Many Generations

Could You Blame Your Ancestors For Your Fertility Problems?

Published 2012-05-03T23:15:30+00:000000003031201205 | By Doc Hollywood

The environment in which your great-great-grandmother lived, breathed, ate and drank might be responsible for health problems endured by you, your children, even your children’s children.

This is the disconcerting conclusion of a preliminary study, which experts say could help shift our understanding of disease — reproductive disorders, in particular — as well as how we perceive the consequences of everyday choices such as drinking out of a plastic water bottle.

“People can be cavalier with their own health,” said Bruce Blumberg, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study. “But it’s not just ourselves that are at risk. We’re condemning our descendants to have increased risks, too.”

Scientists today are uncovering a host of potential new links between environmental exposures in the womb and health problems later in life, from bisphenol A (BPA) encouraging obesity (http://www NULL.huffingtonpost NULL.com/2012/02/14/bpa-chemical-hormone-obesity-diabetes_n_1276996 NULL.html) to pesticides precipitating cognitive problems (http://www NULL.huffingtonpost NULL.com/2012/04/05/pesticides-pregnancy-babies-health_n_1406468 NULL.html).

The new research takes this notion a step farther — or many generations into the future.

Published on Thursday, the study exposed pregnant rats to high levels of prevalent plastics (BPA and phthalates), pesticides (vinclozolin, permethrin and DEET) or a notorious pollutant (dioxin), and then looked to see what influence the one-time exposures had on the ovaries of future generations. Of particular interest was a condition known as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) (http://www NULL.womenshealth NULL.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/polycystic-ovary-syndrome NULL.cfm), which is itself implicated in a range of health problems including infertility, obesity and diabetes. PCOS has been on the rise over the last couple decades and now affects an estimated 8 to 18 percent of adult women.

The researchers found each of the environmental toxins triggered ovarian disease in future generations. Interestingly, the effects in the third generation — the first rats not to be directly exposed to the chemicals — were more pronounced than in the offspring of the exposed rat.

In addition to PCOS, the team also identified rats with the second-most common ovarian disease, also implicated in infertility: primary ovarian insufficiency.

“Ovarian disease, just like many diseases, are primarily thought to be due to genetic abnormalities,” said Michael Skinner, a biologist at Washington State University and senior researcher on the study. “This study suggests it is probably more of an environmentally induced phenomenon.”

Injections of the compounds into pregnant rats, in fact, did not alter the genes. Rather, the exposures changed how these inherited instructions for life were interpreted by the next generation.

Previous studies of this so-called epigenetic (http://www NULL.pbs NULL.org/wgbh/nova/body/epigenetics NULL.html) effect have found that the defective programming can be repaired down the family line. John McCarrey, a biologist at the University of Texas, San Antonio, recently published a study (http://www NULL.ncbi NULL.nlm NULL.nih NULL.gov/pubmed/22371603) in which he actually witnessed such corrections being made as one generation gave rise to the next. Different timing of the single exposures in the new study, he suggested, could explain why the mixed-up signaling wasn’t fixed.

“These epigenetic defects are more serious than we thought. It’s bad enough that these problems are going on in any individual,” said McCarrey. “Having them occur in descendants, that’s pretty profound.”

Skinner’s team is finding evidence of a similar phenomenon leading to kidney and prostate disease, breast cancer and obesity, among other health problems. However, he emphasized that none of the findings to date offer proof that the same permanent flaws would play out in humans. More studies are needed, including research into the levels of exposure necessary to cause harm.

This issue of dosage may further confuse already complicated matters. Growing evidence questions an old assumption that the dose makes the poison. As The Huffington Post reported (http://www NULL.huffingtonpost NULL.com/2012/02/14/bpa-chemical-hormone-obesity-diabetes_n_1276996 NULL.html), even minute amounts of hormone-mimicking chemicals such as BPA appear to be more potent than larger quantities, and can scramble human hormones and cause a host of health problems.

Skinner saw a similar phenomenon in his study: “With the plastics, the lower doses actually gave us a more dramatic effect than the higher doses.”

Tracey Woodruff, a reproductive health expert at the University of California, San Francisco, also noted that investigations into how toxic exposures affect a fetus have pointed to the significance of low doses.

She went on to applaud the new study. “There is so little known about the role of the environment on the female reproductive tract and these types of problems: fibroids, PCOS and endometriosis,” said Woodruff, whose recent work describes what pregnant women can do to limit environmental exposures (http://www NULL.huffingtonpost NULL.com/2012/03/27/unborn-babies-toxic-chemical_n_1383499 NULL.html). “This research adds data to something we suspect to be the case but for which there is little research.”

Some experts suggest that the new research provides new arguments for stricter regulations on certain chemicals.

“This raises the bar,” added Blumberg. “Industry likes to say that the risk isn’t so big or the exposures are not so high. But, in fact, these exposures can have far-reaching effects. Unfortunately, regulators (http://www NULL.huffingtonpost NULL.com/2012/03/29/bpa-fda-decision-poverty-children-health_n_1389799 NULL.html) are having difficulty even coming to sensible conclusions on direct effects, let alone transgenerational ones.”

