The mystery of early puberty

A new study available from the journal Pediatrics (subscription required) shows that girls are entering puberty at steadily younger ages. WebMD explains:

The researchers assessed the onset of puberty by a standard measurement of breast development. They compared the findings to a 1997 study of age of puberty. They found the following in a study of girls aged 6-8:
  • 10.4% of white girls in the current study had breast development, compared to 5% in the 1997 study.
  • 23.4% of African-American girls had breast development, compared to 15.4% in the 1997 study.
The early onset of puberty is found to be correlated with both race and body-mass index (BMI). But what's causing girls to enter puberty sooner?
The researchers also collected urine and blood specimens from the girls to look at levels of compounds called endocrine-disrupting chemicals, Biro says, to see what role these environmental exposures might play in early puberty. ''It appears that some of the endocrine-disrupting chemicals are interacting with body composition and this may be the reason some girls are going into puberty earlier and others later," Biro tells WebMD. "That would have to be speculation," he says of the interaction idea. "But we do know BMI is doing it."

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The next best thing to vegetarianism

Today I had the opportunity to discuss the meaning of life with St. Louis Activist Adam Shriver. Adam mentioned that, a few months ago, he was invited to write an op-ed for the New York Times. The topic he examined was what we can do about the 100 pounds of meat the average American insists on eating every year. This situation raises moral red flags for many of us because it is rather clear that confined animals suffer painful bone and joint diseases. In his article, which he titled "Not Grass-Fed, but at Least Pain-Free," Adam noted that mammals have two parallel pathways relating to pain:

[A] sensory pathway that registers its location, quality (sharp, dull or burning, for example) and intensity, and a so-called affective pathway that senses the pain’s unpleasantness. This second pathway appears to be associated with activation of the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex, because people who have suffered damage to this part of the brain still feel pain but no longer find it unpleasant.
This neurological situation, combined with the ability to genetically design mammals that lack proteins necessary for the perception of the sharpness of pain, presents a potential solution (or, rather, it presents a fascinating thought experiment):

If we cannot avoid factory farms altogether, the least we can do is eliminate the unpleasantness of pain in the animals that must live and die on them. It would be far better than doing nothing at all.

Adam's tongue in cheek solution, then would be to continue to abuse the animals but to relive ourselves of moral queasiness by genetically modifying the animals so that they won't hurt. Adam's article reminded me that I've sometimes wondered what most vegetarians would think if we could grow meat in test tubes, meat that was never connected to any sort of brain. Imagine pounds and pounds of brainless meat coming out of big vats at a factory, the raw materials being mostly grass. Before you answer, consider that I raised this topic a few years ago over lunch. A woman in attendance was adamant that if we could develop veggie burgers that tasted as good as beef burgers, it would still be immoral for a committed vegetarian to enjoy that food. A buddy and I looked on perplexed as she ranted at length. She scowled and said, "If you created a meat substitute that had the shape and texture one would experience if eating a human baby, it would be immoral to eat it!" Now I do think it's creepy to contemplate eating anything resembling the texture and taste of human babies (I insist that I haven't actually tried this delicacy), but in my book, eating something that is not a human baby is not anything like eating a human baby. And consider too all of the people who play violent video games. Is "killing" the image of an innocent person somewhat immoral, even just a bit? And what about a man who fantasizes about having sex with children, or even creates his own drawings of nude children to enhance his fantasies? Assume, further that he has never solicited a real-life child. Is he immoral? And imagine this: imagine that someone at work really pissed you off. Is it immoral, even a little bit, to imagine poisoning that person the next day at work? What if this sort of fantasy actually kept you calmer and actually prevented you from being fiercely tempted from carrying out the murder? Maybe I'm just too much enamored with thick black lines, but I believe that for something to be immoral (or criminal), one must actually do the forbidden act rather than fantasizing about or simulating doing the forbidden act. Now, back to the eating of abused animals who couldn't feel pain. What if I could actually choose to buy such pain-free animal-meat at the grocery story? Wouldn't it be more moral to eat the pain-free animals than the animals who ached with joint pain? It would seem so, even if it not perfectly morally commendable. [Full disclosure: I am a somewhat guilt ridden non-vegetarian. Most of the meat I eat is chicken or turkey, though I do eat a hamburger every few weeks.]

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What’s behind the rise in ADHD?

Now a new study published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, links pesticide use with the rise in ADHD disorders among children. The study's authors examined data on over 1,100 children, and determined that elevated levels of pesticide metabolites in the urine was associated with a diagnosis of ADHD. In fact, children with levels higher than the median of the most commonly detected metabolite (known as dimethyl thiophosphate), were twice as likely to be diagnosed as ADHD compared with children that had undetectable levels of the metabolite. The elevated risk factor remained even after controlling for confounding variables like gender, age, race/ethnicity, poverty/income ratio and others. The pesticides studied belong to a class of compounds known as organophosphates. Time explains:

[Study author Maryse] Bouchard's analysis is the first to home in on organophosphate pesticides as a potential contributor to ADHD in young children. But the author stresses that her study uncovers only an association, not a direct causal link between pesticide exposure and the developmental condition. There is evidence, however, that the mechanism of the link may be worth studying further: organophosphates are known to cause damage to the nerve connections in the brain — that's how they kill agricultural pests, after all. The chemical works by disrupting a specific neurotransmitter, acetylcholinesterase, a defect that has been implicated in children diagnosed with ADHD. In animal models, exposure to the pesticides has resulted in hyperactivity and cognitive deficits as well.

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(Marginally) tougher food safety rules mean (marginally) safer food

"There is no more important mission at USDA than ensuring the safety of our food, and we are working every day as part of the President's Food Safety Working Group to lower the danger of foodborne illness. The new standards announced today mark an important step in our efforts to protect consumers by further reducing the incidence of Salmonella and opening a new front in the fight against Campylobacter," announced Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on Monday. Under these new proposed regulations, 7.5% of the chicken at a processing plant may test positive for salmonella. In 2009, average salmonella levels were at 7.1%, so I guess these giant food conglomerates won't have to stretch too hard to meet the proposed rule. I suppose it's better than the 20% salmonella contamination that's allowed under current regulations. But perhaps current regulations are not the best standard with which to judge the new rules, given that they don't regulate campylobacter at all. Campylobacter causes diarrhea, cramping, fever, and there are no federal standards governing how much of it can be in your food. Under the proposed regulations, companies may not have more than 10% of their carcasses "highly-contaminated" by campylobacter, and no more than 46% may be contaminated at a "low-level." I feel better, don't you?

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