Jason Behrmann

Ethical principles as a guide in implementing policies for the management of food allergies in schools.

Food allergy in children is a growing public health problem that carries a significant risk of anaphylaxis such that schools and child care facilities have enacted emergency preparedness policies for anaphylaxis and methods to prevent the inadvertent consumption of allergens. However, studies indicate that many facilities are poorly prepared to handle the advent of anaphylaxis and policies for the prevention of allergen exposure are missing essential components. Furthermore, certain policies are inappropriate because they are blatantly discriminatory. This article aims to provide further guidance for school health officials involved in creating food allergy policies. By structuring policies around ethical principles of confidentiality and anonymity, fairness, avoiding stigmatization, and empowerment, policy makers gain another method to support better policy making. The main ethical principles discussed are adapted from key values in the bioethics and public health ethics literatures and will be framed within the specific context of food allergy policies for schools.

Looking ahead at the potential benefits of biotechnology-derived allergen therapeutics

While biotechnology-derived allergen therapeutics show promise in improving the safety of immunotherapy, they may prove to have additional benefits in comparison to conventional allergenic extracts that deserve commentary. These issues range from product stability and compatibility to medical practice issues, which will be the focus of this article.

Have Technological Innovations Made Unethical the Use of Human Subjects for Potency Assessments of Allergenic Extracts

Since the 1990s, production batch consistency and the standardization of potency units of allergenic extracts used in allergen immunotherapy has been the focus of drug regulatory reforms and much academic debate. This article seeks to expand the current debate by identifying ethical arguments in support of regulatory reforms to eliminate the use of human subjects for potency assessments of these therapeutics. Although human subject testing is the best method to assess biological potency, it also exposes subjects to significant risks, risks that ought to be avoided as much as possible. Innovation in in vitro immunoassays will soon provide feasible alternatives to biological assessments. This article argues that the allergology community must now consider eliminating human subjects in standardization and potency assessment methods as an ethical imperative in regulatory reforms. Moreover, the allergology community will soon need to reach consensus regarding when in vitro tests are “good enough” in replicatin...