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Comment by kossTKR | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for posting this. Those numbers scary?! Does anyone know if these have kept increasing?

I wonder if some of the gender and queer issues in kids these days are actually because of this issue, same with other pathologies that sometimes require medication like ADHD/Autism.

I'm saying that only from a place of love - as i've always always felt "wrong" in some aspects myself, and have always wondered if increased diagnosis is because of natural biological types getting recognised, because of industry pressure to sell more medication, or because of pollution or lifestyle.

Very different scenarios.

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I think at least some of the rise in ADHD/Autism is from been getting better at diagnosing these conditions and general awareness. Same with queer issues, they've been around forever but until recently it has been pushed out of the social consciousness so it was a lot more hidden.

I don’t think it’s radical to suggest that modern technology, society, diet, and culture are making people sick, both mentally and physically.

We know that people in history have had conditions like Autism. However even in the present day there are stark differences in prevalence in different regions of the world with modern healthcare systems (Japan, for example).

Diagnosis of anything mental is inherently cultural and will be seen through subjective lenses. I would be very surprised if autism rates were truly different across the world. If so, then that would provide a good basis to compare populations to get at the root.

Yes, I'm sure in some cultures they just tried to beat it out of you... :)

Given we might not have data from the past about the prevalence of ADHD, is it safe to assume we'll never know if mircoparticles and other things we introduce into the environment are the cause of these issues?

Arguably ADHD could have benefits for people in hunter-gatherer lifestyles: https://faculty.washington.edu/dtae/manuscripts/eisenberg%20...

I love this article - I knew someone very closely who had “severe ADHD” quotes because in certain things - such as tracking - they were intensely focused and effective. The more time outside they spent , the better they seemed. They eventually found a position with the game commission that overall seemed to work well for them.

They weren’t able to stay focused on nearly anything outside of nature, excluding things that brought them anxiety.

However , this is anecdotal. They were before that able to run a semi successful cleaning business for rental properties, with the main issue being paperwork related.

>they were intensely focused and effective

Oh, I feel this. I have ADHD and I can focus on ANYTHING, but I don't get to choose what to focus on. Some days, my body decides I get to focus on Jira - and then my Jira board gets ALL my attention. Some days, I learn a LOT about data governance or clearing out old emails.

The hardest part of ADHD is to STOP focusing on one thing so I can START focusing on the right thing.

ADHD, High Functioning Autism all have traits which can benefit the hunter-gather lifestyles of the past. Thing is today, some countries like the UK have adopted a stealth war on these traits in some individuals seen with things like transgender promotion or turning a blind eye to more physical forms of abuse often seen in schools. In some case's autistics have been locked up for decades under the guise of mental health reasons which is just prison without trial with forced psych med ingestion and if you dont comply because med staff know best and have the pieces of paper to authorise them, you cant challenge them otherwise you get bullying both mental and physical from NHS staff. Rare cases have been documented in the news, but its just the tip of the iceberg of stuff going on behind closed doors. Society, the legal system is generally complicit when looking at interpretations of law and how little light is shed on these matters.

I knew I had untapped potential!

We could always find a causal mechanism mediated by microparticals.

I'm not speaking to the veracity of any of this, but Dr. Shanna Swan has researched this pretty extensively (and written papers).

What we're seeing since the beginning of petrochemical use in the US (50's) are clear physiology changes (specifically in males) where we're seeing a reduction in physical traits associated with being a biological male of the species.

"But a new study says that even if they don't contain BPA, most plastic products release estrogenic chemicals. Most plastic products, from sippy cups to food wraps, can release chemicals that act like the sex hormone estrogen, according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives." [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134196209/study-most-plastics...

Well, let's think about this. If estrogens or xenoestrogens were at levels in food and drink that they were changing the bodies of young men, what you would see is distress as their body shifts away from their assigned gender. I do not see what about that would lead them to think they are transgender.

