Water turned the frogs gay
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“If he is successful with this Make America Healthy Again movement, I think it could very well become the kind of unifying issue actually that I think health should be.”
For his part, Hayes said he is dismayed to see his research be misused, both by contributing to transphobia, and by distracting from atrazine’s real environmental harms.
“We know that atrazine is bad, we know that it is doing these bad things in the environment, so why are we focusing on something else that is pure speculation, that is an attack on the LGBTQ community?” Hayes said.
Restrictions on trans health care
Kennedy’s nomination to lead HHS comes as conservative lawmakers are threatening access to trans health care.
Multiple Republican state legislatures have tried to ban access to health care like medicines that can pause puberty and give young people time to assess their gender identities.
Pesticide Turns Male Frogs into Females.” Other articles described the frogs in the study as “gender-bending.”
Far-right personalities like Jones were not far behind, arguing the study was evidence that chemicals could have similar effects on people. He is known to regularly oppose things on his show like vaccines, telling his followers that Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor who falsified data on vaccines being linked to autism, "is a pioneer and trailblazer."
Jones has used InfoWars to promote his idea that the U.S.
government geo-engineered Hurricane Irma and can direct tornadoes to certain areas; that the Clinton family was involved in a child pornography ring based out of a D.C. pizza restaurant; and that the NFL protests are really advocating for white genocide.
But perhaps his most controversial view has been that the Sandy Hook Elementary and Stoneman Douglas High School shootings were "false flag" operations carried out by the U.S.
government to turn public opinion against gun ownership. “He knows the truth and isn’t afraid to say it: that corporate control of the food supply and our growing dependency on Big Pharma have been a disaster for our health.”
Cornish-Dale has turned to other conservative media to drum up support for Kennedy. The frog study’s lead researcher said there is currently no data to support Kennedy’s claim.
But Kennedy’s coupling of chemical-related conspiracies with his opposition to hormone therapies makes him especially dangerous, said Olivia Hunt, director of federal policy for Advocates for Trans Equity.
His comments about atrazine contributing to gender confusion is a means of “isolating our community and convincing people we are acceptable scapegoats for problems.”
Branstetter agreed.
“They are promising that if your child does not grow up to be quote-unquote normal, it is somebody’s fault and we can help you get that normal child by drinking the proverbial snake oil, except in this case it’s raw milk,” she said.
Pesticide atrazine can turn male frogs into females
Atrazine, one of the world’s most widely used pesticides, wreaks havoc with the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
The 75 percent that are chemically castrated are essentially “dead” because of their inability to reproduce in the wild, reports UC Berkeley’s Tyrone B.
Hayes, professor of integrative biology.
“These male frogs are missing testosterone and all the things that testosterone controls, including sperm. The European Union already bars the use of atrazine.
Hayes’s studies in the early 2000s were the first to show that the hormonal effects of atrazine disrupt sexual development in amphibians.
Reaction to the study also spawned a viral meme of right-wing Infowars podcaster Alex Jones shouting, "I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water that turn the freaking frogs gay!"
To learn more, PolitiFact talked with Hayes, a professor at University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Integrative Biology.
He said he supports more research into atrazine’s health effects on animals and humans but said of Kennedy’s claim, "There are no data to really make that link.
Atrazine exposure in humans has been linked to reproductive health issues including birthdefects, and low birth weight.
"If you, in a lab, put atrazine in a tank full of frogs, it will chemically castrate and forcibly feminize every frog in there," Kennedy said. And many males had lower testosterone levels than normal females and smaller than normal voice boxes, presumably limiting their ability to call mates.
Hayes’ research also established that many frogs in Midwestern streams contaminated by atrazine and other pesticides have compromised immune systems, leading to increased mortality from bacterial disease.
Those early studies were hampered by the inability to easily distinguish genetically male from genetically female frogs.
@politifact There's no evidence for Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s claim that the herbicide atrazine in water is contributing to youth experiencing what he called “sexual dysphoria.” We rated his claim False."I think a lot of the problems we see in kids, and particularly boys, it's probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing," said Kennedy to podcast host and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson.
Its lead researcher, Tyrone B. Hayes, was profiled in The New Yorker. He still claims the U.S. government was behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and that the George W. Bush administration orchestrated the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. in 2001.
Jones is publisher of the website InfoWars, as well as NewsWars and PrisonPlanet.
But biological differences mean those findings cannot be unilaterally applied to humans. He regularly promotes nutrition and health content alongside racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
His book, about “the globalist plan for food,” is published by Antelope Hill, a white nationalist publisher that also prints work by Adolf Hitler.
In last week’s issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology, Hayes and colleagues published a review of the possible causes of a worldwide decline in amphibian populations, concluding that atrazine and other hormone-disrupting pollutants are a likely contributor because they affect recruitment of new individuals and make amphibians more susceptible to disease.
“These kinds of problems, like sex-reversing animals skewing sex ratios, are much more dangerous than any chemical that would kill off a population of frogs,” he said.
After public comment, regulations on atrazine are expected to be finalized. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with TikTok.)
"Sexual dysphoria" is not a medical term, according to experts, and Kennedy’s team did not respond to a request to clarify his meaning of that phrase. Kennedy made similar comments on Joe Rogan’s podcast 10 days later.
But, with apologies to Kermit the Frog, there are some important biological differences between humans and frogs, and although atrazine may pose some human health risks, there is no evidence that atrazine exposure is linked to gender dysphoria in humans.
Prior to the segment, Cornish-Dale estimates his Raw Egg Nationalist account on X had an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 followers. So their fertility is as low as 10 percent in some cases, and that is only if we isolate those animals and pair them with females,” he said.
A 2010 study in frogs that Kennedy appeared to refer to found evidence that atrazine exposure has a feminizing effect on frogs and can cause genetically male frogs to develop ovaries.
But the United States’ EPA still allows its use.
In fact, the last time Trump was president, EPA increased the amount of atrazine it considered safe for frogs and other aquatic organisms, in a move that the Biden-era EPA later criticized as politically motivated rather than science-based.
Chemical regulations are often a niche topic, debated only in environmental circles.
That's speculation."
He also explained key differences between humans and their amphibian friends.