Victoria, Australia’s Southern-most state, has seen an almost 100% increase in the number of boys being born according to an Aussie biotech magazine, with genital “abnormalities”, up from one in 230 only five years ago to one in 135 today.
The article goes on to explain how scientists are still uncertain as to how or why this is happening, but in the light of CHEMTrust’s damning report last year, which highlighted huge increases in numbers of intersex animals, I honestly don’t see how this is even still a question. This “biomass pollution” as I’ve come to call it is as a result of endocrine disrupting chemicals leeching into our environment from industrial processes and waste, plastics and other pollution. Bisphenol A, for example, which caused a huge stir last year because it leeches into milk and water from baby-bottles, is just one of hundreds of these compounds and hormone-mimicking chemicals.
We are not somehow immune to this stuff: If fish species and polar-bears and gemsbok and every other creature on this planet are being affected by this, OF COURSE we are too. One of the consequences described in that CHEMTrust report explains how more and more boys are being born with feminised genitalia or acting in a gender-variant or transsexual way, preferring activities and identifying much more with the female sex. And in the light of those findings, surely this is just more of the same? Our world is an interlinked system of systems, and what happens locally affects us globally as pollution, toxins and hormone-mimicking chemicals seep into the oceans, our ground-water and even dissipate into the air we breathe.
A summary of CHEMTrust’s findings are available here, sensationalistic title notwithstanding, and the full report from From Australian Life Scientist follows …
[Graeme O’Neill] Genetics and Disorders of Sex Development (19 feb 2009, Australian Life Scientist)
One in every 135 baby boys in Victoria is born with a form of genital abnormality, and the incidence is rising. The US and Europe are also witnessing a similar, alarming trend.
The reason for the rapid increase in the rate of genital abnormalities in male newborns is unknown, but may be due to exposure in utero to endocrine disruptors – molecules that affect the production of androgens at the critical time when the penis is forming.
I’ve added this report to my page on the Causes of Gender-Variance, Transsexuality and Intersex, and you can find links to many other case-studies and research reports there as well.
Mina.
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