IS THERE PROOF?

THE QUESTION IS...
In wildlife, when hormone disruptors enter an animal's body, these "wrong messages" have been shown to mimic, amplify, or block the working of the animal's own hormones. What happens? Male fish start making female egg proteins. Female gulls, called "gay gulls," start nesting with other females. Panthers are born with undescended testicles. Male alligators have such small penises they cannot reproduce. Research experiments with laboratory animals also show the effects of endocrine disruption on mammals.



But has endocrine disruption been proven in humans?

Many scientists believe that the weight of evidence points to endocrine disruption as a human reality. Until recently, there has been little solid cause-and-effect proof of health effects in humans except for the "experiment" with DES.

However... hormone disruptors have been linked with specific health conditions in humans. For example, pesticide exposure to the pregnant mother has been shown to have a definite effect on children's neurological behavior, and other chemical compounds can even cause lowered intelligence. Endometriosis (a painful reproductive tract problem that contributes to female infertility) has been associated with exposure to dioxins (air-borne hormone disruptors). Hormone Deception presents many of the human studies that do indeed indicate hormone disruption in humans.

In many ways, the hormonal system in animals and humans is very much the same and has been so for a long evolutionary time. Still, some people believe that the results from laboratory or animal studies don't necessarily apply to humans. In other words, if exposing pregnant mice to a certain chemical results in their babies being born with damaged reproductive systems, what difference does that make to us? After all, they're only mice.


However, if a chemical can disrupt the endocrine system by acting like a hormone in an alligator, a fish, or a panther, the likelihood is that it will act like a hormone within the human body, although the effect we see in the human may be different from the effect in the animal. The same chemical that may cause smaller penises in alligators may cause lower sperm counts in men. When we see mice with early puberty, for example, it is a serious concern that cannot be dismissed before long-term, accurate studies are performed.

WHY WAIT?
There is a problem with long-term accurate scientific studies that would provide scientific "proof" – they take a very long time.

Think about cigarettes. Smiling doctors used to appear in magazines and on television in the 1950s and '60s, reassuring the public that the medical profession endorsed smoking as a wise way to relax, to digest, and to face life's trials. Then scientists began to suspect that smoking caused health problems. Over the years, numerous studies were run. Many showed a correlation between smoking and lung cancer, as well as other health problems such as emphysema. Yet other studies showed no cause for alarm.

This is the way science works, carefully and cautiously, compiling evidence over an extended period of time. It took 40 years and over 60 studies to get warnings out to the public that, in fact, cigarettes constituted a health hazard. At present, the accepted theory is that cigarettes do cause lung cancer among many other diseases. However, for decades, millions of people still smoked and got ill, all because the connection between cigarettes and disease, though suspected, was not yet "proven."

What is going on with endocrine disruption is big – so big that if we are afraid to ask questions, we very well may miss the answers. Why wait another twenty to forty years until the final word is in before we take preventative action on hormone disruptors?

We have a right to know what is happening, in language we can understand. Very few people can read a scientific study and comprehend what is being said, let alone what is being implied. We need to take this growing body of information out of the hands of scientists alone and place it in the hands of those who need it - the people who buy the groceries and feed their families, microwave quick meals, take their kids to dentists, use Hormone Replacement Therapy - the people who need to know how to minimize the risks for breast cancer, the people who understand the danger in waiting years and years for more studies to be funded and carried out in order to conclusively prove the correlation between hormone disruptors and damaged health in humans.

That's you and me.