So when recently sparked optimistic headlines after releasing clinical trial results that its allergy product, AR101, would reduce the risks linked to an accidental exposure to peanuts, I received the usual wave of questions from friends, co-workers and my parents: Would you try it? Could this help?
Aimmune, based in Brisbane, California, is just one company eyeing the prize. Childhood peanut allergy diagnoses increased more than 20 percent in the United States from 2010 to 2017. The global market for relief is worth as much as $2 billion. The French drugmaker DBV Technologies is also working to commercialise a peanut allergy patch. Other companies, including industry giant Sanofi, are following their lead.
On 19th October 2018, I made a post about a potential Peanut Vaccine and this current article just reinforces the fact that a very profitable industry has sprung up around peanut and other allergies. There is even a new category of medical specialist, the paediatric allergist, that has arisen to combat this scourge.
Of course nowhere does the 26 year old author of the article under discussion allude to vaccinations as a possible source of her allergy. She simply accepts her condition and has some decidedly odd notions as revealed by this quote:
A colleague's young daughter who was born with multiple allergies used that very treatment, as did a younger cousin of mine who, for the first several years of her life, was allergic to almost everything but fruits and vegetables.That phrase "born with multiple allergies" makes ones eyes pop. She seems to believe that allergies are genetic or the result of exposure in utero (perhaps to peanuts that the mother has ingested). She does allude in the article to Big Pharma profiteering:
Tina Sindher, a pediatric allergist at Stanford University, pointed out that the Aimmune pill is a repackaged, clinically tested version of that homegrown oral therapy many allergists have been using. DBV's peanut patch, Viaskin, to a lesser extent, is the same - more convenient, perhaps, and more regulated, but still a variation on the existing medical approach.
"This concept has been around for a long time," she said. What's new is the addition of labour, standardisation and federal oversight - which companies then say demonstrates increased value.
It highlights a pattern I've noticed from my reporting: Drugmakers develop medication that refines a low-tech remedy, run a clinical trial to secure FDA approval and then sell it at a higher price.
For pharma, it's a logical way to profit.
Logical indeed. She doesn't seem too troubled by the profiteering. Interestingly, she makes the observation that "my twin brother was allergy-free until about a year ago. Adult onset peanut allergy isn't that uncommon)". I haven't heard anything about adult onset peanut allergies. Something to investigate further. Her now ten year old brother however, is allergic to peanuts. The disturbing thing about articles like this is that no suspicion is cast on vaccinations as a possible cause of the allergies. Like autism, auto-immune diseases, ADHD and so on, these are simply afflictions to befall some unlucky children. Who knows why?
