EVOLUTION OF EVIL: Are spats allergies next?

Though peanut allergies are ominously on the rise, Laura Bennett, writing in The Daily Beast while wearing sunglasses, questions whether over-anxious parents are demonizing the nut for honorable reasons:

Our children are now being taught that a classmate might die right in front of them if they bring PB&J for lunch. Where were these kids when we were in school?

A Massachusetts school district recently evacuated a school bus of ten-year-old passengers after a stray peanut was found on the floor. not an unclaimed backpack that could contain a bomb, not a mysterious white powdered substance—a peanut. There are parents with legitimate concerns, but I also believe there are a few people needlessly involved in the peanut panic. Here in New York City, the land of Alpha Parenting, every now and then I encounter a parent who is determined to have a child who is special in some way—any way—that keeps them dependent. What better way to have a child strapped to you for life than to have a life threatening allergy. It’s a kind of Munchausen’s by Peanut.”

(via Project Rungay—thanks to Marjorie Ingall, executive director of unhinged paranoia at the PBH Institute on Montague Street)