Far from distress, the rate of dissatisfaction trans people after hormonal transition is very low and is most often driven by external factors. https://www.gendergp.com/detransition-facts/

I do not see how plastics are a convincing explanation for current social trends.

Why would there be distress? If you went through a microplastic influenced childhood and puberty you would never know if your masculine traits were as pronounced as they could have been, as you only have your self to compare to.

Also, these sorts of studies generally look at changes at the population level - an individual won't suddenly wake up with a gender crisis from plastic exposure.

“ What’s surprising, in light of all these quotes, is that the kids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false.”

See https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/researchers-found-puberty...

I don't have the time to dive deep into this article, but I would not be surprised if there were wasn't enough evidence at 12 months. It's a process which takes years, as with puberty itself.

The TLDR is that there are several issues with the study methods which are apparent from available materials (and probably even more apparent from the actual study data which has been withheld by the authors). The cohort that received gender affirming care over the twelve months showed no improvement over baseline, while the control cohort deteriorated into even higher levels of depression/anxiety/suicidality. Instead of looking at the treatment group and saying "there has been no improvement", they compared it to the control and said "they haven't deteriorated like these people have."

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the control cohort simply stopped responding to the survey over 12 months, so there is no end to potential confounding factors causing children (who for all we know elected not to receive gender affirming care to begin with) to stop responding to a survey issued by a gender clinic, or the confounding factors that caused the others not receiving treatment to remain in the study.

I've seen this argument many times and these same sets of studies referenced, yet never is it mentioned that the recorded results are absolutely not single variable measurable items. There are nearly infinite alternative explanations for both sides of the argument, if you are clever enough to break free of the desired outcome bias.

The article touches a little bit about how responses to a 0-27 point depression questionnaire are coded as 0 or 1, 1 being "has moderate to severe depression" and 0 being "does not have moderate to severe depression" at a threshold of 10 points or higher. Similar situation for suicidality. Instead of tracking the actual point changes across the 12 months, they just tracked the pooled percentages of 0 vs. 1.

I looked at a few of the surveys cited, and they all questioned transgendered people, which automatically omits those who detransitioned and stay detransitioned:

https://somenuanceplease.substack.com/p/is-detransition-the-...

>>The way this question is written makes it very clear that they were primarily expecting to get answers related to “pressure” and what are sometimes called “external factors.” Of the options given, only one option is clearly an internal factor (“I realized that gender transition was not for me”).

>>However, the primary reason that this survey cannot be used to draw conclusions about the number of people detransitioning and their motives is because the 2015 US Transgender Survey was distributed amongst the trans community. It didn’t seek responses from people who detransitioned and never reidentified as transgender.

Yes, it seems many preservatives decrease testosterone. Along with this, there is a steady decline in testosterone in the last 60 years. [0]

I suspect it will be a serious issue in another 20, due to not sustaining population, and then we will ban parabens.

It's alex-johns level sounding crazy but it seems true.

[0] https://www.healio.com/news/endocrinology/20120325/generatio...

I’m happy to read a study that has real data, but any conclusions we draw from things like this has to also explain the fact that in a vast array of areas where we have access to objective metrics like strength, speed, and general athleticism, records are set most years and there’s no sign of a “dead ball” era in sports across the board. This includes sports where people are heavily tested. Cycling is maybe the one example, but that’s probably as much the absence of doping (or less effective doping) as it is a diminishing innate biological capability.

Only a subset of the population is athletic. Those that are breaking records have been training for a significant amount of time.

Also I think we’re rediscovering the power of breath work on performance - as exemplified in the constant record beating times occurring particularly in swimming competitions.

This one is from a study with real data:

"In 1985, men ages 20-24 had an average right-handed grip of 121 pounds and left-handed grip of 105 pounds. Today, men that age had grips of only 101 and 99 pounds, the study found. Men 25-29 posted losses of 26 and 19 pounds."

source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/4815909... and: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26869476/

Does this mean Alex Jones was right all along..?

