Dr. Marty Makary on peanut allergies,

"Well, here's a good example of a recommendation that the establishment put out with such absolutism when really they just made it up. And that was in order to prevent peanut allergies, mothers who are pregnant or lactating, any child zero through three years of old should avoid peanuts 100%, peanut butter in particular.

Peanuts have a choking hazard. So we're talking about peanut butter. it had been done for a long time that you would give an infant at five or six months as soon as they can eat a little bit of peanut butter, maybe a little milk, eggs, and that would, that was kind of a standard, you know, in Africa, they would add a little peanut to the soup that they would drink.

So- They start to get the muse to it. Yeah, their immune system learns it and they tolerate, it's called immune tolerance. But in their hubris, the American Academy of Pediatrics had this committee and they said, total peanut abstinence in the first three years of life in order to prevent peanut allergies. They had it perfectly backwards.

It ignited the modern day peanut allergy epidemic. A few years into that recommendation, the peanut allergy rate soared and the establishment started freaking out and thinking, oh, what are what's going on here? And they concluded, anti-science mothers are not following our recommendation. We need to double down and increase compliance.

And they skyrocketed and we saw a new type of peanut allergy which is the ultra severe anaphylactic reaction showing up. A kid can be near a peanut or peanut butter and have trouble breathing. That's a real thing, we shouldn't mock it.

This is by and large an epidemic that was ignited by this hubris and then everyone played along the bandwagon thinking, the group thinking medicine, the National Institute of allergy and infectious diseases, NIAID. They played along, they sort of firmed up the recommendations, supported.

15 years later, just eight years ago, the study finally got published, a basic simple study randomizing kids to the two approaches, early peanut butter exposure, age five months, six months, versus abstinence. And there was a massive difference within a few years, massive, eightfold.

Why not do that study initially? Yeah, right. Instead of just rule by opinion. And this is where we get ourselves in huge trouble."