Is not nice to fool Mother Nature!
Posted on 05/23/2007 5:16:48 AM PDT by grundle
Hormone flushed into rivers, lakes. Feminized male minnows grew ovary-type tissue and produced eggs, researchers say
Estrogen that goes down Canadian toilets - some naturally from women, some from the Pill - is enough to make entire fish species too feminine to reproduce, a seven-year Canadian study shows.
Fish scientist Karen Kidd dripped small amounts of estrogen into a clean lake in northwestern Ontario over several years, just as if urine with the female hormone were running in via sewage from a nearby city.
This constant hormone bath made male minnows produce eggs in unnatural, part-female sex organs.
And even after she stopped adding estrogen and the water turned clean again, the minnows almost completely disappeared for several years.
Even small concentrations of estrogen can decimate wild fish populations, the University of New Brunswick biology professor concludes, even at levels found in some Canadian waters. She wouldn't name individual rivers.
And while the minnows were prone to fast extinction because of their short lifespan (about two years), she says bigger fish like trout or pike might also be hurt if they are exposed for long enough.
The first dramatic news of "feminized" fish came from British rivers in the 1990s where male fish near sewage plants were producing eggs and carrying reproductive organs that were partly female.
"A lot of follow-up studies showed it was the natural estrogens that women excrete and then the synthetic estrogens in birth control pills that were the main causes of feminization in male fish," Kidd said.
"The Pill is one of the most heavily prescribed pharmaceuticals in the world. There are over a million women on it in Canada."
She chose to conduct her experiment in an unpolluted lake with healthy fish to learn what damage estrogen would cause.
Male minnows in water with estrogen just stopped looking male. Where they should have distinct colours and bumps at spawning time, they didn't have any visible sign of maleness.
"And then when you opened them up, their testes were much smaller than they should have been" - about one-third the normal size. By the third year of adding estrogen to the lake, the testes had ovary-type tissue, and were producing eggs - a condition called "intersex."
It's exactly what scientists had seen in the wild. The achievement is in reproducing this effect in a previously clean lake, proving that estrogen is the cause.
Meanwhile, the female fish produced eggs more slowly.
The Kidd team found these effects early, but continued the study for several years to see what would happen. And the whole minnow population crashed.
"That was the big question: What does it mean for the fish population? We've shown that it has profound effects on the fathead minnow."
If minnows don't sound very exciting, Kidd notes they are a staple source of food for bigger fish across North America, right up to lake trout and northern pike. Killing the minnows in a lake is like taking wheat or rice out of the human food supply.
The last estrogen went into the lake in 2003.
Since then, bacteria and sunlight have broken down the estrogen and the water quickly returned to normal. The minnow population, however, took a further two years to recover.
This explains what’s happened to Canada’s men since WW2 as well....
That would explain homosexual behavior - they are confused.
In an amazing development, the male minnows spent all of their time trying to swim toward Greenwich Village.
This explains a lot!
Just drip VIAGRA into the lakes to balance them out..........
Is not nice to fool Mother Nature!
reminds me of the fact that the best place to catch blowfish is off of Fire Island.
now we know how john edwards became john edwards...
It must be something in the water....
"Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water,
or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol?"
The Left loves everything organic and natural. The Left made drinking bottled water fashionable. The Left is in the midst of having such a hissy-fit about the health effects of smoking that last week a new movie rating system was announced that will take note of how favorable smoking is portrayed.
But when the Left is forced to choose between two issues that it favors, it will always protect libertine sex.
Connect the dots: the homosexual lifestyle has a far higher rate of disease, and a far shorter lifespan. In medical-speak it has a higher morbidity and mortality. What does the Left agitate about here? It blames government for inadequate funding of cures for the diseases that this lifestyle spreads. Governments controlled by the left such as New York City, hand out free condoms. Talk about making a change in personal behavior? Not on your life.
(”Not on your life”, what an apt phrase. This kind of validates when the Bible states that such people will “die in their sins”, meaning they would rather die than stop what they are doing.)
Now we find that estrogen in waste water is a great threat to the “fragile” freshwater ecosystem. Recall the language the Left used the last time a big corporation was caught polluting a river, and just change the source. The Left would beat the drums day and night if a private business was responsible. But not here- because when forced to choose between fish and sex, the Left will protect sex any day.
Purity of essence.
This constant hormone bath made male minnows produce eggs in unnatural, part-female sex organs.
And even after she stopped adding estrogen and the water turned clean again, the minnows almost completely disappeared for several years.
Somehow, I'm thinking he didn't get the proper approval for this study, unless this "lake" wasn't really a natural lake somewhere. Nearly wiping out a fish population probably is frowned upon, even in the pursuit of "science"
LOL!
The environmental hypocrites are not trying to ban these chemicals that hurt fish. Of course they did ban DDT, even though spraying small amounts in homes twice a year to save millions of people a year from malaria was never a threat to birds.
Idiot hypocrites. Too clever by half.
Formerly named Walter...
You're just being koi.
I can’t believe they’re carping on this subject again.
Carpe Diem
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