A letter from U.S. and Taiwanese researchers in The Lancet (Jan. 16) throws cold water on the endocrine disrupter theory that sex ratios have been altered by exposure to chemicals in the environment.
Citing a 1978-1979 incident in Taiwan where thousands consumed cooking oil containing PCBs and polychlorinated dibenzofurans, the number of girls born among 137 live births during 1978 - 1985 was not excessive.
The researchers concluded "Despite high exposure to... chemicals sufficient to produce obvious clinical disease and reproductive toxic effects, the sex ratio was not altered in Taiwan. Sex ratio is, therefore, unlikely to be a sensitive indicator of exposures to chemicals within the general class of [persistent organic chemicals."
This consluion stands in stark contrast to the claims made by Devra Lee Davis last April Fool's Day in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Davis' claims were unanimously rejected in letters to JAMA.
As I'm fond of writing,iIt's no wonder that Sir Richard Doll, a highly regarded scientist who helped establish the link between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s, once told Science magazine that Devra Lee Davis' work was "uninteresting," "uninformative," "boring" and "old junk."
Comments on this posting?
Click here to post a public comment on the Trash Talk Bulletin Board.
Click here to send a private comment to the Junkman.
Copyright © 1998 Citizens for the Integrity of Science. All rights reserved on original material. Material copyrighted by others is used either with permission or under a claim of "fair use." Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.
Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of Steven J. Milloy.