227: There's also surgery, if the synthetic hormores are too slow.
Looks like no one has mentioned helminthic therapy yet... it's like the paleo cure for allergies, I guess? Speaking as an ignorant layperson, I totally endorse this therapy!
As it happens my friend who suffers the most from his allergies is also the least likely to voluntarily contract worms by walking barefoot on poop. Maybe more than a coincidence!!!
That's why I save all my urine in jars that I keep in the basement.
I boil mine down for use as pigment
222: Yeah, I was probably into systemic steroid treatment territory. I did pretty well with it except for one afternoon at work where I found myself taking shoes and socks off, and rolling up my pants legs under my desk. Fortunately we didn't have a fire drill.
I was just reading about a "cure" for autism that involves drinking bleach and bleach enemas. The vomiting, fevers, and diarrhea prove it's working!
227: Laydeez, didn't we all get our periods earlier than our moms did? I did by like 3 years and I thought that was common. "Hormones in meat" is a theory I've heard thrown around before about that, though come to think of it I did not eat very much beef/pork as a child (do chickens get hormone treatment?) and there were many other differences in our environments (probably my nutrition was better overall). I turned out more or less the same as her otherwise, physically, though.
Turns out she'd already talked to the lawyer, a few weeks ago. She'd been asked whether she would be willing to voluntarily give testimony to help the case. She really, really didn't want to do that, and she called the lawyer and told him so, and also told him everything she knew about the parties involved (in the hope that would get him to leave her alone). He liked what he heard; hence the subpoena.
Show lots of cleavage.
Will! She was advised (not by me) to dress exceedingly modestly, because if she didn't her sexual background would be called into question. I told her that sounded completely wrong to me, although I didn't disagree with the general sentiment that dressing not-provocatively would probably be a good idea.
That's why I save all my urine in jars that I keep in the basement.
Huh, so you're saying that that roommate of a friend of mine in college who stored his shit (literal) in plastic bags among his shit (figurative) in his closet wasn't actually nuts?
228: Like the 129 pickle jars filled with ordure in The Floating Opera. (My Google search for 'the floating opera jars ordure' returned a comment of mine here as the 4th result.)
239: I'm saying that your friend was nuts if he didn't copy his roommate.
You know, my roommate used to complain about the dorm refrigerator smelling too much like bongwater, but a closet that smells like shit is worse.
I haven't read the thread (much), so perhaps this has been addressed, but to the OP: are the chemicals that are hypothesized to be giving heebie's friend trouble (rather than the vegetables themselves) supposedly on the vegetables -- as pesticides or preservatives -- or are they in the soil and water?
If the former, the friend might try organic vegetables, or growing her own. Though I realize that not everyone has the wherewithal to do that.
It didn't stink as badly as the kimchi my roommate left around to ferment.
244: Thanks to plastics! They really are pretty fucking great in very many ways, loath as we generally are to admit it.
Further to 243, I see this has been discussed. Sorry.
But the fecalphilia discussion has just started.
Also, 206 is wrong. She could probably push the school to get a lawyer to accompany her to court, if I tell her the school really ought to have a lawyer there with her in court. I don't honestly know what their exposure might be here. She seems very concerned about it.
237 -- In that case she should show up and follow LB's 175. But it still might be worth calling the lawyer and asking straight up: OK, you've compelled me to testify. What will you be asking me, and what will the cross be like?
If she can, she should push the school to pay for a lawyer to show up with her. Safer for her regardless of the exposure for the school. And of course if the school doesn't have a lawyer it may not be thinking correctly about its own exposure.
248: I guess I got the impression that she'd already asked and they'd said no.
It's complicated. The school doesn't want to pay for a lawyer unless they think they really need to, and they wouldn't know who to hire if they did want to hire one. However, if she told them that she talked to a lawyer-friend and the lawyer-friend said they really should have a lawyer go with her to court, I think they probably would, or would at least try to.
Safer for her
What does this mean in this context? She's not at risk of any liability, is she?
Sorry, urple, but I agree with 204. If she's really, honestly worried about the effects of the case on the school she works for, she can give them the movie rights. Given an even halfway decent script for this romantic/courtroom comedy, I think even I would buy a ticket.