Even if Alex Jones is right, even if he was right all along, people are conditioned by the media to believe a narrative. Because the presenter of the information is not presenting the information in an appealing way, the information (false or true) is assigned the status of “unappealing”.

Don’t have faith in anyone admitting anyone is right or wrong.

Unless your Copernicus!

Is there a pop sci accessible version of the work that details the physiological changes?

Please use caution when exploring far right rabbit holes based on dubious correlations.

I'm approaching this subject from a place of ignorance. A cursory Google of Shanna Swan, and a glance through her Wiki page, don't suggest a relationship to "far-right rabbit holes", just a lot of coverage of her work on left-leaning sites such as GQ, The Guardian, NYTimes, etc.. I also tend to observe that many (especially older) far-right folk are very pro-petrochemical, whereas she appears to be strongly the opposite.

I guess I'm just having trouble squaring your comment away; can you elaborate/clarify your caution as it applies to Swan?

Theories about "decline of maleness", great replacement theory, "decline of western civilization", are all very linked to this sort of stuff. Granted, that is very possibly not a goal of Swan's work, but these are the type of people who often cite it.

Swan's work is dubious on other scientific grounds, however. [0]

[0]: https://www.science20.com/gregory_bond/just_a_dud_swan_book_...

Is it actually incorrect or just associated with things that are incorrect?

Hence the point of my second comment - not incorrect per se, but not really any evidence suggesting that it is correct, on a number of different fronts.

The point of the first part of my comment was to answer the question posed.

Sure, but you immediately cast a shadow on it by saying "oh, you know those bad people with their bad thoughts? This is one of their bad thoughts"

What? The person directly asked how this research might be used by people on the "far right," I was merely responding.

This is lazy reasoning - you're imputing on me arguments that I didn't make and even if I had made them, they wouldn't impact the veracity of the other claim I was making.

Ah, yeah, I'd forgot about those areas having strong right-wing links. Appreciate the link and the perspective, thank you. :)

Edit: I don't care about my comment score, but what about thanking someone for their response and providing perspective is worth downvoting? Asking in the interest of continuing to foster discussion.

The thanking part will generally get a downvote: it's polite in a normal conversation, but it's just clutter. An upvote is sufficient. The real issue (imo) is this:

> Ah, yeah, I'd forgot about those areas having strong right-wing links.

This is taken to mean that, if there is an idea or conclusion that 'right-wing' people agree with, it is therefore wrong. And you not only think that, but you're thanking someone for reminding you to not actually look at the information objectively, but dismiss it out of hand because the _wrong people_ think it.

It's really revolting behavior.

Translation: "Crimethink is forbidden!"

Hold up, what do you mean with "gender and queer issues" ? I don't consider those as "issues" but as "nature". Obviously (most) societies have estranged LGBQT people for centuries, so they had to go underground for most of that time. Obviously more people are coming out now that it's not nearly as dangerous for them.

I totally agree that living in the past was horrible for many people and i'm extremely lucky to be living right now - where i'm personally sceptical is when heavy medication or surgery is the answer, especially for youngsters - that to me is a sign of something very wrong with society if required to be broadened too much in scope.

Personally i see the heavy use of SSRI's and Ritalin etc. for kids through the same lens where societal or psychological changes should be the focus, or a culprit found instead of patching up.

The answer can't be that in the future out of a class room one half will require some dependency from a medico industrial complex, that's dystopian to me.

> The answer can't be that in the future out of a class room one half will require some dependency from a medico industrial complex, that's dystopian to me.

The difference to "back then" is that the amount of work required both in school and in later work life was far less than today. Only those with actual academic ambitions went to school for longer than eight years, the rest entered the trades and worked on a farm.

The answer will have to be a radical reform of our societies - away from turbo-capitalism that is only focused on hyper-growth and excellence, to a society that actually respects the needs of all of its citizens and nature itself. Not everyone needs to have an academic degree just for a bullshit data-entry job ffs.

