Re: re: Disturbing article (POLITICS?)

[Guest guest]

--- In , " " <mhysmith@e...>

wrote:

> This whole thread did not start with an article written by a

>Christian - I do believe it was written by a scientist.

I meant to reply to the list on this but my reply might have been

lost. In case it was lost I'm going to summarize:

If you're talking about Pottenger, a google search seems to indicate

that Pottenger (who was first of all a medical doctor, rather than a

scientist, although you can be both) attended Otterbein College in

Ohio, It looks like his father and maybe his son also went there

(hard to be sure of identities on google searches). Otterbein is a

private liberal arts college affiliated with the Methodist church so

it seems likeley that Pottenger was a Christian.

Pottenger did talk about role reversal in his cooked meat fed cats.

Some females were more aggresive, some males were more docile, and

he saw what he considered 'abnormal activities between the same

sexes'. My reaction to this is that clearly some of his cooked fed

cats were malnourished in some way. Some vitamin deficiencies or

exzcesses can produce irritability and some malnourishment could

produce a lack of energy which might translate into docility and

lack of sexiual interest. Some malnutrition could seriously effect

brain maturity. I wonder if Pottenger saw his cats' behavior through

a preconceived filter of sex role models and a distaste

for 'deviant' behavior. I wonder if he noticed a deficiency-based

irritability in the female cats and labelled it role reversal, but

missed a similar irritability in the male cats because he thought

that was normal for the gender. And similarly I wonder if he

saw 'docility' in male cats a missed a similar diet-related behavior

in female cats. And I wonder if what he labelled deviant behavior

was really some kind of immature behavior due to an effect of diet

on brain development (such as thyroid problems in the mother).

He was concerned about masculinity in American teenage boys and

worried about a city boy (whose mother might have had a bad prenatal

diet) who was too interested in fooling around with hot-rods and not

enough interested in more manly activities. (This is from memeory,

so I might not have remembered it correctly.)

Marty