What does this mean in this context? She's not at risk of any liability, is she?
Probably not (I mean, I don't know, but I don't know why she would be) but if she's lawyered up the questioners are likely to be more restrained and she'll get some coaching on providing reserved answers, which may be safer for her in the sense of not revealing information she's not very interested in revealing.
She's not at risk of any liability
This is a ridiculous question, Urple. From what you've said, I can't see how she could be. OTOH, you're not her lawyer, you don't know everything, I'm certainly not her lawyer, I don't know anything about the situation.
Nothing jumps out at me as a risk for her, but who knows? Is she likely to confess to a crime on the witness stand, or to facts leading to civil liability? If she is, that could be a problem.
they wouldn't know who to hire if they did want to hire one.
How did they enter into a confidentiality agreement without a lawyer? If they had a lawyer, that's who they go back to. If they're signing agreements like that without a lawyer, she shouldn't worry about them because she can't help them.
255: You mean there really is a chance she'll confess to the murder? I thought Moby was joking.
Also while I think I've lost track of the characters in this soap opera, if the confidentiality agreement was between the school and the person who wants her testimony, the school may have a decent argument that their ex-employee is breaching the confidentiality provision by subpoenaing her testimony into confidential matters. Or, if I've gotten the parties wrong, the school may have an obligation to ask her to limit her testimony, or to seek to have her testify in a closed courtroom and seal the transcript, or something similar. Anyhow, if there's a lawyer that's a possibility and it's sensitive for the school, they should get her a lawyer.
I was trying not to go there, but: the lawyer was me.
Then why are you asking for legal advice?
Oh good lord. Just tell the school to pay something for someone who's been in a courtroom before to spend 4 hours walking her through this.
Generally a subpoena trumps a confidentiality agreement. If you are forced into court by a subpoena, you don't have any choice about answering (unless you have a fifth amendment issue or something like that), so you're not violating the agreement by answering the questions.
I'm not worried about the confidentiality agreement; it's toothless.
263 -- of course, but the school may still have an obligation to take reasonable steps to maintain the disclosed information as confidential as to the entire world.
Or, it may have no obligations, since the agreement was drafted by someone who refuses to learn any post-1972 facts about dinosaurs.
The school has interests. It should protect them.
She knows the confidential information? She may be on the hook if she reveals it either directly or indirectly.
I'm pretty concerned that the lawyer thinks the witness' testimony is so good it's worth calling her over her objection to being called. That means the other side is going to have to do some serious damage control.
Liability is also too limited a concept here. Having to publicly admit embarrassing details, in the presence of people who may well share them with mutual friends, is a higher price to pay that being legally responsible for some misdemeanor.
(or breach of a toothless agreement)
267.3: Maybe the lawyer isn't very good.
I don't honestly know what their exposure might be here. She seems very concerned about it.
From what I'm reading here, it seems likely that the confidential matter is exactly the thing that's interesting to the spouse's lawyer, no?
I'm curious, what are the ethical implications for the witness to chat about her testimony with the non-subpoena-ing lawyer? If she wants to minimize the impact of her testimony, it seems like that's the lawyer who will have an incentive to share her priorities.
If the school were to hire an attorney, which I'm still wondering if there's really any reason for them to do, it's unclear to me whether they would want an employment lawyer or a family law/divorce/custody lawyer. I'm assuming probably the former; the school doesn't care about the outcome of the custody dispute. And I'm not an employment lawyer, but I struggling to see what sort of employment-related liabilty they could face. So, it's really the employee whose interests are at stake, and those seem to be less legal interests than personal discomfort/embarrassment interests. They could choose to pay for a lawyer to accompany their employee just to help her out in the process (and make sure she doesn't say anything completely out of left field that, who knows, maybe could create some liability for them, maybe), but absent that, I'm not really seeing what interest they need to protect.
Presumably there was some interest the school was trying to protect with the confidentiality agreement, right?
This isn't rocket science -- if she knows anything that's at all likely to come up in relation to the case and could lead to liability for the school, whether under the toothless confidentiality agreement or anything else, they have an interest. She told them about it, and they're not worried enough about it to lawyer up. At which point whether or not they're at risk, she shouldn't worry on their behalf.
