For Ontario Native Nation, Twice As Many Girls Born As Boys - Researchers "Stunned"

[hatrack]

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION, Ont. (CP) -- The people of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation are painfully aware they make up a startling statistic that has raised eyebrows around the world, but the bigger concern for residents are the chemicals they fear are overwhelming their community and killing off their legacy.

The birthrate ratio of boys to girls normally observed in communities falls close to an even split. In Aamjiwnaang, records show two girls are being born for every boy -- a scientific anomaly that has stunned researchers and that residents admit is clearly not normal. "Our sense of normal is not normal," said Ada Lockridge, chair of the Aamjiwnaang environment committee and a mother of two girls.

Visitors to this reserve just outside the southwestern Ontario border community of Sarnia, Ont., are struck by the sight of dozens of massive industrial facilities spewing out smoke and their close proximity to the First Nations community of about 850. Residents live in an area known as chemical valley -- Canada's largest cluster of chemical, allied manufacturing and research and development facilities -- and co-exist with smoke stacks and nauseating smells that carry with the wind.

The girl-boy ratio anomaly has been the subject of international study, most recently in an article published in Environmental Health Perspectives this month based on the work of researchers from the U.S. and Japan. "To our knowledge, this is a more significantly reduced sex ratio and greater rate of change than has been reported previously anywhere," the study reads.

EDIT

http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/national/story.html?id=717cd11f-0f20-4b9c-b680-f8136ca10747

[ananda]

1. how strange

Is it related to all those smokestacks or chemicals being
spewed into their environment at an alarming rate?

Or not?

I feel as though there are places just as polluted where
this anomaly isn't happening.. so.. what???

[GliderGuider]

2. I hadn't heard about this

Thanks ... I think

[hatrack]

3. I'd heard of sharply higher rates of hypospadia in some native nations near the Great Lakes

But nothing like this . . .

[LiberalEsto]

4. Reminds me of a Beach Boys lyric

"Two girls for every boy."

Seriously speaking, there are female children being killed in various Asian countries, leaving their population overwhelmingly male. As these boys grow up, they have trouble finding wives. Wouldn't it be nice if part of the problem could be solved by introducing the Aamjiwnaang First Nation ladies to the unattached Asian men?

[Igel]

8. The numbers are small.

(I paid attention because I wondered how statistically significant the claim was; it's a valid concern.)

[electron_blue]

12. what are the numbers?

[piedmont]

24. Their whole community is only about 850 people. nt

[tomp]

20. wasn't that jan and dean? nt

[LiberalEsto]

21. I stand corrected

All those surfer songs kind of blend into one at my age. Thanks.

[raccoon]

23. But Brian Wilson of the Beach boys wrote "Surf City." nt

[tomp]

28. wow! i didn't know that. thanks! nt

[Missy M]

5. Beware.....

we females are out to take over the world. This is how we plan on doing it.

[DIKB]

27. Given that women

tend to be more open-minded i.e. less conservative, and less gun-crazy, I'd say that's a good thing :bounce:

[bananas]

6. Surf City

Jan & Dean

[immoderate]

7. LOL. I used to play that for my math classes.

It was the introduction to ratios.

--IMM

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Y ("male") sperm are much less viable

I believe that the average ratio of Y to X sperm produced is 17:10, because the mortality of the Y spermatozoa is so high. Therefore, it's the first place I would look for "clues" to this mystery.

It fits in with other observations of chemical pollutants acting like hormones, particularly xenoestrogens. Why it is confined to the Aamjiwnaang people is puzzling -- unless they are all in a single close geographical area that excludes non-Aamjiwnaang. I'd start looking at the smoke emitted by the factories very closely.

And with a tight mask.

--p!

[Tom Joad]

10. Never does say how many children.

Out of how many children born? it would be much differnt if the total was say of the last 6 children born 4 were girls, than say of the last 100 children born 66 were girls.
Incomplete. thumbs down.
The article does not say.

[GliderGuider]

13. There's a clue in the reference to four baseball teams

The numbers appear to be on the order of 40 children as of "a few years ago". In a community that size (850) there would be 100 to 150 women of child-bearing age, so 50 to 100 children in the last 15 years isn't an unreasonable estimate. They have observed the trend since 1993, which adds some statistical significance the sheer numbers may not:

Last summer, a study confirmed what was already obvious to everyone on the reserve: the number of girls there was far greater than the number of boys. A community participatory research project with the University of Ottawa found that between 1993 and 2003, only 41.2 percent of babies born on the reserve were male. The normal sex ratio for humans is roughly 105 males born for every 100 females (about 51.2 percent males). This pattern held true for Aamjiwnaang babies prior to the 1990s, but then something changed. Since 1993 girl births have been steadily outnumbering boy births and the gap continues to widen.

