I am appalled at the attitude of some people with their disregard for the wellbeing of children. I can not imagine what goes on in the mind of an airline executive that allows peanuts on their aircraft. And then proudly promotes them.
I can not understand what was going on in the mind of a friend's daughter, a daughter that had flown thousands of miles to look after her sick mother, but a young lady that got highly motivated in her annoyance about being deprived of this traditional airline freebie. I thought about the family that could never go on a foreign holiday because someone might want to stuff peanuts in their face. The dichotomy. So much good, yet a bewildering callousness.
I had a first officer that had such an allergy on his licence. When he told me what the reaction was like, I found it hard to imagine how that simple nut could do that.
About two years later I was to find out just what it was like. Out of the blue. Clacton hospital for a back-stretch, a quick pee and wash hands, then drive home. It was the washing of hands that got me - one of those tippy metal bottles with strong liquid soap. 7 minutes, hands itching like hell. 13 minutes hands fat and red and feeling ill. About three minutes later I was on our Holland (on Sea) marshes and so ill I was having difficulty dialling 999. My lips were purple and face ashen. I had an elephant sitting on my chest. It is impossible to describe how ill I felt. No one place or organ or thing, just ill. I was totally disabled.
Over the next year or so, four doctors quickly jumped to the diagnosis of anaphylaxis. A few years later a young lady in Addenbrooks said it couldn't have been. I would've been dead. Ho hum. It was quite a few years later that I was cleaning the bath with Mr Muscle. I had that feeling. The paramedic was wonderful. 'Stay with me! I'm six minutes away. I opened the front door with perfect clarity of thought but dimming eyesight. On the floor I thought, 'this is not so bad, just let it happen' (I despise old age). I'd grey'd out to the point of blindness and that scared me. I wanted to see. Next thing I'm hooked up to the bloke's machine. 80/40. 40 pulse and temperature dropping. Not bad given my BP is very low anyway.
One thing came of this. The print-outs showed I was not fussing over nowt but still my doctor decried the hand contact idea. 'A nerve agent, perhaps. Not soap.' And so it goes on. Not being able to barely look at a broad spectrum of chemicals, life is one violent oscillation between being 'really good for your age' and feeling like I'm auto-composting.
So, now I've said what it's like if you don't die, back to the subject. One young teenager not that long ago. The passengers had been asked not to open the peanuts. A man four rows ahead thought bollocks to that, and killed the child. He was with his family. It's real. There is not the slightest doubt about these reactions, just sometimes how many things can get you. It gets worse. You don't brave it out and become immune. It's your immune system that's killing you.
Perhaps peanut packet label could contain: Open this and you could kill a child.
I just can't put forward any more argument in a world where such suffering and ensuing grief can be inflicted for a moment's self gratification.