As allergic reactions to everything from peanuts to poodles become ever more prevalent we are all likely to find ourselves sitting on the horns of some uncomfortable dilemmas. Two recent stories, culled from John Scott’s’ latest news’ files, illustrate what I mean…
Story 1. Cat Allergy versus ‘emotional support’ – courtesy of the Calgary Herald
Air Canada is currently struggling to find away to accommodate both those
passengers who are allergic to cats and those who need to keep their cat with them when travelling for emotional support – both classed as persons with disablities and therefore protected by anti-discrimination legislation.
The Canadian Transport Agency has required Air Canada to either ban cats from the aircraft cabins or to provde a five row buffer zone and a cat-free zone with upgraded air circulation fro those suffering from severe cat allergies – the latter being feasible in some of Air Canada’s planes but not in its large fleet of Dash-8s. This may be tiresome for the airline, but is not unmanageable. Well, not until a pasenger who travels with a cat as emotional support wants to get on the same plane.
But while the cat allergic passenger would presumably have warned the airline of his/her need for a cat-free area, the person with the ‘emotional support’ cat does not need to provide any advance notice to carrier and can just show up for the flight and and present a note from the certified mental-health professional who is treating them – and cannot be refused a seat on the flight.
Bizarre though this may seem to those of us who are neither cat allergic nor in need of feline support, it presents a serious problem to both of the travellers and to the airline…
Story 2. Mother of defendant not allowed into court room as she was wearing perfume – courtesy of the Quad-City Times
In this case Babette Liby and her mother were not allowed to enter the courtroom where her son was being sentenced on a drug charge (and therefore even to see him before he was taken away to prison) because they were wearing perfume and the court reporter had an allergy to perfume.
While expressing sympathy for the court reporter (Mrs Liby said that she fully understood allergic’s reporter’s position as members of her own family had to carry Epipens for an allergy to bee stings) she felt that her right to see her son had been violated by not being allowed to enter the court room.
As the journalist who wrote the piece commented, ‘in this case an individual’s right to not be placed in peril in her workplace is overriding others’ right to be present in her workplace.’ Is this right?
It is the same dilemma which is faced by schools which have peanut allergic pupils – and which ones do not these days? Are the non-peanut-allergic children’s rights being violated by being prevented from eating a harmless (to them), nutritious and much loved food merely because it may cause harm to another child? While no parent would, I am sure, willingly wish an anaphylactic reaction on an allergic child, and while one can fully appreciate the concern that having peanuts in a school setting must cause to the parents of peanut allergic children (let alone about the children themselves) there is a perfectly valid point of principle here.
To move it out of the world of allergy, the same argument is deployed by smokers wanting to know why their freedom to enjoy themselves as they choose (eg by smoking) should be restricted by those who do not wish to smoke. In the case of smoking, the evidence of the harm to the population at large done by smoking does now seem sufficiently robust to justify the arbitrary curtailment of smokers’ rights. But in the case of the cats, you have a much more equal balance of potential harm – while in the case of the perfume and the court reporter you have a clash of two entirely different rights (the mother’s right to see her son and the perfume-allergic reporter’s right to continue to do her job and have her workplace accommodate her allergy). And who is to adjudicate on which is the more important?
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