I've got lots of hypotheses, none of them very charitable. :?
The primary hypothesis I have is that we're getting more allergies, especially anaphylactic ones like peanut, because there are more folk with those recessive genes breeding now than before. More carriers mean more births, which means more people with the problem. Then, too, with the "shrinking" of the world, more and more folk are being exposed to such things than ever before. It's an awful combination to be sure.
I know I shouldn't be alive. I suffered from tons of allergies and should have died in childhood from croup and bronchitis. Instead, I survived to breed and pass on the faulty genetics. I've done my best to shield and protect my girls from the risks of developing allergies, but it's in the genes and the genes will tell. Gwynne has already been hospitalized for a bad bout of croup, so who knows if she's going to end up with asthma like her mom, y'know?
Then, too, think of all of the infertility treatments out there now. I can't help but think that there's a biological reason for fertility difficulties; a reason that some people are fertile, but not together. Y'know?
Then there are the environmental agents that are slowly and surely poisoning us all - xenoestrogens, toxic chemicals, vaccinations, sterile/aseptic living, UV light changes, a 24-hour world, noise pollution, light pollution, yadda, yadda, yadda. They're all contributors. They've changed the world in which our bodies' immune systems' work best. There's too little to truly fight, so the immune system fights what it can -
anything foreign.
I can liken it to Rambo:First Blood, y'know, the original Rambo. The guy was trained and honed to fight and kill. In the appropriate environment - the battlefield - he was a formidable opponent and did his job very well. When he was put into an less hostile, unsuitable environment where survival was no longer such a threat, however, he wigged out and started attacking harmless folk that tripped his fight-trigger. His skill was no less, but was inappropriately applied. The same kind of thing is happening to the immune system of allery sufferers. :?
Of course, this is just conjecture based on things I read. It could just be a load of hooey as more research is done. :wink: