What can we do?
Allergy could be seen as an ‘integrated illness’ – that is, it’s likely that factors outside the control of the individual sufferer will be in play. So what can we do as a society to try to halt the rise of allergy?
Some enthusiasts for the hygiene hypothesis have suggested a pig in every household – which sounds like more of a winning suggestion when you realise how little research there has been into better alternatives.
In 1998, the government advised people with food allergies to avoid giving peanuts to their very young children. Now there are suggestions that this may increase rather than reduce the risk of severe peanut allergy. The researchers simply don’t know.
The House of Lords’ call for a greater number of allergy centres in every Primary Care Trust region is an excellent start. They also praise the work of allergy charities such as Allergy UK whose own work and nurse advisors often complement the work of the health service.
But the central plank of dealing with allergies has to be working out the causes using long term studies. This is going to be hugely complex. Environmental factors which cause little harm on their own appear to combine to sometimes deadly effect for a growing number of people in society. The Medical Research Council is due to undertake a review of clinical immunology shortly and we would urge them to make the study of environmental influences on allergy a high priority.
Political will to find the causes will also be important. As the very long debate on food additives indicates, there has been a history of slowness to carry out trials on the allergy epidemic that may have commercially unpopular results – and to act on those results when they are finally revealed. A joined up approach, especially in search of the environmental roots of allergy, is vital. A cross-government group including the Food Standards Agency, the Health Protection Agency, the Commission on Environmental Pollution, the Environment Agency, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) would together be able to create a bigger picture.