Kevin's Watch

I am a little bit leery of a survey that shows that people who have pets have less allergies than people who do not. I would have thought that that would go without saying, so to speak.

As for why the people in the baltic countries have less allergies I guess that is genetic. I would guess that the swedish gene pool is still fairly homogenous.

I dont think the genepool in sweden is that homogenous since sweden has a lot of emmigrants from many countries (Finland is however said to have a very homogenous genepool due to almost no new genes coming there), so I dont think that is the only answer. It might be the hysterical vaccinations in sweden or perhaps not enough dirt in the environment... No I have no idea acctually. I think the study was a random sample of the population - not chosen for the sake of once having/not having pets. However I suspect they must have taken into account that some people not having pets lived this way due to allergies. Otherwise: yes it would indeed be a very silly study However, I have lots of allergic friends who insist on having pets anyway... so it might be biased in the opposite direction as well. And pets dont explane all the food-allergies that suddenly pops up. Pollution?

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