Re: autism testosterone PCOS bisphenol A Precautionary Principle

[Guest guest]

Many factors seem to affect hormone levels in ways that might appear as

excessive acne, male pattern hair loss in women, PCOS, etc.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals are a major factor but not the only

factor. Weak alleles in genes related to detox or nutrients can impair

detox. Also, weak alleles in hormone-related genes are associated with a

variety of physician manifestations (we can use the fancy phrase, a

variety of clinical phenotypes). Another factor is co-occurring (ie,

comorbid) pathologies that can weaken the individual's immunity and/or

suboptimalize detox pathways.

Clearly, some individuals are profoundly injured by " low dose " chemicals

that regulatory agencies have approved or allowed. More generally,

regulatory agencies' enforced imposition of the Risk Management

rationale - in contrast with with Precautionary Principle - leads to

approvals of toxic molecules far before their harmful effects are known.

The EU has begun to lean in the direction of having the Precautionary

Principle be the basis for approval for production and distribution of

new molecules. The US lags far behind, and the owners of patents on

toxic molecules have long known the value of encouraging professors and

anti-Public relations firms to manufacture uncertainty.

The pathologies induced by toxic molecules which are patented may be a

statistical blip on an investor's quarterly report, but for a family so

affected, the ramifications are discomfortingly huge.

ps: Here's an example free online:

Moving further upstream: from toxics reduction to the precautionary

principle.

Mayer B, Brown P, Linder M.

Department of Sociology, Brown University, Providence, RI

02912, USA.

Public Health Rep. 2002 Nov-Dec;117(6):574-86.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1497491 & blobtype=pdf

Early policies to reduce the amount of toxic waste in the

environment focused on cleaning up downstream sources of pollution, such

as toxic disposal sites. Public attention in the 1980s encouraged both

industry and government to develop an alternative to this

command-and-control approach. This article describes the emergence of

that alternative-pollution prevention-and its application in

Massachusetts through the 1989 Toxics Use Reduction Act. Pollution

prevention focuses on the sources of pollution, both metaphorically and

physically, more upstream than its predecessors. The success of the

Toxics Use Reduction Act in Massachusetts helped create an opportunity

where an alternative pollution prevention paradigm could develop. That

paradigm, the precautionary principle, is popular among environment

activists because it focuses further upstream than pollution prevention

by calling attention to the role the social construction of risk plays

in decisions regarding the use of hazardous substances. The authors

examine the evolution of the precautionary principle through an

investigation of three major pathways in its development and expansion.

The article concludes with a discussion of the increased potential for

protecting public health and the environment afforded by this new

perspective.

PMID: 12576537