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.
Mylan manufactured demand by lobbying for laws requiring EpiPens in schools, running "disease awareness" ads to heighten fear, and creating a free school training program specifically for their device. This created economic "lock-in," making it difficult for cheaper alternatives to compete and securing a captive market.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, operating on the precautionary principle, advised parents to delay introducing allergenic foods. This lack of early exposure prevented immune systems from developing tolerance, directly leading to a massive increase in food allergies and creating a disastrous feedback loop.
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.
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.
Facing public outrage, Mylan offered a "generic" EpiPen at half price. However, due to convoluted drug pricing economics, this move quelled the controversy while allowing the company to earn nearly the same amount of profit per device. It exposed the illusion of consumer savings in a broken system.
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.
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.