By now, you’ve probably heard this story already:

SAGUENAY, Quebec - A 15-year-old girl with a peanut allergy died after kissing her boyfriend, who had just eaten a peanut butter snack, hospital officials said Monday.

Christina Desforges died in a Quebec hospital Wednesday after doctors were unable to treat her allergic reaction to the kiss the previous weekend.

Desforges, who lived in Saguenay, about 155 miles north of Quebec City, was almost immediately given a shot of adrenaline, a standard tool for treating the anaphylactic shock brought on by a peanut allergy, officials said.

Imagine that. She avoids them her whole life and dies kissing her boyfriend who may or may not have realized what he was doing and the danger he was putting her in. So tragic.

I’ve discussed peanut allergies with a lot of people, though, and we’ve all agreed that we’ve known no one in our lives allergic to peanuts. In fact, I didn’t even know people could be allergic to peanuts until my late teens. I always wondered why we didn’t hear about this when we were kids. This article may finally offer a clue:

Peanut allergies have been rising in recent decades. The reason remains unclear but one study found that baby creams or lotions with peanut oil may cause children to develop allergies later in life.

About 1.5 million Americans are severely allergic to even the smallest trace of peanuts and peanut allergies account for 50 to 100 deaths in the United States each year. Canadian figures were not immediately available.

So basically, there are more cases than there used to be, and there may actually be a scientific reason. Sounds like the idea that the reason viruses are more prevalent because of the perpetual use of anti-bacterial products and the weakening of people’s immune systems from lack of exposure to the bacterial that causes viruses.

Fascinating machine, that human body.

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