Arachis hypogaea, the peanut plant
“My God!”, said Mr S to the radiographer, “this place is filthy; it’s covered in red ants.” Mr S had been given an iodine preparation to prepare him for his CT scan. “My God,” replied the radiographer, you’re allergic to the iodine”. This wasn’t too much of a surprise because Mr S, a surgeon by profession, was also allergic to crab, also of marine origin.
There are some unusual allergens, at least for a few individuals: conference pears, lettuce, kiwi fruit, shellfish, salmon, cucumber, even the simple cooked chicken for some.
However, peanut allergy is probably the most distressing, especially for parents of young children.
We are told that in the 20th century there has been “an explosion in allergies” which have “quadrupled since 1997.” Why? It is not genetic, according to one expert, suggesting the cause is environmental, like diesel! However, allergies have increased in line with other auto-immune diseases like arthritis and diabetes. But correlation does not imply a related cause.
What could have caused such an explosion of allergies, especially since 1995? It has to be something that arouses an immune reaction. How about vaccines? This is the argument put forward by The Doctor Within, and is well worth reading.
I know at least one child who was allergic to peanuts and who was not vaccinated, which seems to contradict the vaccine theory, unless there are more than one cause.
But what is interesting, in defence of the vaccine hypothesis, is the fact that members of the Amish community are less susceptible to peanut and other allergies than the general population. According to Allergybureau.net, “Only 7% of Amish children test positive for common allergies compared to over 50% in the general U. S. population.” It is noteworthy that the Amish are far less vaccinated than the general population.
It is also significant that in 1991 the Hepatitis B vaccine became a universal recommendation, and in 1996 varicella was introduced. Also of note, in 1995 a vaccination schedule of multiple vaccines was introduced. Well, did kids’ immune system thank the powers-that-be for that. . . ? Dr Tim O’Shea, at The Doctor Within, notes that a precursor to this assault on children’s immune systems was a doubling in vaccines from 20 in 1980 to 40 in 1995 and 68 in 2011. (I’ve already argued that the MMR vaccine is the likely cause of the pandemic of childhood asthma).
disproven medical treatment – isopathy
The approach of some in the medical and pharmaceutical industry to deal with peanut allergy is the disproven method of isopathy. Isopathy is treating symptoms with what is believed to be the same (iso) cause. This is not a new approach – Chinese medicine used it a thousand years ago, which they called variolation, to try to prevent smallpox – but is mistaken, as I have explained before in a post Nature uses homeopathy not isopathy. It is the fallacious idea behind modern vaccines, fallacious as the millions who acquired Covid despite multiple vaccines now know from experience.
Instead of curing the allergy, medicine focuses on ‘desensitising’ the patient with daily doses of minute amounts (sound like homeopathy…) of peanut.
Patients have become less sensitive, at least moderately so and over the short-term, but there are side-effects, including anaphylaxis, but it is not a cure, being suppressive, and the patient has to continue the ‘treatment’ daily for years, maybe for life!
This approach is instinctual, not rationally based on principle or experience. For example, in one study at UCC, infants under three have been experimented on with a peanut patch left on the skin for 22 hours a day for the best part of a year.
Why a constant dose? Why a year? It would be better to give a dose, let the body react and calm down, then repeat, but who said constantly stimulating the vital forces is the correct way? The results have not been earth-shattering. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has evaluated the AR101 daily dose for infants age 1-3 is not proven as beneficial for this patient group.
In children age 4-7, treatment, called Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) is in the form of a daily capsule sprinkled on food, is known as Palforzia. It was originally produced by Aimmune Therapeutics, then bought by Nestle for $2.6 billion, who then sold it to Stellargenes who discontinued the drug at the end of July 2026 due to poor commercial performance, the same reason Nestle had off-loaded it. This is despite Palforzia being the only FDA approved peanut treatment.
proper treatment – homeopathy
A mother once said her child who was allergic to peanuts would have a reaction even when putting one of his fingers into an empty peanut pack. How does science explain this? The child hadn’t consumed any peanut. The source of the allergy was exogenous, i.e. external to the child and his immune system.
Another mother testified that her child was so allergic to eggs, he would react when an egg was cracked at the other end of the room. How would science explain that? If science can’t explain that cause, then it will not cure that reaction. This reaction is no different from the reaction to a peanut that is consumed. So how to cure the allergy?
The cause is not the peanut, but the reaction to it. It is a re-action, only a living body can react, meaning, as Dr Samuel Hahnemann explained, disease is dynamic, therefore the treatmetn has to be dynamic, not static and materialistic. In his footnote to section eight of the Organon, he states:
This he maintains partly from mortification at the progress made by homoeopathy to the benefits of mankind, partly because he still holds thoroughly material notions respecting disease, which he is still unable to regard as a state of being of the organism wherein it is dynamically altered by the morbidly deranged vital force, as an altered state of health, but he views the disease as a something material, which after the cure is completed, may still remain lurking in some corner in the interior of the body, in order, some day during the most vigorous health, to burst forth at its pleasure with its material presence! So dreadful is still the blindness of the old pathology! No wonder that it could only produce a system of therapeutics which is solely occupied with scouring out the poor patient.
Unfortunately Hahnemann, writing in the early 19th century, could be writing for today’s allergists! He further explains disease being dynamic in section 11:
When a person falls ill, it is only this spiritual, self acting (automatic) vital force, everywhere present in his organism, that is primarily deranged by the dynamic influence upon it of a morbific agent inimical to life; it is only the vital force, deranged to such an abnormal state, that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations, and incline it to the irregular processes which we call disease; for, as a power invisible in itself, and only cognizable by its effects on the organism, its morbid derangement only makes itself known by the manifestation of disease in the sensations and functions of those parts of the organism exposed to the senses of the observer and physician, that is, by morbid symptoms, and in no other way can it make itself known.
After all, the dead don’t get sick, only the living. Therefore, the treatment must be dynamic, or attenuated and dynamized, as per Hahnemann’s discovery.
A dynamic, vital medicine, the only type appropriate for a dynamic disease in a vital, living being for Hahnemann is a minute dose of an attenuated medicine (a medicine that is also shown to cause similar symptoms to those of the patient’s reaction. I’ll explain this second principle of prescribing later).
The minute dose is not unusual to these allergists, because they are using minute doses, though not as minute as Hahnemann taught. Hahnemann’s doses were diluted to the point of no material content. This again is not – or should not be! – unusual to medics because vaccines are made by the same process, known as attenuation. This process was plagiarised by Koch and Louis Pasteur from Hahnemann, and is used today to prepare vaccines.
The second principle of prescribing for Hahnemann – who had principles; a rational basis for prescribing based on experience – is that of symptom similarity. This means the symptoms produced by a medicine must be similar to the symtoms for which it is being prescribed. Again, this should not be unfamiliar to medics; mercury causes tooth decay, it’s used for tooth decay; Epilem treats epilepsy but causes convulsions; Tamoxifen causes cancer but is a treatment for cancer, and so on, and so on.
How does this apply to peanut allergy? Well, if one wants to continue using the unsafe and unproven isopathic approach, they could attenuate they could dilute the peanut even further. However, it is not a simple matter of diluting but of tritration and succussion also.
But to treat safely, based on proven principles, empirical testing and experience, the rational and scientific method is to use a substance known to produce symptoms of allergy, including anaphyllaxis. One that comes to mind is the venom of the bee sting. It is likely to be safer as they patient is unlikely to be so sensitive to it and therefore suffer some of the side-effects of it.
Another possibility, inadvertently suggested by one allergy expert, is the protein found in the birch tree which is similar to that of the peanut protein.
Another area worth investigating as a source of treatment are other members of the leguminosae/fabaceae family, i.e. cognates of the peanut plant, taxonomically known as Arachis hypogaea. At least one, or some, are bound to have a similarity in their symptomatology.
Photo credit: Wikimedia