Thread: This burns my bacon! More nanny state bureaucratic nonesense.

Originally Posted by ReardenSteel

I guess Spock was wrong then, the needs/wants of the few/one outweigh the needs/wants of the many. I'm not saying give the child an epipen and goodluck with that. My question is, where does it end? So one child has a peanut allergy, so does that means the entire school is now peanut free? One child may not eat any pork products because it's against their religion, so does that mean the school bans pork. When did we start catering to the minority?

Precisely the logic that makes it illegal for people to smoke outside at say a beach or a public park. I think it's totally transcended and logical reasoning and has become an issue of control and progressively making us a country who is agreeable to having every breath we draw regulated by our benevlolent government. Maybe I'm crazy but I didn't know a single kid when I was young who didn't routinely live off a diet of peanut butter and something. Apparently kids back then had a heartier constitution.

Once again, we are flying off into the realm of hyperbole, gentlemen.

If someone is allergic to a bee sting, there's not much you can do but be prepared to react, but when it's a situation you can control, such as not allowing potentially dangerous food to be near the kid, what is wrong with that?

There's a big difference between being overprotective and doing everything possible to make sure your child doesn't come into contact with a substance that is likely to kill him or her. Believe me, I know people with these types of allergies and they take very good care of themselves and have done so for many years, but to expect a kid to do that is a bit much. And to expect other kids in the school to be aware of the allergies of their little friend and steer clear is not fair to the kids.

There's a big difference between "catering to the minority" in the case of their religion or food preferences and helping to lower the risk of death via allergic reaction. It's a very easy risk to eliminate. I mean, come on...giving your kids peanut butter at home and ham or turkey sandwiches at school is not a sign of the apocalypse.

It's just a cost/benefit analysis on the part of parents, administrators, board members, or whoever. Sure peanuts and peanut oil are in lots of foods, but if you can reduce their prevalence by 97% simply by asking parents not to send their kids to school with PB&J sandwiches, it might make sense to do so. As for the kids not learning to take care of themselves, I can speak from experience and say that those kids face more than ample opportunity: birthday parties, restaurant outings, well-meaning mothers of friends, ... the list goes on.

To restate, it all comes down to somebody deciding that reducing a 1 in 10 chance of something *really* bad happening to 1 in 500 is worth asking the rest of the kids to forego PB&J sandwiches at school. If it's that easy, that's all there is to the decision. It makes good fodder for people to huff about on talk radio, but most of those directly involved probably don't mind it so much.