Another bit of cracker-barrel litigation advice a wise colleague once gave me was "Never care more about the case than the client does." And she shouldn't worry more about her employer's well-being than they do.
Not really, other than not having their former employee sue them.
if she knows anything that's at all likely to come up in relation to the case and could lead to liability for the school
Well, as you say I'm not her lawyer and don't know what I don't know, but my point was that based on what I do know, I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that fits into this box. Which is why telling her to push them to get a lawyer feels overcautious.
Anyway, I've talked her through generally what to expect, with plenty of caveats that I don't actually have any goddamn idea what I'm talking about, I'm just repeating shit I read on the internet. But I passed along the advice in 175. So thanks.
264, 266--
Perhaps the confidentiality agreement has vestigial teeth.
Also, the question re anti-anxiety medication was serious.
278: The confidentiality agreement is a dinosaur.
I'm going to do the thing where I comment once every two years to talk about a disease, but oral allergy syndrome is totally a thing, related to hay fever! If you are allergic to certain pollens, you can be allergic to the. . . proteins? in some fruits that mimic those pollens. I get super burning-mouth (nbd, but aversive) if I eat apples or any pitted fruits or almonds or walnuts fresh or dried (but not cooked) and assumed for the longest it was a pesticide thing, and then it was just a boring pollen allergy thing. And I know potatoes and broccoli are cross-reactive with some other pollen. And it makes sense I can have all this stuff cooked, because that makes the proteins go all floppy.
Also though when I mention I can't eat peaches a huge number of people respond with: how do you even live, what else is the point?
All other allergies are totally fake, I'm just saying mine are real.
The question about honey was also serious.
Oral allergy syndrome doesn't sound implausible at all, given that it sounds like it involves an immediate reaction. (Although, this is just out of curiosity, if cooking mostly fixes the problem, how did anyone ever figure out that potatoes were implicated? Does the potato allergen survive cooking, or are there raw-potato eaters out there?)
I have OAS but I don't think I'm allergic to potatoes. But, I wouldn't know because I neither cook them nor eat them uncooked. My guess is that people who have issues with them are more likely to have reactions on their skin from handling than in their mouths from eating.
My guess would be that people get allergic reactions when preparing (handling, peeling, etc.) potatoes.
If she is bound by a confidentiality agreement, then she needs to assert it. The judge can then rule on it. (va law - no idea about elsewhere)
I haven't looked at the facts closely, but I would generally tell her to make her request for counsel to the school in writing.
Maybe it would be helpful for me to understand why the school is implicated in this custody case.
Many people claim to have gotten significant relief from allergies through acupuncture, but I am skeptical.
She prob will only testify about parenting or job schedules.
Nobody wants to testify. I worry more about people who really really want to testify.
Maybe it would be helpful for me to understand why the school is implicated in this custody case.
I don't think they are! That was my point.
(The theoretical concern is that she is an employee of the school, and knows certain things about the new boyfriend/former employee by virtue of that employment, and that she might say something in that capacity that could cause problems for the school. But I honestly can't really imagine what.)
She prob will only testify about parenting or job schedules.
No, I'm guessing she will probably testify about a long string of reckless relationships, mental instability and suicide attempts.
The soon-to-be-ex husband's lawyer probably just wants her to say that this guy she used to date is a man-whore with no respect for the bonds of marriage.
292 posted before seeing 291. Sorry. That sounds bad with the other things all included.
284: Yeah maybe the potato people just think they have an allergy but the problem is they're just doing something really gross. "When I eat raw potatos it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes me feel unwell."
285: So you only eat potatoes that other people have cooked?
I have pretty much exactly what Di describes. Hard-skinned fruits make the inside of my mouth itch so I look like a dog eating peanut butter. Apples, cherries, peaches, and plums are the worst. Washing makes the reaction milder and cooking makes it disappear entirely. Which always made me assume it was an allergy to a wax or pesticide on the surface of the fruit, rather than any property of the fruit itself. No reaction to nuts, carrots, celery, potatoes or most berries.
I mostly know potatoes, turnips, etc. are a problem because my hands break out when I cut them up, though I have mindlessly nibbled a raw bit from time to time.
