I hope men fix things before it's too late - Are men becoming extinct?

Evolution is being distorted by pollution, which damages genitals and the ability to father offspring, says new study. Geoffrey Lean reports

Sunday, 7 December 2008

The male gender is in danger, with incalculable consequences for both humans and wildlife, startling scientific research from around the world reveals.

The research – to be detailed tomorrow in the most comprehensive report yet published – shows that a host of common chemicals is feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people.

Backed by some of the world's leading scientists, who say that it "waves a red flag" for humanity and shows that evolution itself is being disrupted, the report comes out at a particularly sensitive time for ministers. On Wednesday, Britain will lead opposition to proposed new European controls on pesticides, many of which have been found to have "gender-bending" effects.

It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminised genitals.

"This research shows that the basic male tool kit is under threat," says Gwynne Lyons, a former government adviser on the health effects of chemicals, who wrote the report.

Wildlife and people have been exposed to more than 100,000 new chemicals in recent years, and the European Commission has admitted that 99 per cent of them are not adequately regulated. There is not even proper safety information on 85 per cent of them.

Many have been identified as "endocrine disrupters" – or gender-benders – because they interfere with hormones. These include phthalates, used in food wrapping, cosmetics and baby powders among other applications; flame retardants in furniture and electrical goods; PCBs, a now banned group of substances still widespread in food and the environment; and many pesticides.

The report – published by the charity CHEMTrust and drawing on more than 250 scientific studies from around the world – concentrates mainly on wildlife, identifying effects in species ranging from the polar bears of the Arctic to the eland of the South African plains, and from whales in the depths of the oceans to high-flying falcons and eagles.

It concludes: "Males of species from each of the main classes of vertebrate animals (including bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) have been affected by chemicals in the environment.

"Feminisation of the males of numerous vertebrate species is now a widespread occurrence. All vertebrates have similar sex hormone receptors, which have been conserved in evolution. Therefore, observations in one species may serve to highlight pollution issues of concern for other vertebrates, including humans."

Fish, it says, are particularly affected by pollutants as they are immersed in them when they swim in contaminated water, taking them in not just in their food but through their gills and skin. They were among the first to show widespread gender-bending effects.

Half the male fish in British lowland rivers have been found to be developing eggs in their testes; in some stretches all male roaches have been found to be changing sex in this way. Female hormones – largely from the contraceptive pills which pass unaltered through sewage treatment – are partly responsible, while more than three-quarters of sewage works have been found also to be discharging demasculinising man-made chemicals. Feminising effects have now been discovered in a host of freshwater fish species as far away as Japan and Benin, in Africa, and in sea fish in the North Sea, the Mediterranean, Osaka Bay in Japan and Puget Sound on the US west coast.

Research at the University of Florida earlier this year found that 40 per cent of the male cane toads – a species so indestructible that it has become a plague in Australia – had become hermaphrodites in a heavily farmed part of the state, with another 20 per cent undergoing lesser feminisation. A similar link between farming and sex changes in northern leopard frogs has been revealed by Canadian research, adding to suspicions that pesticides may be to blame.

Male alligators exposed to pesticides in Florida have suffered from lower testosterone and higher oestrogen levels, abnormal testes, smaller penises and reproductive failures. Male snapping turtles have been found with female characteristics in the same state and around the Great Lakes, where wildlife has been found to be contaminated with more than 400 different chemicals. Male herring gulls and peregrine falcons have produced the female protein used to make egg yolks, while bald eagles have had difficulty reproducing in areas highly contaminated with chemicals.

Scientists at Cardiff University have found that the brains of male starlings who ate worms contaminated by female hormones at a sewage works in south-west England were subtly changed so that they sang at greater length and with increased virtuosity.

Even more ominously for humanity, mammals have also been found to be widely affected.

Two-thirds of male Sitka black-tailed deer in Alaska have been found to have undescended testes and deformed antler growth, and roughly the same proportion of white-tailed deer in Montana were discovered to have genital abnormalities.

In South Africa, eland have been revealed to have damaged testicles while being contaminated by high levels of gender-bender chemicals, and striped mice from one polluted nature reserved were discovered to be producing no sperm at all.

At the other end of the world, hermaphrodite polar bears – with penises and vaginas – have been discovered and gender-benders have been found to reduce sperm counts and penis lengths in those that remained male. Many of the small, endangered populations of Florida panthers have been found to have abnormal sperm.