I buy that as society becomes more accepting, the prevalence of non-heterosexual and trans people should be expected to increase, but this is a huge confounding variable in figuring out what the natural prevalence of these traits in society is. A Gallup poll this year [0] broke it down by generational cohort, and I was surprised at the increase in LGBT identification from Millennials (10.5%) to Gen Z (20.8%), and I am part of Gen Z. I don’t know what explains an increase of that size, simply because while society in general has become more accepting, my feeling is that it hasn’t become that much more accepting between Millennials and Gen Z. But maybe it has and I’m just underestimating it.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick...

Because we’ve succeeded at instilling a negative self identity (if you’re white you’re racist etc) in kids while offering a positive self identity you can choose (non-binary, pan-sexual etc) and correct yourself. To be a good person you need to be oppressed. This is the way.

Break it down by race and you see totally different results. Why? You wouldn’t expect that.

This is an ugly caricature and reeks of ignorance and faux victimhood.

If ignorance, then enlighten

And yours is ad hominem. Parent comment is far from unlikely.

>negative identity…if you’re white you’re racist

>to be a good person you need to be oppressed

So you’re cool with these absurd assertions about society’s direction?

Have you read “White Fragility” or “How to be an Anti-racist”? It’s literally in the texts of which these are mainstream publications and interpretations of critical race theory concepts originated from Derrick Bell, bell hooks, and of course Kimberle Crenshaw - who of course created “intersectionality” which is exactly oppression Olympics.

I’m being a bit reductionist, yes. But the overarching point is obvious. It’s what the church and cults have done forever: explain why you are a sinner and then offer ways to not be. But worse because in this postmodern take on cult dynamics it’s about group identity. By virtue of being born with arbitrary DNA you are classified as good or bad and kids don’t want to feel bad so “here’s a way to be good”.

It’s the grooming of jr. revolutionaries.

I don’t really feel like engaging with you.

Extremely weak. Do better.

Please leave me alone.

The really interesting thing will be to survey those same people in 10 years to see if the numbers go down.

Your teenage years are naturally a time to "figure out who you are". The widespread acceptance and promotion of LGBT adds an extra variable that teenagers need to "figure out" for themselves.

I sometimes call Gen Z the troll generation. I feel like they never knew life without Internet and so they naturally choose the most inflammatory answer as default. I heard a survey of Gen Zers that something like half reported themselves as gender non binary. I think it’s more protest than anything

My armchair theory after reading this a while back as well was gen Z, better than any other group, understands that gender/sex/etc. is a spectrum. So if you ask them “are you heterosexual?” it’s no surprise that more are comfortable saying - and have the requisite knowledge to say - something along the lines of, “well I wouldn’t say I’m straight because while I am man with a woman I could see myself with a man.”

I don’t have a source for this of course. I’m operating under the assumption that gen z has more internalized the idea of gender/sex/sexuality as a spectrum.

Because it is trendy.

Framing it as "gender and queer issues" is disturbingly reminiscent of the time when the DSM listed homosexuality as a mental illness.[1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_DSM

I'd generally understand "gender and queer issues" to mean problems with how society treats people who don't fit into norms.

I'm not sure how plastics contribute to people becoming more accepting/norms changing over time

Exactly, if they were getting at maybe hormone levels changing because of microplastics pollution then they should have stated that rather than bringing up sexuality and gender.

The cynic/conspiracy theorist in me says "Imagine blaming kids for acting weird when they're literally infested with plastic."

There‘s other stuff to pick from, too - lead, mercury, and other metals come to mind for example. Lyme disease, which is now suspected to be transmitted sexually and maybe across the placenta (speculative though that is). Pesticides and herbicides. Radical particulates emitted by cars and industry (have been shown to lower IQ, and who knows what else). Nutrient-depleted soil (eg magnesium and copper), resulting in deficiencies. Iodine deficiency, which is endemic in many western countries. Rampant sugar (even worse: HFCS) consumption, obviously. Increase in food lectins via GMO, endangering gut mucosal barrier function.