Also though when I mention I can't eat peaches a huge number of people respond with: how do you even live, what else is the point?
Yeah, I kind of feel this way. People seem surprised when they learn that I finally decided to try allergy shots because the doctor said some -- not all! no guarantees! do not hold me to this! -- find that they are able to eat raw fruits again after doing allergy shot. Itchy red eyes, violent fits of sneezing, and wheezing 6 months of the year is one thing. Not being able to eat peaches, though, that is torment.
I must have the preach resistant gene or something. I like them fine, but if I could make a deal to never eat them again in exchange for getting rid of all my seasonal allergies, I'd do it in a second.
My hands break out from the stuff that oozes out of the peel when you cut butternut squash. I thought it was an allergic dermatitis, but some internet page claims that it happens to everyone, provided the squash is fresh enough.
I must have the preach resistant gene or something.
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
235: same age as my mom I think. 14 and 6 months. All the other 9 th graders had theirs already.
237
Turns out she'd already talked to the lawyer, a few weeks ago. She'd been asked whether she would be willing to voluntarily give testimony to help the case. She really, really didn't want to do that, and she called the lawyer and told him so, and also told him everything she knew about the parties involved (in the hope that would get him to leave her alone). He liked what he heard; hence the subpoena.
If she really wanted to be left alone she should have mentioned the time the client got drunk and tried to rape her.
Wooooo Shearer, transgressive fake rape joke woooo.
Moving on, I guarantee you that this transit of Venus thing is going to be way lame. More overhyped bullshit from Big Astronomy. Will anything cool happen, no -- it will be like "oh look in the telescope I see a dot while there are like 50 other dots around the sun." Also it's a "once in a century" event that happened last in -- wait for it -- 2004. But go out and hang out with the amateur astronomy enthusiasts, your grandkids will be fascinated by this story.
I continue to be perplexed by Halford's disdain for astronomy.
Astronomy is fine. The amateur astronomy hype machine is out of control. ONCE IN A LIFETIME EVENT.
I mean, I'm sure snail biologists are doing important, fascinating work and that some reasonably interesting things are happening in the world of snails, but the newspapers aren't all like ONE TIME VIEWING EVENT TRANSIT OF THE SNAILS.
I mean, it's not that you're wrong, exactly; these events are generally not all that impressive when judged by the standard of Michael Bay movies. I just don't know where you got the idea of judging them by that standard in the first place.
It's a twice-in-a-lifetime event. And it's important to me because of the eighteenth-century transits, when sailors from many nations traveled as far north and south as possible to make simultaneous observations that helped to determine the distance of the sun from the earth.
There's some really epic trolling going on in this thread! Is it worth reading beyond the first 100-odd comments?
What other standard would a reasonable modern person judge by? I mean in the year 1000 the stars were pretty much it for nighttime viewing excitement, but fortunately (or deliberately -- through the power of copyright) culture has progressed and now we have cooler things to watch than a dot.
313 was not meant very seriously. But even judging by the standards of not-a-Michael-Bay-movie, these amateur astronomy events are way way way overhyped.
Is it worth reading beyond the first 100-odd comments?
I would say so, yes.
Oh, but any food developed in the past 30,000 years is too modern.
Maybe we evolved to care about the stars, and our bodies haven't caught up to processing constant explosions and jump cuts.
Does everyone remember the last time absolutely nothing impressive happened in the sky, in 2004? Those were awesome times, man.
Man, I wish we could trade lives and everyone you knew talked about Game of Thrones and everyone I knew talked about astronomical events.
It's a truly remarkable success of human civilization that we managed to work out that:
1) The earth is a planet.
2) The sun is a star.
It blows my mind. Think about it for a second. There's lots of small dots of lights in the night sky. It turns out that all but 5 of them are the same kind of objects as the giant object that makes the day light and warm, and the remaining 5 (well, 3 or 5, depending on how much you care about rockiness) are basically the same thing as the giant sphere we're standing on. How the hell do you figure that out?
Admittedly this lame non-event in the sky might be cooler than last night's season ending to Game of Thrones, so I'm with you there.
