Solved: Mystery of the sex-change toads

[Telperion]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/solved-mystery-of-the-sexchange-toads-866497.html

American scientists are about to publish research showing that male toads on intensively farmed land are changing sex. And the study may provide a clue as to why the world's amphibians are disappearing faster than any class of species since the dinosaur.

The researchers, from the University of Florida, studied one of the toughest and most aggressive of all amphibian species – the cane toad, Bufo marinus, whose indestructibility has caused it to become a plague over much of Australia – only to find that it is being, literally, unmanned.

This latest info seems to be almost directly related to something that surfaced some years ago. Intensively farmed land and weed killer would seem to go hand and hand and there has already been a well documented link between the massive amounts of farming chemicals in our environment and sex changing behaviors/mechanisms in frogs. IMO, it's definitely food for thought when contemplating the origins of those wild San Francisco parade floats lol. There have already been some studies linking hormonal changes in the womb to later sexual preference. How sensitive is a developing human fetus to these same chemicals that turn Freddie frog into Fanny frog? The real extent of the effect of this weed killer Atrazine (and perhaps other unknown purposely administered chemicals?) on humans would make an interesting area of study imo.

Because hormones, not genes, regulate the structure of reproductive organs, vertebrates are particularly vulnerable to their environment during early development...

The controversy began five years ago, when a company called Syngenta asked Hayes to run safety tests on its product atrazine. Syngenta is the world's largest agribusiness company, with $6.3 billion in sales of crop-related chemicals and other products in 2001 alone. Atrazine is the most widely used weed killer in the United States....

Atrazine is a synthetic chemical that belongs to the triazine class of herbicides. Its technical name is 2-chloro- 4-ethylamino- 6-isopropylamine- 1,3,5- triazine. In the United States, farmers apply around 60 million pounds of atrazine a year. Nearly all of it eventually degrades in the environment, but usually not before it's reapplied. The EPA permits up to three parts per billion of atrazine in drinking water. Every year, as waters drain down the Mississippi River basin, they accumulate 1.2 million pounds of atrazine before reaching the Gulf of Mexico..."It's hard to find an atrazine-free environment," Hayes says. In Switzerland, where it is banned, atrazine occurs at one part per billion, even in the Alps. Hayes says that's still enough to turn some male frogs into females.

http://discovermagazine.com/2003/feb/featfrogs

 

[mcb]

I could tell you a few things about "sex change," but it wouldn't be relevant here. Some of my friends participate in those San Francisco parades, though, so don't be laughing too hard.

Here is a report of a warning published last year in the LA Times, "Scientists warn of toxic risk to fetuses:" _http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/25/nation/na-fetuses25. It echoed something we have often heard:

Many governmental agencies and industry groups, particularly in the United States, have said there is no or little human evidence to support concerns about most toxic residue in air, water, food and consumer products. About 80,000 chemicals are registered in the United States.

Psychopathy, anyone?

I have personally observed a great deal of gender and sexual variance, and while I believe that most of it represents a background that has existed throughout history, individuals vary greatly and it is quite possible that there is ample evidence of the effects of endocrine disrupters on humans within the gender variant and intersex populations, that goes unnoticed by and large in these largely ignored groups of people.

I noticed it because I am one of them. I am not sure what happened to me. I think it was an endorine disrupter, but I think that it was pharmaceutical, not environmental. Millions of pregnant women (nobody seems to know exactly how many) were given the synthetic estrogen DES between the late 1940's and the early 1970's, and I suspect that my mother was one of them, although there is no way for me to be certain now.

The effects varied depending upon the dosage and when it was taken. It was inadequately tested before it went on sale, and was never shown to be effective for the things for which it was prescribed, such as preventing miscarriages, although it did prove to be effective for producing birth defects. We may never know very much about the effects, though, because for some reason they weren't studied all that much. A link with "transgenderism" was acknowledged, but it is quite possible that that greatly understates the magnitude of the problem. By doing a few limited studies, publishing those results and repeating the "findings" often, and by impeding funding for other studies, and criticizing and ridiculing people who do their own independent studies, you can hide a great deal. (Sound vaguely familiar?)

That large scale introduction of an endocrine disrupter into the human population could, I imagine, make it more difficult to assess the effects of environmental contaminants. One thing that can be learned from it, though, is that huge "problems" of this nature can be covered up effectively.

 

[Telperion]

I could tell you a few things about "sex change," but it wouldn't be relevant here. Some of my friends participate in those San Francisco parades, though, so don't be laughing too hard.

Here is a report of a warning published last year in the LA Times, "Scientists warn of toxic risk to fetuses:" _http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/25/nation/na-fetuses25. It echoed something we have often heard:

Many governmental agencies and industry groups, particularly in the United States, have said there is no or little human evidence to support concerns about most toxic residue in air, water, food and consumer products. About 80,000 chemicals are registered in the United States.

Psychopathy, anyone?

I have personally observed a great deal of gender and sexual variance, and while I believe that most of it represents a background that has existed throughout history, individuals vary greatly and it is quite possible that there is ample evidence of the effects of endocrine disrupters on humans within the gender variant and intersex populations, that goes unnoticed by and large in these largely ignored groups of people.

I noticed it because I am one of them. I am not sure what happened to me. I think it was an endorine disrupter, but I think that it was pharmaceutical, not environmental. Millions of pregnant women (nobody seems to know exactly how many) were given the synthetic estrogen DES between the late 1940's and the early 1970's, and I suspect that my mother was one of them, although there is no way for me to be certain now.

The effects varied depending upon the dosage and when it was taken. It was inadequately tested before it went on sale, and was never shown to be effective for the things for which it was prescribed, such as preventing miscarriages, although it did prove to be effective for producing birth defects. We may never know very much about the effects, though, because for some reason they weren't studied all that much. A link with "transgenderism" was acknowledged, but it is quite possible that that greatly understates the magnitude of the problem. By doing a few limited studies, publishing those results and repeating the "findings" often, and by impeding funding for other studies, and criticizing and ridiculing people who do their own independent studies, you can hide a great deal. (Sound vaguely familiar?)

That large scale introduction of an endocrine disrupter into the human population could, I imagine, make it more difficult to assess the effects of environmental contaminants. One thing that can be learned from it, though, is that huge "problems" of this nature can be covered up effectively.

I completely agree with your last sentence. What's worrisome is the extent to which we may all be guinea pigs and not even realize it. As someone who has gone through my own wrangling over sexual identity (though not as it pertains to gender) this is an issue near to me and I did not mean to come across as flippant in my mention of the San Fran parades. I simply find it humorous to imagine that one group of "undesirables", the sexual and gender minorities of this nation, could very well have come into being as a direct result of corporate negligence and or purposeful tampering with our endocrine systems in some (or many?) cases.

 

[mcb]

Here is a recently posted blog about DES, endocrine disrupters, and cover-ups:

_http://gidreform.wordpress.com/2008/12/06/des%e2%80%99s-daughters-neglected-evidence-of-prenatal-gender-development/

While DES wasn't exactly an "enviromental" endocrine disrupter, it can tell us something about how endocrine disrupters affect humans.