The rising fear of allergies prompted parents and doctors to adopt avoidance strategies. This avoidance, however, was the biological cause of the allergies, creating a vicious feedback loop where fear led to actions that generated more of the thing being feared, thus reinforcing the initial fear and behavior.

In 1901, Prince Albert of Monaco funded an expedition for scientists to study Portuguese man o' war venom. Expecting to create immunity, they instead found that a second, smaller dose could trigger a fatal reaction. They named this phenomenon anaphylaxis, or "anti-protection," forming the basis of allergy science.

The rise in consumer cleaning products and spick-and-span households reduces our exposure to diverse microbes. According to the hygiene hypothesis, this lack of immune system training can make our bodies less robust and more prone to overreacting to benign substances like food proteins, thus fostering allergies.

Despite strong observational evidence from Israel suggesting early allergen exposure was beneficial, medical guidelines didn't change. It required the "gold standard" of a randomized controlled trial (the LEAP study) to definitively prove the link and force institutions to formally reverse their harmful avoidance recommendations.

The rise of 'helicopter parenting'—driven by high-profile but statistically rare media stories—has stripped childhood of unstructured, challenging experiences. Without facing minor physical and social risks (like playground fights), younger generations perceive intellectual disagreements as severe threats, leading to higher anxiety and depression.

Regulating technology based on anticipating *potential* future harms, rather than known ones, is a dangerous path. This 'precautionary principle,' common in Europe, stifles breakthrough innovation. If applied historically, it would have blocked transformative technologies like the automobile or even nuclear power, which has a better safety record than oil.

The dramatic decline in childhood peanut allergies offers a clear victory for public health policy. A 2015 reversal in official guidance—from avoidance to encouraging early exposure for infants—is directly credited with a 40% overall reduction, demonstrating how evidence-based policy can rapidly change health outcomes.

Other scientific fields operate under a "precautionary principle," avoiding experiments with even a small chance of catastrophic outcomes (e.g., creating dangerous new lifeforms). The AI industry, however, proceeds with what Bengio calls "crazy risks," ignoring this fundamental safety doctrine.

Dr. Gideon Lack noticed Israeli children had tenfold fewer peanut allergies than UK children. The key difference was their early and frequent consumption of Bamba, a peanut-flavored snack. This simple cross-cultural observation sparked the research that eventually debunked the prevailing medical advice of allergen avoidance.