Other research has revealed otters from polluted areas with smaller testicles and mink exposed to PCBs with shorter penises. Beluga whales in Canada's St Lawrence estuary and killer whales off its north-west coast – two of the wildlife populations most contaminated by PCBs – are reproducing poorly, as are exposed porpoises, seals and dolphins.

Scientists warned yesterday that the mass of evidence added up to a grave warning for both wildlife and humans. Professor Charles Tyler, an expert on endocrine disrupters at the University of Exeter, says that the evidence in the report "set off alarm bells". Whole wildlife populations could be at risk, he said, because their gene pool would be reduced, making them less able to withstand disease and putting them at risk from hazards such as global warming.

Dr Pete Myers, chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, one of the world's foremost authorities on gender-bender chemicals, added: "We have thrown 100, 000 chemicals against a finely balanced hormone system, so it's not surprising that we are seeing some serious results. It is leading to the most rapid pace of evolution in the history of the world.

Professor Lou Gillette of Florida University, one of the most respected academics in the field, warned that the report waved "a large red flag" at humanity. He said: "If we are seeing problems in wildlife, we can be concerned that something similar is happening to a proportion of human males"

Indeed, new research at the University of Rochester in New York state shows that boys born to mothers with raised levels of phthalates were more likely to have smaller penises and undescended testicles. They also had a shorter distance between their anus and genitalia, a classic sign of feminisation. And a study at Rotterdam's Erasmus University showed that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys.

Communities heavily polluted with gender-benders in Canada, Russia and Italy have given birth to twice as many girls than boys, which may offer a clue to the reason for a mysterious shift in sex ratios worldwide. Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls, but the ratio is slipping. It is calculated that 250,000 babies who would have been boys have been born as girls instead in the US and Japan alone.

And sperm counts are dropping precipitously. Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that they have dropped from 150 million per millilitre of sperm fluid to 60 million over 50 years. (Hamsters produce nearly three times as much, at 160 million.) Professor Nil Basu of Michigan University says that this adds up to "pretty compelling evidence for effects in humans".

But Britain has long sought to water down EU attempts to control gender-bender chemicals and has been leading opposition to a new regulation that would ban pesticides shown to have endocrine-disrupting effects. Almost all the other European countries back it, but ministers – backed by their counterparts from Ireland and Romania – are intent on continuing their resistance at a crucial meeting on Wednesday. They say the regulation would cause a collapse of agriculture in the UK, but environmentalists retort that this is nonsense because the regulation has get-out clauses that could be used by British farmers.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/its-official-men-really-are-the-weaker-sex-1055688.html









Are men becoming extinct?




Are males becoming an endangered species? That’s the question scientists and researchers have been pondering since alarming trends in male fertility rates, birth defects and disorders began emerging around the world.





BY THE WINDSOR STARNOVEMBER 5, 2008



Are males becoming an endangered species?

That’s the question scientists and researchers have been pondering since alarming trends in male fertility rates, birth defects and disorders began emerging around the world.

More and more boys are being born with genital defects and are suffering from learning disabilities, autism and Tour-ett’s syndrome, among other disorders.

Male infertility rates are on the rise and the quality of an average man’s sperm is declining, according to some studies.

But perhaps the most disconcerting of all trends is the growing gender imbalance in many parts of heavily industrialized nations, where the births of baby boys have been declining for many years.

What many scientists are calling the most important — and least publicized — issue surrounding the future of the human race will be highlighted in a CBC documentary that features two Windsor researchers who’ve studied the phenomenon.

Titled The Disappearing Male and premiering tonight at 9 on CBC TV, the documentary includes interviews with Jim Brophy and Margaret Keith, adjunct sociology professors at the University of Windsor.

They have been studying the decline in the birth of male children in the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community located next to the infamous Chemical Valley, Canada’s largest concentration of petrochemical plants near Sarnia.

A paper co-authored by Keith and published three years ago in the U.S. journal Environmental Health Perspectives suggests that exposure to various chemicals produced by industrial plants surrounding the Aamjiwnaang reserve land may be skewing the community’s sex ratio.

The researchers looked at the community’s birth records since 1984 and saw “a dramatic drop in the number of boys being born in the last 10 years, particularly in the five-year period between 1998 and 2003,” Brophy said.

Of 132 Aamjiwnaang babies born between 1999 and 2003, only 46 were boys. Typically, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls in Canada.

High miscarriage rates and a unusually high number of children suffering from asthma were also noted by researchers.