Today, two girls are born for every one boy.

It looks like there is enough statistical significance to survive whatever peer review process "Environmental Health Perspectives" has, and to startle researchers in the process.

[jgraz]

11. I wonder how many of the "girls" are XY

We're seeing more and more animals with warped gender due to polution. I wonder if the same thing is happening to these people.

[piedmont]

25. That was my first thought too. nt

[danimich1]

14. I read an article that found

that vegetarian women give birth to girls more frequently than they give birth to boys. I don't think they knew the cause. I don't believe the purpose of their study was to determine what sex child vegetarian women have - it was more of a sidenote that they found this correlation. I have no idea if this means anything, except that it's possible that what is put (or not put) into the body could have some effect on the sex of your child? It's interesting to think about...

[AikidoSoul]

15. This is happening all over the world, but it is not publicized here in the U.S.

because the culprits are estrogenic chemicals.

Remember please who funds your nightly news programs -- it's the chem/pharm industry.

When scientists try to get this stuff on the news - the advertisers threaten to pull advertising.

This is why Nicholas Regush quit as investigative medical / science reporter for ABC News With Peter Jennings where he worked for ten years.

If you want the very latest and even the archives on the problems of estrogenic chemicals changing the sexes of animals, and causing penis abnormalities in both animals and male children -- go to this site where the scientists have been investigating this for over 15 years.

http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/

[Boomer]

16. I've been waiting for this....

...ever since reading the research on the disproportionately high number of females fish in populations downstream of urban areas. Also observed high numbers of malformation of male sexual organs.

The possible chemical culprits are so numerous the researchers didn't even know where to begin.

[AikidoSoul]

17. In 1994 there was a film called "Assault on the Male" produced

by a Discovery Channel team in the UK. It showed how chemicals are changing sex in fish, cells, amphibians and humans. Dr. Theo Colborn organized an international conference and brought together scientists from all over the world who had been noticing and recording such patterns.

All of this is known in the scientific community and is suppressed by the U.S. government and industry. It is the tip of the iceberg of what is happening and it is catastrophic at many different levels. Scientists who speak out are vilified.

Below is a transcript of Assault on the Male

The original is very powerful partly due to the images -- but you will find the hair rise on the back of your neck as you read this.

http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/envsci/resources/assault.php

[AikidoSoul]

18. Here's a great link to research on estrogenic chemicals found in everyday products

http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/searchresults.html?cx=000948349435611362955%3Awwg_w5czktc&q=estrogenic&sa=Search&cof=FORID%3A11#949

[DKRC]

19. Could it be that deep in our DNA

our species is encoded to produce more childbearing offspring when the population is abnormally stressed?
This may be a bad example, but I pointed out to my daughter when we were watching a documentary on lions that it makes perfect sense to only keep one sperm donor around when the number of fertile females that can produce healthy offspring is more important to the longevity of the pride. Maybe something in our own genetic coding is kicking in to produce more females to save us from extinction.

Make sense to anyone, but me?

And isn't the imbalance of females to males in Asia a matter of choosing to have sons due to cultural norms?

[truedelphi]

22. Insects' revenge?? Pesticides and other chems harm human reproduction

If you consider the words of Warren Porter, Ph.D., Professor of Zoology at Univ of Wisconsin, this is just the tip of the iceberg

We are heading into an era of total infertility

www.coastalpost.com/02/12/index.htm

[GliderGuider]

26. JESUS CHRIST! There is a real land mine buried in the article you linked!

The article was written in 2002.

Porter's work to date has included a peek into the pronounced impact that fertilizer and pesticide mixtures make upon the thyroid's workings. His team of researchers replicated the composition of springtime fertilizer and pesticide residues found in most drinking water across the country. They found effects on the endocrine system (thyroid hormone levels) and the immune system, and reduced body weight, from mixtures of low levels of aldicarb and nitrate, atrazine and nitrate, and atrazine, aldicarb and nitrate together. They observed increased aggression from exposure to atrazine and nitrate, and from atrazine, aldicarb and nitrate together. The laboratory rats used in this study became more aggressive as a result of the malfunctioning of their thyroids. The conclusion was that it was never a single chemical, but always the mixtures, that produced these effects.

In case this research seems a bit esoteric to you, let me point out one observable effect: the many school shootings in this country, with only one exception, follow a pattern: that of occurring during the exact time period when the fertilizer-pesticide mix is most prominent is those areas' drinking water due to spring chemical use in farm crops and yards. When the shooting occurred in a Southern state, the shootings took place in February or March. The Columbine late-April shootings reflect on the fact that Rocky Mountain States experience spring so late.

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"
"I think so, Brain, but where are we going to get a Glock 9mm at this time of year?"