Ingrid Newkirk: The ‘Real Milk’ Campaign Hopes To Make Real Suckers Out Of Us

Published 2012-04-02T02:35:06+00:000000000630201204 | By Doc Hollywood

Cows are gentle, interesting animals. They don’t advertise anything unless someone spraypaints a slogan on their sides. The California Milk Processor Board (CMPB) has done almost everything short of that in its increasingly bullish efforts to push consumers in the direction of the dairy case. For the last few years, it has bombarded the airways with frantic attempts to boost sales of cow’s milk, even running negative ads against its opponents, Ã la the race for the presidential nomination. But cow’s milk is neither good for the human body nor good for our friends the cows, as consumers are realizing in spite of all the industry’s misleading attempts to make them think otherwise (http://www NULL.alternet NULL.org/food/154443/got_propaganda_why_all_of_the_milk_industry).

Despite the factory-farming regimen of drugs and genetic manipulation used to increase milk production — which have left Betsy looking more like a tractor-trailer than a cow, rendered her lame, and given her an often painfully infected udder — according to the USDA, per capita consumption of cow’s milk has been steadily decreasing since the 1990s. It seems that more and more Americans are becoming aware of the negative health and animal welfare implications of drinking cow’s milk and are switching to soy, almond, and rice milks (or other plant-based beverages — there’re even oat and hemp milks now) to enjoy with their cookies and cereal.

In an attempt to stop this healthy new trend, the dairy industry has begun a frontal assault on any milk that didn’t come from a cow’s udder. One national dairy trade group is so rabid about the situation that it has tried to get the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of the word “milk” (http://catchwordbranding NULL.com/catchthis/language-use/soy-milk-comes-from-soy-cows-a-k-a-the-dairy-industry-jumps-the-shark/) for these increasingly popular products, despite the common use of terms such as “soy milk” and “coconut milk” over many generations.

Now, the CMPB has launched a new campaign asserting that “real milk comes from cows.” Besides annoying nursing mothers (http://community NULL.babycenter NULL.com/post/a30091503/real_milk_comes_from_cows), this ad blitz — coming from the same people behind the failed “got milk?” ads — fudges the facts about dairy products’ effects on both humans and cows. So PETA designed an ad of our own (http://www NULL.peta NULL.org/mediacenter/news-releases/PETA-Offers-to-Help-Save-Milkman-s-Business-if-He-Becomes-Soymilkman NULL.aspx) to be run near CMPB’s headquarters, reading, “‘Real Milk’ Comes From Real Sick Cows.”

Here’s why we can say that: Up to half of all cows exploited in milk production suffer from a painful udder infection called “mastitis,” which may cause pus to end up in milk, and around the same percentage is believed to possibly be suffering from lameness caused by being kept on hard concrete floors and in filthy conditions.

PETA’s most recent dairy-farm investigation (https://secure NULL.peta NULL.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=4051) — at Adirondack Farms, LLC, a milk supplier to Massachusetts-based Agri-Mark, Inc., which makes Cabot and McCadam cheeses — found cows with bloody vaginal prolapses that were covered with pus and feces. The cows were left to endure this sickening condition, untreated, for almost three months. And in order to increase milk production, workers injected cows with bovine growth hormone, which contributes to mastitis (for which cows tested positive virtually daily).

All this is in addition to other findings, such as the fact that a manager thrust his arm deep inside a cow’s rectum to “rake” out feces before artificially inseminating her with a “gun,” another standard practice on dairy factory farms, and that cows were subjected to the din of blaring music while being beaten for failing to realize that they were not going in the desired direction, which got another cow electro-shocked in the face repeatedly. To produce milk, a cow has to give birth, so cows on most dairy farms are repeatedly artificially inseminated, some on what the farmers themselves call a “rape rack.” The cows’ calves are torn away from them within hours of birth, causing extreme distress that leaves some mothers bellowing after their lost babies for days.

Considering that dairy products have been linked to heart disease and cancer, it’s no surprise that almond milk sales increased by a whopping 79 percent in 2011. Real nutrition comes from soybeans, almonds, rice, and other healthy vegetable sources, not from a cow’s udder. Fortified plant-based milks are delicious and contain all the calcium, protein, and vitamin D of dairy products but with none of the cholesterol, lactose, hormones, or cruelty found in cow’s milk.

And if anyone is concerned about bone health, studies have shown that consuming cow’s milk not only provides no protection against bone fractures but may also even increase one’s risk. According to a new study (http://archpedi NULL.ama-assn NULL.org/cgi/content/short/archpediatrics NULL.2012 NULL.5) published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, active adolescent girls who consumed the most calcium, primarily from dairy products, had more than twice the risk of bone fractures of active girls who consumed the least calcium. In other words, rather than gulping down sugary chocolate milk after a workout, as the dairy industry would have you do (http://newsfeed NULL.time NULL.com/2012/03/08/chocolate-milk-wants-to-be-your-post-workout-drink/), drop some almond milk, fruit, and kale into a blender for a delicious calcium-packed power smoothie, then get your vitamin D by exercising outdoors, and you’ll be much better off.

So, while the CMPB tries to scare consumers away from healthy and humane plant-based milks, people might just be starting to realize that drinking the breast milk of another species not only hurts animals but also is a rather weird, entirely unnatural, unhealthy habit that we need to break.

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Could You Blame Your Ancestors For Your Fertility Problems?

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Ingrid Newkirk: The ‘Real Milk’ Campaign Hopes To Make Real Suckers Out Of Us

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