75% of an exposed pop stop producing testosterone. 10% of the pop shift from male to female. These frogs still mate successfully with male frogs, and even produce male offspring — it turns the frogs trans :)
That’s a bit of twist: in fact amphibians, like humans, start out all female - atrazine just interferes with the development of male characteristics, making male frogs develop intersex or even completely female characteristics.
Can you elaborate on humans starting out all female ? Are you talking about the women's egg chromosomes ? I wouldn't call that a human.. an embryo has a strong claim to being a human, but an egg ?
I thought that would be considered intersex as there are some anatomical structures that do not rely on the testosterone to develop minimally, such as udecended (non/minimally functioning) testicles in an XY individual who has external femal genitalia.
If you would call that intersex, then go for it. I'm not here to argue the semantics. These are edge cases that are fairly complicated.
We're talking about a person with a uterus, vulva, vagina, etc. But without the widening of hips or development of breasts that happen in most women. No penis, no scrotum, no vas deferens, no testosterone. Nothing you would find in the majority of men.
The only thing they have are testes and the testes present in these individuals are basically inert. They're usually removed because they're more likely to develop testicular cancer.
With hormone therapy, they will develop the secondary sex characteristics of women.
But the overall point here is that atrazine would need to be administered in utero to have the effects claimed by Alex Jones. Frogs reproduce externally. They lay eggs that are then fertilized. These eggs can be contaminated with surface atrazine which would then affect their development as described earlier.
so we need to ensure that pregnant women avoid atrazine, from sources such as drinking water
Note: the claim was “they’re turning the frogs gay!!” which is quite inaccurate in several aspects (who’s “they?”). The general thrust is correct, however.
If someone is claiming that global climate change has melted all the arctic ice and created a Vulcan into spring up in lower Manhatten, they are a crackpot. But that doesn’t mean global climate change isn’t real or isn’t bad.
Two can be true. Atrazine can be bad, and Alex Jones claims about it can be outrageous unfounded conspiracy theories.
He does call out a lot of corruption, much of it prima facie. And given how much there is, who conspired with who else (or not) is neither here nor there.
Alex and the circa 2010 Occupy Wall Street crowd have a lot more in common with each other than the "other side", which would be the warmongering "Neocons". But this might be more than some will want to contend with cognitively. Easier to bamboozle someone than tell them they have been bamboozled, and all that.
The issue I think there is never the specific claim but the manner in which Jones makes these pronouncements linking a fact like this to broader conspiracies and politics. That somehow this shit is a left-wing / liberal conspiracy blah blah blah when it's just run of the mill (and far more insidious and systematic) corporate malfeasance in the search of profits.
He espouses a lot that much of the modern "left wing", or at least what is sold as "left wing" (but is not our typical progressive/liberal friend we know), comes right out of technocratic think tanks.
There's nothing new about that. That's the whole schtick the populist far right has had forever.
Look up Lyndon LaRouche, or hell Mussolini & Hitler. They start from what seems like legitimate concerns and often from what seems like a pro working class agenda, but ultimately the purpose is more power to the Market and more power to people themselves or people like themselves, and usually there's this huge socially regressive aspect to it especially attacking minorities, huge amounts of anti-Semitism, yada yada yada
Hitler has a whole part of Mein Kampf where he talks about a communist trade union protest and how his explicit goal is to capture that same anti-establishment anger and form of organizing but direct it in the service of the Nation and the Leader. Hence keeping around the "socialist" symbolism in the NAZI name and symbolism long after they murdered any actual "socialists" in the party.
It looks like it actually reverses sexual characteristics without reversing chromosomes, meaning the males that have reversed sexual characteristics are still technically genetically male.
"The resulting larvae were all male when raised to metamorphosis and sampled (n = 100), confirming that atrazine-induced females were, in fact, chromosomal males. Furthermore, atrazine-induced females lacked the DM-W further confirming that these atrazine-induced females were indeed chromosomal males (Fig. 2). These ZZ females expressed gonadal aromatase, as did true ZW females (n = 4, from our stock colony), but ZZ males (n = 8, control or treated) did not"
I was more commenting on the first line of your comment, where you said that they were changing sex, but I don't think intersex is accurate either, as intersex traits are present at birth. In the study, they raised the male frogs to maturity before exposing them to atrazine, after which 10% had their adult male characteristics reversed to that of a female.
Personally I also think something shown to have such effects on wildlife should be banned, and definitely should not be in our food. It is banned in some countries.
Other animals that observably have language and culture may have social identities that include how they feel about themselves as well. Perhaps.
But at any rate, I’m relatively sure frogs are not a part of that potential group lol.
Frogs are a bit smarter than I used to give them credit for, though.
I live on the edge of a jungle, and I’ve had to transport frogs out of my house. First 20 meters, came back.
(The frog in question had an identifiable scar or deformity)
Then 100 meters.
Then 250 meters to a nearby stream…. Back in my sink within a week lol.
That's the key element to effective conspiracy theories. A thread of truth, exaggerated, twisted and manipulated for maximum virality. Debunkers are met with links like the one you provided, and that's typically enough to discourage further debate because the truth is boring and a lot of hard work. And who wants to spend time trying to debunk when the believers don't want the truth!
Yes, and the blame is always placed on some cabal or minority group or political tendency that the conspiracy theorist dislikes... rather than looking at anything systematic.
Which actually has the ultimate effect of blunting change rather than fostering it.
His point was to keep the chemicals out of our food supply.
Argue about the details all you want, but nobody wants to consume this toxin and feed it to their children.
So yet again, Alex Jones was right.