The list goes on.

Yep that shear number of possible confounders is why it is so difficult to draw any sort of clear relationships between any particular pollutant and any particular health outcomes. It's not necessarily always conspiracy by corporations to thwart the research, it's genuinely difficult to study any affect because there's so many confounding pollutant exposures, metabolic pathways, and outcomes.

An interesting question is that would the risk of these outcomes be worth the massive amount of savings and productivity that plastics have had on nearly every industry? Then there's also the use cases where plastics are nearly irreplaceable, or at least not easily replaceable without incurring a huge cost increase for example in medical applications (think packaging for syringes, vaccines, surgical tools, or anything that requires contamination control).

I don’t think any of the irreplaceable uses of plastics are really major contributors to the problem. eg if syringes were the only plastic item around, this would not be an issue simply because there aren’t that many syringes and they aren’t generally reused (and so don’t shed plastics as much as water bottles with tops being screwed on and off frequently). It’s the common, day-to-day plastic items like food containers and synthetic clothes. Those are hardly irreplaceable use cases, although obviously other solutions are going to be more expensive than plastics.

You're right if we eliminated all non-essential use cases it there would be a lot less microplastics, but even in the cases where it's readily replaceable is the extra expenses in all of those product categories worth it over the highly speculative health concerns? I think cumulatively the expenses can be more drastic than at first glance, for example like think of all the non-essential but extremely common use in items like beauty products, food packaging, electronics, etc.

Another issue is that aluminum cans and food packaging is lined with a plastic residue.

It's almost impossible to get away from it. Also plastic bags, clothes shed into the environment and get eaten by fish and animals.

So maybe we all need to be vegetarian.

> Lyme disease, which is now suspected to be transmitted sexually and maybe across the placenta (speculative though that is).

Source? Lyme disease is from ticks.

And the Black Death was from fleas. What are you trying to say? There is speculation around the human-human-transmission vector out there, easy to find via a quick search. As I mentioned, it’s speculative and I haven’t found anything I‘d post here.

rude... Lyme disease is actually part of my life, unlike the black death.

"they turned the frickin' frogs gay, and me too" - l cuboniks

Highly unlikely. You'd expect higher prevalence if environmental causes are to blame.

> I wonder if some of the gender and queer issues in kids these days are actually because of this issue, same with other pathologies that sometimes require medication like ADHD/Autism.

Uh, transgender people were scientifically known since at least the late 19th century [1]. The problem is that the Nazis eradicated all the knowledge during their reign [2], and that the Catholic Church was actively fighting against LGBT people for a very long time, even before that era (and modern-day Evangelicals in the US have taken on their mission).

What has changed in "gender and queer issues" is that this negative influence has disappeared as the public importance of the Catholic Church has waned over the last decades and that protections for LGBT people got affirmed by courts, constitutions and laws.

As for ADHD/autism: these were also known to science at least in the mid 19th century [3]. However, for a very long time the issues were not as apparent or problematic in society as they are today, mostly because most of society was working in the agricultural sector with lot less work load than modern-day turbo-capitalism requires [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific-Humanitarian_Commit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter

[4] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

Yep.

You know, in ancient Indian legends there are characters who one can now perceive as LGBTQ people.

Granted, the accuracy of the stories as a whole is questionable — but the very fact that such people are mentioned means the idea existed even back then.

Maybe if somebody looks deep enough they can find something similar in ancient Greek/Egyptian/Chinese literatures as well.

Just a thought. My hypothesis could totally be wrong.

> Maybe if somebody looks deep enough they can find something similar in ancient Greek/Egyptian/Chinese literatures as well.

The ancient greek culture is well known to have a decent prevalence of homosexuality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greec...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JRLCBb7qK8

gay frogs

gender / queer / autism / ADHD

are not pathologies

are not 'wrong'

are not just in kids, they've been in adults and kids for millenia

Please stop perpetuating such misleading tropes.

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