Slate's Human Nature column has two surprising stories in it at the moment:
1. A medical journal article cited refers to the complications of tongue piercing as having included brain abscess, heart infection, tetanus, dental damage. OK, so I knew about the dental damage before, but brain abscess and heart infection!
2. There are some cases of pre-schoolers hitting puberty. As Slate summarises it:
Suspected factors: 1) Adult use of Andro, testosterone skin creams, and "prohormone" sprays that are passed to kids by contact; 2) estrogen in cosmetics; 3) shampoos with estrogen or placental extract; 4) industrial byproducts in food made from contaminated animals. Internet sales pitch: Buy our cream, and we'll guarantee your erections. Fine print: And we'll throw in a few more for your first-grader.
Hey, I wonder if Zoe Brain has ruled out a change in shampoo as being the cause for her transformation. :)
1 comment:
Yes I have - it was a statin that triggered it, apparently. A Leydig cell anomaly known to cause severe sexual dysfunction in males when triggered by Lipitor, and Cushing's syndrome, known to cause mild feminisation under the same conditions.
But the two together multiply the effects by about 1000. Have both - about 1 in a million - you get 3 years worth of female puberty in 3 months.
We think. It's the only hypothesis that would account for the anomalous hormone level results since it happened anyway.
Thank goodness I was transsexual - if this had happened to a guy, I think it would have been fatal.
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