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Lots of anti-birth control pill news on the wires today. The first story comes from the Economist by way of Canada: A Canuck scientist has found that extra estrogen, which can get into rivers and lakes through the toilet-flushed urine of birth control takers, kills fish. Karen Kidd, an ecotoxicologist at the University of New Brunswick, "poisoned" a small lake in northwest Ontario with estrogen, and she found that the smallest fish in that lake, "fathead minnows," were feminized because of the excess hormone. According to the Economist, "[The fathead's] sperm production was delayed and they started producing eggs. After two years of treatment, the fathead minnow population collapsed." The bigger fish eventually started having fertility problems as well, but it took much longer for the estrogen to permeate their populations. More »
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Psychology Today has a trio of articles about antidepressants and love/sex that I feel uniquely qualified to comment on since I am both on antidepressants and in love (and having sex). [Braggart! -Ed.] The main article, "Sex, Love, and SSRIs" wonders whether selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (the class of drugs that includes Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and others ) "compromise the ability to feel love," because SSRIs inhibit dopamine, which is also responsible for the feelings of elation and ecstasy that accompany falling in love. The author uses the anecdotal evidence of "Megan," whose sexual side effects ruined her relationship with high school sweetheart "Neil." The anecdote felt so weak (a high school love affair dissipating when the pair goes to separate colleges? You don't say!) that I wasn't surprised when she also used a seemingly dubious statistic to back it up: "Approximately 70 percent of people taking SSRIs suffer from sexual side effects." More »
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