I was all primed to tell the story AWB got to in 310. It turns out it's actually really hard to find the absolute distances between objects in the solar system. You can find the relative distances (say the ratio of the distance to the sun and the distance of the sun to Venus), but it's hard to get any one of those distances exactly right.
These events are not best viewed as entertainment. The idea behind watching them is not "here is a super-impressive visual spectacle that happens very rarely so you'll want to check it out" but "here is an event that happens very rarely and is of interest for that reason and for what it represents, which someone will have to explain to you." If that's not of any inherent interest to you, there's no reason to bother watching this stuff.
The planets move very differently. That they were rocks took forever, but it was known that they were different from the stars.
Right, it's clear that they're different from stars. What's not clear is that stars are like the sun and planets are like the earth.
The Northern Lights are pretty cool by any standard, though.
These events are not best viewed as entertainment.
Same with episodes of "Mr. Belvedere."
RIGHT. The Northern Lights are independently awesome. Meteor showers in the desert -- also very cool. OMG THE TRANSIT OF VENUS is ridiculous -- it's a fine event for scientists, but if this is getting all this hype I want my snail biologists hyped too.
I want my snail biologists hyped too.
Be the change, yo.
Is the Transit of Venus really getting that much hype? I didn't even hear about it until my mom (who has been getting pretty into this astronomy stuff lately) mentioned it to me the other day. I'm not going to make any effort to see it.
What hype are you complaining about? I've seen links on FB about it from (1) a dude from my grad school who recently decided that science is cool, and (2) an academic astronomer of my acquaintance. Meanwhile, there are like 20 other things everyone seems to be talking about right now. Is it all over the TV news or something?
I've been trying to get the word out about the Iowa Pleistocene Snail but the Dubuque tourist agency keeps pushing the Dickeyville Grotto and the damn funicular railway.
A whole bunch of Facebook stuff and some news articles. Coming on top of the gigantic eclipse lameitude of 2012. Don't believe the hype. Reach the bourgeoise, and rock the boulevard
gigantic eclipse lameitude of 2012
Sorry your eclipse experience was so terrible. Mine was awesome!
Does anyone know why it took people so long to observe galaxies? You can see a couple of them with the naked eye, yet the earliest known writings about them is in the Book of Fixed Stars from 964 AD. Why didn't the Greeks know about them? (Obviously they wouldn't have known that they were galaxies, but neither did Arab astronomers.) Probably the main explanation is that you can't see the Large Magellanic Cloud from Greece or near Greece, but that explanation doesn't work for Andromeda.
I've been trying to find interesting snail biology to hype, but so far I haven't found anything to surpass this gem from the 1850s.
Who knew an eccentric mollusc-obsessed French occultist had discovered quantum entanglement a century before the EPR Paradox?
Another, more recent snail discovery.
A snail was involved in one of my favorite tort cases ever. A warning: this is a very disgusting read.
Halford, what did you think of Hale-Bopp? I thought it was amazing.
Also, the transit of Venus was in Mason & Dixon, so there's that.
For a while I thought about raising snails for food. Get in on the free-range, organic, artisanal racket. But the snails down here aren't the right sort (not to mention the lack of people to sell to in Alabama) and you can't transport live snails across state boundaries because they're agriculture pests. Anyway, it's something I might try when I move next.
Embarrassingly, I recently confused the 18th-century expeditions to observe the transit of Venus with Eddington's observations of the solar eclipse.
I think I have been by that very spot! (In fact I know I have.) Good lord. I had never made the connection until I saw that photo. Well.
Hale-Bopp was cool; I'd still say slightly overrated. But I was drunk for much of 1997.
Nice work Teo. If we keep pushing hard enough for Team Snail, we can all work together to fight Big Astronomy.
347: As long as you kept your balls, you did good for Hale-Bopp.
I'm counting on you to put the Big Hollywood Hype Machine into action on the snail front.
Halford, have you seen the movie Agora?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186830/
Big Astronomy v. Big Ignorance. Guess who wins.
Not the studio on that one (unless it played well in other places). I don't recall hearing about it before.
As a Christian, I'm on team ignorance in the terms of that weird-ass movie (which is totally wrong on the facts btw).
