Birth control: The new pollutant

[Michie]

You've already heard about the pregnant man. But what about the she-man fish? "Intersex" freshwater fish are all the rage. But unlike the pregnant man, these scaly androgynes didn't ask to take on the sexual characteristics of both genders: humans are doing it to them. (Where's the freedom to choose?!) And the reason these fish are doubling up could make hash of orthodoxies dating back to the sexual revolution.

Estrogen pollution from contraceptive and abortion pills could be the culprit behind these piscine switcheroos. And thus the two holiest of holies for the left may be on a collision course. It promises to be quite the show.

Starting a few years ago, in the Potomac River, male largemouth bass started popping up with eggs in their sex organs. The deformity usually makes reproduction impossible, ultimately hurting the fish population. Many scientists believe the problem could stem from hormones and other pollutants flushed into our nation's waterways from sewage-treatment plants.

In his book "The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About -- Because They Helped Cause Them" (Regnery, 2008), Iain Murray writes: "Why don't we have more outcries about hormones, and campaigns to save the fish populations? Why aren't environmentalists lobbying on Capitol Hill to keep these chemicals from being dumped into our rivers?" He answers his own question: "Maybe because the source of these chemicals is not some corporate polluter, but something a little more dear to the Left: human birth-control pills, morning-after pills, and abortion pills."

Continued- http://townhall.com/columnists/KathrynJeanLopez/2008/08/01/birth_control_the_new_pollutant

 

[Michie]

Gah.

 

[2Cosmic2Charlie]

Look, this article is complete off the wall.

There are female hormones in a lot of stuff:

herbicides

insecticides

Animal feed

Feed stock vitamins

There are literally hundreds of chemicals used everyday that contain female hormones are dumped by chemical companies into the water supply.

And liberals complain about it everyday.

Where is this broad coming from ?

And another thing (before the dear reader wastes time reading the dreck) the only quote the women sources is one from Fox Mulder (a fictional character from the paranoid '90s TV series "The X-files")


Miche, I love you like a cyber sister but you're better than this internet slop.

 

[Fantine]

I guess Kathryn Lopez didn't do her research.

One of the leading environmental voices for clean water in the country, RFK, Jr., has also noted that there are hormones in the water supply, and he is doing far more to combat the problem than falsely attributing the problem to birth control pills.

Here is what Kennedy thinks:

One of Smithfield’s Utah factories houses 850,000 pigs and produces more faecal waste than New York City’s 8.5 million people. In pig factories waste falls through slatted floors into a basement, where it is periodically flushed into giant outdoor pits called lagoons. While cities must treat sewage before discharging it, Smithfield’s meat factories just dump their liquid manure untreated onto fields, which quickly become saturated. It then seeps into groundwater or is carried by rain into nearby streams or lakes. Waste from these factories contains a witch’s brew of nearly 400 dangerous substances – including heavy metals, antibiotics, hormones, deadly biocides, pesticides and dozens of disease-causing viruses and microbes. Antibiotic residues in this lethal soup foster the growth of deadly ‘super bugs’ – disease organisms that are immune to human antibiotics. Polluted water supplies Millions of tons of faecal stew produced by pig-meat factories have poisoned the groundwater in 34 US states with deadly nitrates that can kill infants and cause severe mental retardation in children.

http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=387

How convenient of Lopez not to mention the 399 other toxic substances that pig and meat factories have dumped into our water supply, preferring to take an opportunity to speculate about a false reason why fish contain female hormones.

 

[WarriorAngel]

I heard about this dilemma a few years ago. [hormones]
Altho pigs in the wild [boars] as well as deer, raccoon, and a variety of critters probably put their wastes in the waterways quite frequently, yet none of them are putting synthesized hormones into the water.

And altho it is rather disturbing to hear animal waste is dumped in - in large quantities...
In maybe smaller areas, i am somewhat sure that nature itself [re: fecal waste] is more than capable of cleaning up what nature provides.

Or the oceans would be just brown from all the sea critters... as well as rivers and lakes from the fishies.

But the problem with synthesized hormones [unnatural and seperate from nature] is that it is causing the fish to become possibly sterile...which will reduce their numbers...if not make them extinct.

Also the pesticides or antibiotics might be a concern. But how much residual effect is left from the time the pigs digestion has used them?
OR are they a seperate issue?
Also, hormones are probably greater in number than the quantities from waste which is after the body has had its use and or filtering it thru.

I wonder what the actual percentage is on all the substances.

It then seeps into groundwater or is carried by rain into nearby streams or lakes.

I know that we are supposed to get our well water tested every few years for substances.
The crop sprays concern me much more than waste - only because we are out in the woods [sorta] with lots of animals. SO i trust that God made things perfectly enough to filter out natural impurities [thru His own filtration system] which are rocks and dirt.

I think when the percentages show anything very high, then things need to be re-evaluated.

Yet - if the fish die because they cannot reproduce, it will be pretty bad.
Very bad...
And birth control is not even something necessary to have.

 

[Gwendolyn]

There's hormones in a lot of stuff these days. Food. Shampoo. Other chemicals. I remember reading something awhile ago that posited that puberty was being pushed earlier because of hormones in foods and stuff. I don't know if it's true.

 

[Fantine]

Livestock and chickens are fed hormones to fatten them up, and so they are excreting synthetic hormone-filled waste into our waters (as RFK, Junior, a liberal whom Lopez accuses of being unconcerned about water pollution, noted.)

She just got one thing wrong. He is concerned about all 400 toxic substances, and she's unconcerned about the other 399.

Because humans consume beef, pork, and chicken, the hormones they are fed may cause early menstruation, the increase in homosexuality among males, and various hormonal maladies which were uncommon years ago.

(Why, at age 16, for example, did my daughter have a ruptured ovarian cyst? It wasn't hereditary, and she was never exposed to any hormones prenatally or otherwise--except, perhaps, in the milk she drank and the meat she ate.)

 

[WarriorAngel]

There's hormones in a lot of stuff these days. Food. Shampoo. Other chemicals. I remember reading something awhile ago that posited that puberty was being pushed earlier because of hormones in foods and stuff. I don't know if it's true.

I heard that too.

I ran across this video..figured might as well add it in. This is where i heard about this before - altho i didnt get the book, its been a few years since this news came out.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoIFBLj15fY&feature=related