Going nuts about nuts

Remember peanut butter sandwiches?  Once upon a time, school lunches meant a brown bag or colorful lunchbox with the requisite peanut butter sandwich, carrot sticks or fruit, juice box or thermos, and whatever dessert was most heavily advertised on TV. 
Sadly, our kids will never know the delight of the peanut butter sandwich in their school lunches.  Many schools, including the one where the Things have their Sunday program, are peanut-free.  My darling little Things go to their Sunday program with cream cheese sandwiches.
Now, I am aware that some people have peanut allergies so severe that even being in the same room with a peanut-based product will cause that person to go into anaphylactic shock and die.  But for the love of Planter's, how many people are like that?  And if peanut allergies are truly on the rise, how much of it is our fault?
Years ago, I knew someone who avoided peanuts during pregnancy.  Her rationale was that she didn't want her kids becoming allergic in utero.  Well, I took the opposite approach.  Not only did I eat peanuts and peanut butter while pregnant, I gave my kids peanut butter when they were toddlers.  Guess what?  Neither of them has a peanut allergy. 
In a way, I think the hysteria fuels the rise.  Our environments are so sterile that everything becomes an allergy.  By avoiding peanuts, we may be turning them into a pathogen through lack of exposure.

Capitalism and healthcare--a match NOT made in Heaven

Recently, there's been a lot of talk about how each candidate will handle healthcare.  Mitt Romney's plan is to let the market dictate healthcare costs.  This is not a good idea.
1. Unlike cars, timeshares, or even the Adam Smith standby of eggs, people do not buy increasing amounts of healthcare simply because there's a drop in price.  When was the last time a hospital offered a sale on casts and splints?  Or penicillin?  No facility would do it because IT DOESN'T WORK!  No one will line up to take advantage of such a discount.  People only buy healthcare as needed.  The only time affordability becomes an issue is when consumers delay or avoid buying necessary treatments because they can't afford it.  These non-consumers then face either a reduced quality of life, or they die.
2. Unlike food, clothing or housing, substituting cheaper forms of healthcare doesn't always work.  Can't afford a house?  Rent a smaller apartment.  It serves the same purpose.  Same thing with groceries.  If chicken is on sale this week, you'll buy it instead of beef.  Or, you'll buy eggs or beans.  However, there are few alternatives to open-heart surgery.  Even certain medications must be given in their brand-name form, as patients can be sensitive or allergic to an additive in the generic.
3. Market forces dictate that companies produce that which is the most profitable, not always the most necessary.  This explains why there are constantly new medications for acid-reflux disease, while cancer (less common but far more deadly) is still being treated with the same radiation and chemotherapy which have been used for decades despite their horrific and well-documented side effects.
4. Any market that exists outside of an economics textbook has a fair amount of collusion.  This can take many forms when it comes to healthcare, such as all health insurance companies fixing premiums while denying care for pre-existing conditions, to pharmaceutical companies paying their competitors to keep generic versions of newly off-patent medications off the market.  It's reprehensible, but it's all legal.
For a long time, we've let the market dictate healthcare, and the results are a mess.  It's time to investigate alternatives.

The penis and the germ

Recently, here in New York, there has been a great deal of discussion about circumcision.  Specifically, the need to regulate and/or ban metzitzah b'peh.
For the uninitiated, metzitzh b'peh is a procedure that dates at least as far back as the Gemara.  After the infant is cut, the mohel uses his mouth to stop the bleeding and draw out any stray blood.  Yeah.  Ick.  Gross-out factors aside, there are those who would argue that a bris performed without metztzah b'peh is invalid.  And the Board of Health is concerned about this little procedure because infants have been coming down with herpes--which the Board has linked to metztzah b'peh.  Of course, those on the side of metztzah b'peh argue that the chances of catching herpes from a mohel are impossible or at least very small.
Pardon me while I get all post-modern, but I don't think so.  OK, in the Gemara nothing was understood about germ theory.  Nowadays, we stop the bleeding with sterile sutures, not saliva.
Consider, if you will, the penis.

The human penis is rich with blood vessels.  Blood flow is what causes the physical effects of arousal, colloquially known as an erection, woody, or hard-on.  And these blood vessels, like all others, flow to and from the heart.  Should anything get into those blood vessels, they have a one-way ticket to a mean infection.
Now consider the germ.
Herpes simplex is caused by a virus.  Viruses, unlike bacteria, are not true cells.  They are simply bundles of DNA.  Scientists are not even sure how to classify them.  And they cannot be destroyed by antibiotics.  Herpes simplex is a particularly vicious little bug that has, at this time, no known cure.  Now, in an adult, it manifests itself as sores on either the mouth or genitals.  In the mouth, these are commonly known as cold sores.  However, to an 8-day-old infant whose idea of immunity is whatever got handed down in Mommy's colostrum (and G-d help the bottle-fed, who don't get all their mother's antibodies), herpes simplex can cause brain damage and death. 
So now you have a mohel placing his saliva (which is filled with bacteria anyway, even without the herpes virus) on an open wound, on an organ filled with blood vessels, on a fragile newborn.  Do you want to take the Vegas odds that everything will be fine?