Hormone Imposters

Alligators with tiny penises? Hold the sniggling there in the back row, this is serious news (and not only for gator babes). As Toy Story's Woody doll once said (over and over), "someone's poisoned the well," with the "poison" in this case being toxic chemical PCB's and the "well" being North America's waterways, resulting in, among other things, the aforementioned diminutive members of alligators. On this episode of The Nature of Things, host David Suzuki strings together a group of related horror stories which gradually travel up the food chain: from "feminized" sex organs in male salmon to abnormal reactions in the human offspring of mothers who ate those salmon. At issue here is the previously unconsidered concept that certain toxins could a) cross the placenta, especially if they could act as b) hormone imposters. Playing havoc with the endocrine system, these "hormone imposters" create developmental problems both mental and physical in those exposed, similar to the way that the synthetic hormone DES once caused problems. As thought-provoking as the subject is, however, the presentation is more than a little scattershot. The newsmagazine anthology approach doesn't come close to offering either a firm introduction or even a coherent overview of the topic. In fact, by program's end when microwaving baby bottles is implicated in today's children's decreased attention spans, the charge seems not only wildly speculative, but oddly ignorant of many other cultural aspects that might be contributing factors, such as, say, the prevalence of MTV-editing techniques on television. While this might be used in an academic setting with a lot of qualifiers from a knowledgeable instructor, Hormone Imposters is generally not recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)