Chemically Altering Human Sexuality

An interesting article published at Natural News announced that exposure to mercury is linked to homosexuality in birds.  Considering the fact that mercury is found thousands of foods and soda's containing high fructose corn syrup, I think that the study is worth thinking about and the article worth reading.  I reposted the entire article here:

In a rather bizarre, and perhaps even controversial, study that looked at the mating behavior of ibises, a tropical bird species that to some extent resembles a seagull, researchers from the University of Florida, Gainesville, (UFG) found that exposure to mercury disrupts the birds' endocrine systems and leads to decreased offspring. Not only this, mercury exposure was also found to cause some male ibises to pair up with other males rather than females, exhibiting a type of chemical-induced homosexuality that is rarely the topic of scientific inquiry.

Published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, this study reveals that methylmercury, the most toxic and easily absorbed form of mercury found in the environment, is capable of literally altering sexual preference, at least in ibises. What has otherwise never been observed in wild ibises, homosexual behavior, was observed for the very first time in carefully controlled tests, suggesting that determined sexual orientation could have a chemical component.

Peter Frederick, an ecologist at UFG, and his colleagues wanted to see how methylmercury, which is often hiding in wetlands and other natural environments, is affecting ibises. So the team collected 160 of the birds from breeding colonies in South Florida and divided them up into four test groups. Each group was composed of 20 males and 20 females, and after 90 days, the first three groups received either low, medium or high doses of mercury in their feed. The fourth group received control feed without mercury.

The birds in the first group received 0.05 parts per million (ppm) of mercury in their feed, while the second and third groups received up to 0.3 ppm. These amounts were carefully selected to reflect what wild birds living in the area and in other parts of the world might encounter in the wild from pollution runoff and other sources. The control group, of course, was designed to replicate wild ibises living in more remote areas that do not encounter mercury.

After three years of studying the birds and analyzing their various behaviors, the team came to some shocking conclusions. Not only were the mercury-exposed male ibises less prone to mate with females and produce offspring, but they were also more likely to try to mate with other males. And even when this proved to be a failure -- non-exposed ibises typically give up on trying to mate with certain females after the first year if they are unsuccessful -- many of the mercury-exposed birds continued in long-term relationships with other males, which is completely outside their normal behavioral pattern.

"Methylmercury seems to cause these behavioral changes by affecting the endocrine system, which controls the release of hormones in the body," Frederick is quoted as saying in the journal Nature. "That effect alters levels of the sex hormones testosterone and oestradiol in male ibises."

Does endocrine disruption in humans also play a role in determining sexual orientation?

hough Frederick was quick to insist that the findings cannot simply be extrapolated to apply to humans, he did explain that chemical-induced endocrine disruption definitely caused male ibises to act much differently than they otherwise would in a non-polluted environment. And because of what we know from other research that looks at endocrine disruption in humans, it is possible that similar chemical effects may also be occurring in humans.

"Mercury is a known endocrine disruptor, but this is the first study of endocrine disruption in birds," adds Frederick. "This study links detrimental effects on biochemistry to decreased reproductive success very plausibly, through altered pairing and courtship behavior."

A similar but unrelated study on nematode worms published in the journal Current Biology back in 2007 found that the brain, which is highly affected by chemical exposure, determines sexual orientation, at least in this particular species. The authors of this study concluded that sexual attraction in nematode worms is literally wired one way or the other in their brains and that this wiring can be altered by external factors or inputs.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101201/full/news.2010.641.html

http://www.livescience.com/13408-brain-chemical-serotonin-sexual-orientation.html

Outdated Fears and Prohibition

Phoenix New Times News published an interesting article today called Phoenix Goddess Temple's "Sacred Sexuality" Is More Like New Age Prostitution

Read the article here:
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2011-02-17/news/feature/
I found the article entertaining yet typical in so many ways.

The writer's bias is screaming that the concept of Tantra is some sort of perversion, yet she also points out that there's a tradition of "sacred sex" that dates back to 490BC. Of course she puts the term sacred sex in quotations to add sarcasm, as if this is so hard to fathom in today's day and age.

In fact the entire tone of this article is sarcastic and deeply disrespectful to anyone who doesn't believe sex is some kind of perverted behavior.

The Phoenix Goddess Temple may very well be an undercover prostitution operation or it could actually be an institution founded for "all who wish to better know the Great Mother and her unique gifts for healing body, mind and soul", as it claims. In either case, the article in the Phoenix New Times is extremely revealing insight into just how immature, provincial, and downright hypocritical most Americans are, even in these modern times.

James Hays, who helped rewrite the city massage ordinance in 1989 and worked in adult-business regulations for more than a decade and "remembers sting operations on massage parlors in Phoenix in the 1990s" (how does one even get this job???) - sounds to me like the type of guy that end up getting busted years later for something actually perverse, like participating in some sort of international sex scandal.

Another facet of the article that I find downright hysterical in its hypocrisy, is the inane input of Phoenix psychologist Martin Keller who calls tantric sex "kinda hokey", yet devoted years of his life studying the pseudo-science of psychology - the industry that attempted to bleed and electrocute the "bad" out of people...the industry that reveres men like Wilhelm Wundt who adamantly proclaimed that the "spirit" does not exist and men are just domesticated dogs.

Keller, a diplomat of both the American Board of Professional Psychology and the American Board of Sexology went on further to say, "If they're doing sex therapy, sex counseling, or even sex education, they need to be a licensed mental-health provider." He says the alternative "trauma healing" techniques like those described at Phoenix Goddess Temple "sound scary." He says he sees it as dangerous.

Consider that Dr. Benjamin Rush, the "father of American psychiatry," published the first American textbook on psychiatry in 1812. In it, masturbation and too much blood in the brain were considered causes of madness. Treatment involved cauterizing the spine and genitals or encasing the patient's private parts to prevent masturbation.
Now ask yourself, how any shrink has authority to deem anything "hokey" or dangerous?

This article fails to make any sort of distinction between sex slave prostitution rinks and night crawlers with those who willingly make a comfortable living working in the oldest profession known to man. The women of The Phoenix Goddess Temple, all seem to be happy with their jobs and they're there by their own volition. Maybe a better angle on this subject matter might be to discuss the many harms that come out of prohibiting prostitution rather than regulating it?

Perhaps this type of thinking is deemed dangerous and perverted in places like America (porn capital of the world) where sexual impulse is to be buried, hidden and repressed - a place where we think natural healing through a simple understanding of the chakras is dirty and perverse, yet prescribing ritalin and paxil to our children is more and more commonplace.