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Well, at least they didn't identify testosterone as the pollutant. :-)
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ROFL!
Something tells me that if the Y is as fragile as we've discussed, the chemical-exposed fathers should be having more GIRLS, along with a higher rate of Turner's syndrome (girls with genotype XO).
It doesn't make sense. Being male is no more a mutation than being left-handed.
"Female men's activist" is not an oxymoron.
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It doesn't make sense. Being male is no more a mutation than being left-handed.
I dunno. I wouldn't mind being a mutant if it gave me special powers. I want those Wolverine claws. :) I really don't want to be called a "pollutant," though. I don't eat many beans.
This isn't the last you'll hear of the mutation argument, though, I'm sure.
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ROFL!
Of course, we all know the scientific definition and the comic-book definition of "mutant" are different. :)
"Female men's activist" is not an oxymoron.
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They are just noting a seemingly cause and effect relationship as far as I could tell. What am I not seeing? I didn't see any anti-male bias in the article.
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> They are just noting a seemingly cause and effect relationship as far as I could tell. What am I not seeing? I didn't see any anti-male bias in the article.
Well, I think the misandry is minor, but not nonexistant. My main complaint is the title, which certainly does imply that the increase in male births is undesirable. Only subtley so.
Tangent: There is a lot of evidence that the metabolic waste from birth control pills is causing shifts in gender in some non-human populations. Science News had an artcile several years ago where a river in Europe (I think it was the Danube) had fish which were delivering 90% females. They attributed the shift to the estrogens flowing into the river from human sewage. Women's pee was affecting the birth rates!
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So are you saying then that ; women need the Danube like fish need to pee?
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Geez, the association the press draws with this "experiment" breaks every rule in the statistics textbook. At least they admitted that the sample size was too small to make any real claims. If the sample only included one birth, and it was a boy, they could say that these chemicals cause 100% of births to be boys! I wonder what the standard devation is for the chance error of sex. If it is even close to +/- 6 percent, this study doesn't even kinda, sorta, suggest anything at all. 57% is absolutely meaningless when taken outside the context of a standard error (which they fail to provide). I'm not denying whether or not chemicals do actually cause more boys to be born (I don't know), but I am saying that the press fails to show in the article ANY convincing evidence to substantiate the headline they wrote. Further, IF the people conducting this experiment failed to figure out the standard error of sex before making any conclusions, they are nothing more than psuedo-scientists, drawing associations that might not exist.
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday January 30, @10:02AM EST (#9)
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The study doesn't show a "cause and effect" relationship--it shows a *corallary* without showing cause. I think that the study, in the hands of the feminist journalists at (one persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter)Reuters is being used as a misandrist spin agent--(associating men and boys with pollution). This is my complaint.
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First thing I noticed is that the article in question was written by a female. This is always a bad sign when you are a male or discussing anything to to with men or women.
Second, while I will not dispute the "scientific facts," I question there validity and objectivity. One can perform scientific tests and come up with almost any answer one wants by manipulating various aspects of the testing.
Third, it is interesting that anyone would point to pollution and harmful chemicals and conclude that something must be wrong with males. What this testing proves is that the Y sperm is much hardier than the weaker X sperm.
Fourth, last but not least, it is a little known fact that women and women's bodies actually decided on the sex of the child. If a woman's vagina is more acidic, you get one gender; if it is more alkaline, you get the opposite gender. So possibily pollution and men have nothing do to with the noted conclusions of this "scientific study" at all. I wonder if the university is planning on testing the spouses of the men to determine the alkalinity or acidity levels of their vaginas?
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Actually, everything I've ever learned in physiology, biology, human anatomy, and psychology have taught the opposite - the presence (or lack) of a Y chromosome on the 23rd pair determines the sex of an infant. The presence of a Y is not determined by acidity levels; rather, by which sperm reaches the egg first. Some have X and some have Y. It is really more by law of chance than anything that determines which sperm reaches the egg first (which also explains why the birth rate is almost exactly 50/50 - acidity levels could not produce such statistical perfection). At least that's what all those damn professors keep telling me ;)
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Ok this is an attempt to clear up some of the issues that are being discussed. There seems to be a lot of confusion around the sex gene.
First the Y sperm is more fragile and does live less time than the X sperm. The Y is faster than the X. (mainly due to the amount of genetic material it has to push with that little tail) so the need for a long surviablity is minimized. This has nothing to do with the information contained within the sperm!! This can be seen in basic evolutionary theory, if you get there faster you don't need to live as long to maintain a fairly balanced sex population.
In addition there are acutally more males concieved than females (this is from memory but its about 125:100) but due to the likelyhood of a spontaneous abortion due to a genetic defect this number is often reduced to about 105:100 at birth and further reduced by age 5 to about even numbers of female and males alive because of other genetic defects.
Second there seems to be a bit of confusion about the Y chromosome. There a lot of theories about the need for it but the basic idea they all have is that to allow for the species to adapt to environments there must be some method to test mutations that occur in the DNA material. Having two X chromosomes tends to mask (information on the reguardless if this is a positive or negative mutation. The way I see it is men are a gene test pool. It is well known that when tested men to have a wider within group variance than women. For example on intelligence tests, school performance, etc men score higher than women BUT there also more men that score lower as well. This does NOT mean than men are inferior to women. It just means that we have more variablity than women do when it comes to a characteric.
Finally I do not see this article as a villification of men but an indication that a great deal more attention should be paid to male health issues. Males suffer from more infectious and gentic diseases than women and more men die from these disease than women yet the vast amount of funding and attention is given to females. If men are suffering from pollution I would like to know about it and see something done but I seriously doubt that anything ever will until the gender feminist attitude that men's needs are being met is debunked.
(note: I do think that the title tries to indicate blame for problems on men. There is no blame in this case it is the males biological job to try and place blame on men for the result is like blaming the lepeord for its spots.)
Tony H
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final note about acidity it does have an effect BUT it effect is to just enhance the ability to get pregnant. since the environment of the vigina is hostile (no pun intended) the ability of the y sperm to survive for long periods of time is reduced compared to that of the x sperm but the diaadvantages of each type of sperm cancel out the advantages of the other.
Tony H
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