The Big Astronomy news filling up my Facebook feed is the repurposed spy telescope, which is pretty awesome. It's almost like the national security apparatus is useful for something after all! Oh wait, imagine if the money had just been spent on science to begin with.
And I bet neither Mason nor Dixon had anything to do with a mechanical duck.
Much less Clive of fucking India's, fucking, brother-in-law.
Hey, so I was just talking to my mom on the phone. She went to a lecture about Venus yesterday and while talking to the lecturer afterward it turned out he was a good friend of noted Cornell astronomer Steve Squyres (from whom I took an intro astronomy class that was really cool). (I note this to point out that Halford is betraying his alma mater with this anti-astronomy stuff.) She's also going to a viewing of the NASA live feed of the transit tomorrow.
339. A few years ago a British ginger beer manufacturer used Donoghue v Stevenson as the basis for an advertising campaign, and printed the story on its labels, which was fun.
Fentiman's ginger beer is awesome by the way. If you can get it, do so.
By the way, speaking of the difference between British etc, I get five pence from the Nashies every time I remind people that, of course, it wasn't a tort case at all, but rather one of delict. Other fun games include tutting whenever people refer to the plaintiff in the case, and occasionally muttering `but none of it is binding people, it's all just persuasive'.
362.2: Oh boy, it sure is! (Luscombe is also very good.)
The story in 356 makes me think that NRO has some brand new ass-kicking surveillance technology that makes the big satellites obsolete. I hope it's not as mundane as drones.
Jonah Goldberg can kill with a thought and see through the very core of the Earth.
327 will go down in the Moby hall of fame.
Not that I don't appreciate the compliment, but for "Mr. Belvedere"?
369: Obviously Sir Kraab hates Mr. Belvedere even more than she likes you.
In this thread, I liked his 279.
369: It was mostly the total unexpectedness of the reference combined with the supreme idiocy of the show. I would never have come up with "Mr. Belvedere" independently, which makes it funnier than, say, "Diff'rent Strokes." The name "Mr. Belvedere" also has a pleasing rhythm that makes it funnier than "Webster" or "Blossom."
#InadequateExplanationsOfWhyThingsAreFunny
Jesus Christ. My Mom just sent me a long email with transit of Venus stuff. Will the horrors never cease.
Her verdict: "Pretty cool." WRONG.
It was too cloudy here to be worth looking, or at least that was my thought after a quick glance out the window. But I still can't get that damned Police song out of my head. Was it someone here who brought it up?
Hmm. Can't find any evidence that this is the place where someone mentioned it. But just to spread the suffering around, you know: there was a little black spot on the sun today.
375: If it was someone here, I missed it. I mean, before you. Fucker.
I actually liked Mr. Belvedere when I was a kid. Also I liked Sitting Prettywhen I saw it recently.
It was pretty cool. It was like the sun had a tiny blackhead on its forehead.
When I was studying, the hot theory for allergies was a lack of macroparasite challenges to the IgE/mast cell mediated immune response. There's a whole separate immune system set up to kill worms and so on, and now that we don't get worms very much it doesn't have anything to do and gets a bit paranoid and self-destructive. No idea if this is still credible though, but it would explain why allergies are a First World problem and one that has happened along with cleaner houses and fewer, healthier pets.
Worms are a lot worse than allergies, so even if the macroparasite hypothesis is correct, most people are still better off.
Couldn't we innoculate? Minor doses of minor worms aimed at small children who will be grateful in the long run that they can eat fruit?
Also this article I am reading is like a parody. It is by the Ol/in Visiting Fellow of Law and Economics (at the U of Chica/go). The phrase `the argument can be made more formal as follows' appears on page 2, and the first (& rather unnecessary) formula appears a para or two later. There is a Mathematical Appendix, but no Unexamined Assumptions Appendix, sadly. Quite why every other fucker in the world has managed to deal with this issue, since the Star fucking Chamber, without any mathematical trickery-pokery, is not mentioned.
384.1: One week a year, nobody in the school cafeteria washes their hands.
Only someone who had never had a "minor dose" of worms could have written 384.1.
I've seen worms come out of a dog's butt. That was pretty gross.
The dog died of old age years ago. Me? I'm still here but I don't enjoy rice noodles.
And I hope I never get worms; parasites truly terrify me.