Although the link between pollutants and human reproduction has not been firmly established, there is growing evidence that the birth sex ratio can be altered by exposure to certain chemicals, such as dioxin, PCBs and pesticides. Brophy said studies done in the United States, Japan and Europe seem to support the theory that the so-called endocrine disrupting chemicals have a particular effect on males.

Some of these chemicals are found in commonly used products such as baby bottles and cosmetics. They can also cause miscarriages and a “whole host” of disorders in a male child, Brophy said.

Brophy said soil and water contamination in and around the Aamjiwnaang reserve had been documented before, including in a University of Windsor study that found high levels of PCBs, lead, mercury and various chemicals in the area in the late 1990s. Accidental chemical spills in the area have not been uncommon.

But it wasn’t until the Aamjiwnaang birth ratio study was published that the global science community really took notice.

“It triggered this international set of calls from scientists and researchers from around the world who had been looking at this issue in Europe and the United States,” Brophy said. “Aamjiwnaang became almost the poster child.”

Although Brophy has not seen The Disappearing Male documentary yet, he believes the story of the Aamjiwnaang community will be “the focal point.”

He said the documentary also includes interviews with “some of the foremost experts in the world” on environmental effects on reproductive health.

Brophy and Keith have also studied other occupational and environmental exposures to pollutants, including the link between breast cancer and certain types of jobs in the Windsor-Essex region.

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Book Summary

This is Dale Carnegie's summary of his book, from 1936

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. Don't criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six ways to make people like you

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
6. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Win people to your way of thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
A leader's job often includes changing your people's attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Dale Carnegie Page

What Forgiving Is and Isn't - A Lama Marut Video Podcast

Emotional state

I'm feeling emotional, I know that is stupid. no, really it is stupid. nothing changed since yesterday, i only grew up one more day, i slept and woke up, received some more spam, spent a little bit more time on the PC and the TV, ate and drank...

nothing significant.

i feel rejected though. maybe because i am listening to emotional songs that are taking me back to times when i felt loved and in love. maybe because these songs are transmitting sad feelings. i wonder if i will feel happy if i listen to happy songs. am i taking on the feelings in the songs or is the song playing because it is reflecting my own feelings.

recently something happened , i met someone , and i got rejected, it didnt feel good at all. it clouded my judgment about how i feel about that person. you know what Madonna says? "rejection is the greatest aphrodisiac" do you think she is right?

The truth is that i have so much love inside me, that i need to share, to give, to express, and i keep on running into people who are afraid of love, i learned recently or not so recently that i cant express my feelings openly and freely, i cant be transparent. i never believed or followed that directive. the result, rejection or feeling rejected. having to swallow back my pride and emotional expression and crawl back in bed with old memories and fantasies of glimpses of loving moments.

Why do humans need love?? what is so special about a kiss ? about lips meeting? what happens when lips meet? how can people be so close one day and next day they are strangers. they hurt each other and say bad things about each other..

why does a song affect me so much? is it because it resonates on the deepest level with feelings i once touched and tasted? sad or happy

I dont know. i wish i knew, or maybe i dont wish, because at least i have an excuse now to be stumbling, i dont know, if i knew then i cannot justify my stumbling.

love love, they say it makes the world goes around.i love myself , but that still isnt enough, nothing is like hearing and smelling the love.

i am rambling heavily , i know. that is why God invented blogs , so that people like me ramble freely, liberally.

it will pass, the 'i need personal romantic love' fever. i think i like being in that state otherwise i can turn off the fucking music and go take a shower or a walk.. but again, no , i cant run from myself. in the shower I'll have me with me, i cant hide or run.

i tell myself this is only my domestication, it is all learned behavior. even feelings are not real, they are how we learned to react to different things.

In Star Trek there is a race called the 'Vulcans'. Vulcans were once emotional barbaric but then they decided to control themselves, they meditated and controlled their minds and emotions so that they dont get into the kind of emotional turbulence similar I am in today. they succeeded in living according to logic. But the price was high, we see in one of the episodes how Tuvac , the Vulcan became crazy eventually. In another episode it shows how when Vulcans are in sexual heat they are totally out of control.

The question is , will I even find the kind of love that i imagine and wish for? will i feel this real and deep connection with another person where there we become pure energy, where we merge but stay separate , connect on the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual, where there is no inhibitions and right and wrong, only pure transparency and childlike innocence exists, where play is the game, exploration of the soul.

bla bla bla