Mercury Poisoning Causes Homosexuality

[Infoexcavator]

"Low levels of mercury in the diet of male white ibises cause the birds to mate with each other rather than with females. As a result many of the females can't breed, and fewer chicks are produced."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19784-mercury-poisoning-makes-male-birds-homosexual.html

Maybe homosexuality is not a choice after all, there are more and more mercury poisoning victims because of all the poisons in the environment. Conspiracy theorists also say that the mercury in vaccines is behind all kinds of bad effects, maybe this is one of them! There is some politically correct nonsense in the article claiming that this does not apply to humans, but that's what scientist have to do to keep their jobs and funding.

 

[Bishadi]

"Low levels of mercury in the diet of male white ibises cause the birds to mate with each other rather than with females. As a result many of the females can't breed, and fewer chicks are produced."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19784-mercury-poisoning-makes-male-birds-homosexual.html

Maybe homosexuality is not a choice after all, there are more and more mercury poisoning victims because of all the poisons in the environment. Conspiracy theorists also say that the mercury in vaccines is behind all kinds of bad effects, maybe this is one of them! There is some politically correct nonsense in the article claiming that this does not apply to humans, but that's what scientist have to do to keep their jobs and funding.

first off, having sex with the same sexed partner is a choice otherwise, you wouldnt have a choice.

but the thread is definitely in the right place for this place.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

Conspiracy theorists also say that the mercury in vaccines is behind all kinds of bad effects, maybe this is one of them!

Or maybe the microscopic amounts of mercury in vaccines are nothing compared to the levels in, say, various kinds of food you eat.

There is some politically correct nonsense in the article claiming that this does not apply to humans, but that's what scientist have to do to keep their jobs and funding.

Evidence?

 

[Cainkane1]

There have been gay people all throughout history. Did they ingest mercury too?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Freddy was poisoned?

 

[Mirrorglass]

I don't see why mercury couldn't contribute to the development of homosexual tendencies. When you get right down to it, it's a functional abnormality in the brain, and chemical exposure has been know to cause those.

Note that I'm not using "abnormality" as a derogative, but merely to refer to something that deviates from the norm.

But the writers of the article are right not to draw conclusions from it. Human and bird brains are very different, after all. And has the average amount of mercury ingested by humans actually increased in the past decades? Any traces of it in vaccines are completely negligible compared to eating a few fish, of course.

 

[Infoexcavator]

There have been gay people all throughout history. Did they ingest mercury too?

Yes, for example the greeks used it as a skin ointment.

 

[Cuddles]

There is some politically correct nonsense in the article claiming that this does not apply to humans, but that's what scientist have to do to keep their jobs and funding.

Or, to put in a way actually grounded in reality, similar studies have been done in humans and found that the same effect is not present. As Mirrorglass says, there's no reason to think such an effect could not be possible, it's just that people have already looked for it and concluded it's not there. That's not political correctness, it's just science.

 

[casebro]

I don't imagine there have been hundreds of studies of homosexuality in Ibises yet anyhow. Call me back when this study has been repeated.

 

[Bikewer]

According to most sex researchers.... One's sexuality is pretty much in place by age 3. Are kids that young being exposed to mercury?
And as noted, they were likely not historically.

It's just an observed effect of this sort of pollution in a particular species.

 

[Soapy Sam]

According to most sex researchers.... One's sexuality is pretty much in place by age 3. Are kids that young being exposed to mercury?
And as noted, they were likely not historically.

It's just an observed effect of this sort of pollution in a particular species.

Clearly, mercury poisoning of the parents.

 

[Twiler]

Also, blows to the head cause unconsciousness, but people can become unconscious without the application of blows to the head.

 

[SnakeTongue]

The research's abstract:

Methylmercury (MeHg) is the most biologically available and toxic form of mercury, and can act as a powerful teratogen, neurotoxin and endocrine disruptor in vertebrates. However, mechanisms of endocrine impairment and net effects on demography of biota are poorly understood. Here, we report that experimental exposure of an aquatic bird over 3 years to environmentally relevant dietary MeHg concentrations (0.05–0.3 ppm wet weight) resulted in dose-related increases in male–male pairing behaviour (to 55% of males), and decreases in egg productivity (to 30%). Dosed males showed decreased rates of key courtship behaviours, and were approached less by courting females in comparison to control males. Within dosed groups, homosexual males showed a similar reduction when compared with dosed heterosexual males. We found an average 35 per cent decrease in fledgling production in high-dose birds over the study duration. These results are of interest because (i) MeHg exposure is experimentally tied to demographically important reproductive deficits, (ii) these effects were found at low, chronic exposure levels commonly experienced by wildlife, and (iii) effects on reproductive behaviour and sexual preference mediated by endocrine disruption represent a novel and probably under-reported mechanism by which contaminants may influence wild populations of birds.¹​

From the University of Florida:

Frederick is quick to warn against drawing any inferences about human homosexuality based on the results of the white ibis study.

First, Frederick said, there have been a number of long-term studies of mercury’s effects on humans, and none have found changes in sexual behavior. Second, the drivers of human sexuality appear to be complex, so a single contaminant would be an unlikely cause. Finally, the reproductive physiology and sexual behavior of birds and humans are very different.²​

References:
¹ Altered pairing behaviour and reproductive success in white ibises exposed to environmentally relevant concentrations of methylmercury - http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/11/24/rspb.2010.2189
² UF study: White ibis mating habits altered by mercury consumption - http://news.ufl.edu/2010/11/30/mercury-birds/

 

[Soapy Sam]

" the drivers of human sexuality appear to be complex,..."

...who knew?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My next bumper sticker: Nuke the Gay Ibises!!!!!

 

[bjornart]

160 ibises, split into 4 groups, results are about male behaviour, that's 20 individuals in each group.

Now the correlation between increased homosexual behaviour and dose makes the results more interesting, but stating that 55% of males in the group with the highest dose were cock-fanciers (or is there a different name for male ibises?) should have been accompanied by information about the other three groups. 11/20 for the highest dose, x/20 for the second highest...

And it doesn't even say what the base rate for non-poisoned birds was. What if ibises naturally are 40% gay. They look gay to me...

 

[casebro]

From the abstract:

"experimental exposure of an aquatic bird over 3 years to environmentally relevant dietary MeHg concentrations (0.05–0.3 ppm wet weight)"


Does this prove that you CAN poison birds? He seems to have a broad range of dosage, 600%? Is his "environmentally relevant" for real, taken from necropsy results, or is it an extrapolation that might be incorrect, due to , oh, say, migration affecting ingestion?

If wild birds have only 30% of egg that they used to, wouldn't it show in environmental counts?

 

[Craig4]

Hmm... My uncle Barry and Aunt Jeff do go out for sushi a lot and tuna often has mercury in it. Coincidence?

Yeah probably.

 

[casebro]

Hmm... My uncle Barry and Aunt Jeff do go out for sushi a lot and tuna often has mercury in it. Coincidence?

Yeah probably.

Does that make you my second cousin? ; 0

 

[soylent]

There have been gay people all throughout history. Did they ingest mercury too?

Yes, unavoidably so. There was never a time when the environment was "pristine" and mercury free.

The levels talked about in the article are small and all figures I can find about historical mercury levels in the environment seem to indicate it has risen by a factor 2-5 since antiquity depending on what and where you look.

In particular, sulfide ores contain fairly high levels of mercury and they've been smelted since at least 1600 BC. Wood contains similar levels of mercury as coal on a per unit of energy basis. Fatty, predatory fish have always accumulated mercury.