Yesterday’s conspiracy theory is today’s reality. Especially if it was never a conspiracy theory in the first place. Just ask Alex Jones.
Eight years ago, Alex Jones, the founder of “Infowars,” was the subject of tremendous ridicule when he made the claim that chemicals in the water supply were feminizing amphibians, and probably humans too.
That wasn’t quite how he put it, of course. “I don’t like ‘em putting chemicals in the water that turn the ... frogs gay!” he bellowed, in his inimitable manner, pounding the desk with his fist for emphasis.
At the time of its release, the clawed-frog study received significant popular attention from the scientific community and the media, and was featured in National Geographic and Science magazines. It was taken in deadly earnest, as it should have been. Overnight, however, once Mr. Jones made his famous “gay frogs rant,” the study and the broader issue—of endocrine disruptors wreaking havoc on living creatures, including possibly humans, due to their massive presence in the environment and the food and water supply—became a joke. A conspiracy theory. While some detractors made memes of the rant, and even an autotuned indie song that went viral, others would tell us that Mr. Jones’s rant was simply a sign of “white extinction anxiety.” If you didn’t know, that’s the fear the future of white people is being imperiled by falling birth rates and demographic and political change. Mr. Jones was simply being an “ecofascist.”
It was only a matter of time before a study like this was released. An overwhelming body of evidence has built up in recent decades about the effects of exposure to chemicals with endocrine-disrupting properties. Herbicides and pesticides, plastic chemicals, fire retardants, greaseproof coatings, medicines, food additives—all of these substances, and many more, have been linked to birth defects, lowered testosterone and sperm counts, miscarriages, cancers, and other serious health consequences. It’s not just atrazine, far from it, and we knew that was true back in 2015.
It’s hard not to conclude that this prima facie case has gone unanswered simply because the topic is so controversial—any explanation of transgenderism that doesn’t center individual agency is angrily disputed—and because of the “right-wing” associations the issue has gained, not only as part of the broader “culture war” but also as a result of the “gay frogs rant,” in particular. Finally, I hope, these associations can be laid to rest for good, and we can see the issue for what it is.
The new study, in the Journal of Xenobiotics, shows that boys exposed to DES in utero had a hugely increased risk of going on to become a male-to-female transgender (i.e. to have gender-reassignment surgery) by comparison with boys who were not exposed to the drug. The risk increase may be as much as 100 times, but since it’s difficult to find reliable figures for the number of transgender people as a percentage of the population, the actual increase could be even higher.
DES was banned in the United States in the year 2000. It was used for six decades to treat a wide variety of women’s ailments, from vaginitis to menopause. Most disastrously, it was given to pregnant women with a history of miscarriage in order to reduce the risk of further complications. Between 1938 and 1971, in the United States alone, as many as 4 million pregnant women may have been given DES. DES was also given to livestock to fatten them for market, until concern was raised about residues in meat products, and it was even used as a form of chemical castration to “treat” homosexuality. The cryptographer Alan Turing was forced to take DES not long before his death, in suspicious circumstances, in 1954.
The FDA withdrew approval for the use of DES by pregnant women in 1971, after researchers showed it caused rare vaginal cancers in girls exposed to the drug in utero. Today, DES has been linked to a much wider range of severe reproductive problems in both sexes, from epidydimal cysts, undescended testicles, and micropenises in boys to ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, premature births, and various forms of cancer in girls. DES has also been linked to psychological disorders: schizophrenia, bipolarism, eating disorders, and suicidal behavior.
The French study looked at data for 1,200 mothers who were given DES while pregnant and their nearly 2,000 offspring. Crucially, the study included children these women gave birth to before they had been given DES. This means a proper comparable rate could be established between boys who were exposed to the drug in utero and boys who weren’t.
None of the 148 sons who avoided exposure ended up becoming transgender, whereas four out of 253 boys exposed to DES in the womb ended up becoming transgender. These are small numbers—four versus none—because this is a small study, but the effect of exposure is still huge. As the study authors note:
“If we consider the highest prevalence of transgender women reported in the literature (1/17,000), the prevalence we observed in our study (1.58%) is 10- to 100-fold higher. Moreover, the prevalence of female transgender identity was 0% among the 148 elder non-exposed sons in the same informative families.”
To me, there is no longer a prima facie case to answer about the relationship between endocrine disruptors and transgenderism: It has been answered. Yes, the study was small, but given the scale of exposure to DES—perhaps 4 million mothers in the United States alone—there is no reason why a much larger study should not be carried out to confirm these findings. And, of course, there are dozens—hundreds? thousands?—of other known endocrine-disrupting chemicals whose effects could also and should also be investigated in relation to transgenderism.
What this new study tells us, rather, is that much of this pain and tragedy may be avoidable, if only we can protect pregnant women and children from exposure to chemicals like DES. And that, if anything, only makes this problem more painful and more tragic.
