Redefining "Unnatural"

The news media are often slow on adopting correct terminology for phenomena with which they have insufficient experience.

Case in point:

Male fish are turning into females thanks to chemicals from birth control pills and makeup being flushed down drains, according to a new study.

The study of freshwater fish in Britain found a fifth of males are now showing feminine traits — including producing eggs, a reduced sperm count and less aggressive behavior — due to gender-bending chemicals found in the contraceptive pill, cleaning agents, plastics and cosmetics, the Telegraph reports.

The chemicals causing these effects include ingredients in the contraceptive pill, by-products of cleaning agents, plastics and cosmetics, according to the findings.

Or, you know, they might just be ungodly perverts, as many right-wing Christianist may opine.

Professor Charles Tyler, of the University of Exeter, presented his findings in a key-note lecture at a symposium in early June. He will explain that the offspring of such "transgender" or "intersex" fish can also be more sensitive to the effects of these chemicals in subsequent exposures.

We are showing that some of these chemicals can have much wider health effects on fish that we expected.

Using specially created transgenic fish that allow us to see responses to these chemicals in the bodies of fish in real time, for example, we have shown that oestrogens found in some plastics affect the valves in the heart.

--Professor Tyler

More than 200 chemicals from sewage plants have been identified with oestrogen-like effects and drugs such as antidepressants are also altering fish's natural behaviour, his study found.

Other research has shown that many other chemicals that are discharged through sewage treatment works can affect fish, including antidepressant drugs that reduce the natural shyness of some fish species, including the way they react to predators.

--Professor Tyler

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Given that simple fact, we are all free to define "natural" and "unnatural" according to whatever criteria we fancy. Each individual's definition will be unique and idiosyncratic, but we would be able to "cluster" the definitions into several groups according to shared characteristics. And then we can all argue about:

A. Whose definition is "better" than anybody else's.
B. What we think is the virtue -- or not -- of that which is "natural"

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd The only way there can be an "unnatural" anything, is if there is something that is defined to be outside nature. The ridiculous idea that people are not part of nature is how we get to define certain things done by certain people as unnatural. Which is stupid, since obviously people are part of nature. Humans standing outside of nature is one of the major philosophical errors underpinning the mess we find the world in today.

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@rachael7
interestingly, the error happens on both ends of the ideological spectrum. there are lefties who revere and romanticize the "natural" -- presumably excluding rape and murder from the realm of the natural -- and righties who revere the "natural" exactly when they are able to define it as "what we all take for granted after 25,000 years of slowly emerging modern society."

there are good reasons to be suspicious of synthetic things, but not because they are "unnatural", which they are not.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

thanatokephaloides's picture

..... have been inherently trans for millions of years. When the population is skewed too far towards one gender or the other, certain individuals in these populations simply switch, no transition surgery required, and fully reproductively functional in the "new" gender to boot!

So even if you consider "natural" being "that not made by the artifice of Man", it's still completely natural for these fishes to do this! They've been doing it longer than there has been humankind!

The only places where the christofascists impact this phenomenon is we humans' limited knowledge of it, as funds for study are scarce, as for every facet of science which challenges their skewed world view. This is a problem experienced by scientists from Copernicus to Galileo to Champollion and onward!

Yes, the presence of human-added chemicals in wastewater triggering these changes is of concern; but the changes themselves came first, a lot longer than 6000 years ago!!

more info

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

dystopian's picture

The change in fish sex does occur naturally in some species, like Anthias or Wrasses for instance among marine species. When the dominant male of the harem dies a female will become a male. Some basslets also do this. Probably more species than we know, observing marine fish spawn is not always easy. But many, more species, do not do any such thing. My understanding is that this is now occurring in species it does not occur in. Most known examples for instance are marine species. I read in the Potomac now some astronomical percentage of male Small-mouthed Bass have eggs internally. We have the museum specimens to show this was not the case before. This is going on all over. In Florida the micro-phallus issue with allagators that cannot successfully copulate is as I recall believed to be due to high estrogen, believed due to hormone therapy, which when by the millions becomes significant. Things like hormones and anti-biotics are not removed by typical water treatment, and in the case of septic use end up in the water table.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --