Early puberty possibly caused by hormones in beef, milk

[Guest guest]

I don't know if the original message from Maynard Clark went to , so I apologize any

redundancy.

 

I recommend *everyone* go to TIME.com and read this article about early puberty in girls.

 

My comments follow the article segment.

 

Thanks,

Tracy

Mom to Zach (9) and Leah (5) -- Vegans by choice!

 

-"Maynard S. Clark" <vrc<Recipient list suppressed>Wednesday, October 25, 2000 9:03 PMEarly puberty possibly caused by hormones in beef, milkThis is from TIME.com 10/24/00

Cecilia Morton, in Santa Maria, Calif., has not one but two daughters who developed early. Clara, now 13, started sprouting breasts and pubic hair she was 8 and began menstruating a year later, at summer camp. Says her mother: "It was scary and embarrassing because the girls in her cabin didn't have their periods yet." Then Clara's little sister Susan, a kindergartner, began developing at the same time. Although Susan's tests were normal, Morton put her on hormone treatments. "We already see how men look at Clara," she says. "If my younger one didn't have the medication, I can't even imagine the problems we'd be having." If these were isolated cases, they might be chalked up to statistical flukes. But it seems as if everywhere you turn these days--outside schools, on soccer fields, at the mall--there are more and more elementary schoolgirls whose bodies look like they belong in high school and more and more middle schoolers who look like college coeds. "Young girls [in the 5-to-10-year-old range] with breasts or pubic hair--we encounter this every day we're in clinic," says Dr. Michael Freemark, chief of pediatric endocrinology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. It's as if an entire generation of girls had been put on hormonal fast-forward: shooting up, filling out, growing like Alice munching on the wrong side of the mushroom--and towering Mutt and Jeff-like over a generation of boys who seem, next to the girls, to be getting smaller every year (see box). What's going on? Is it something in the water? That's a possibility. Scientists think it may be linked to obesity, though they've also proposed a witches' brew of other explanations, from chemicals in the environment to hormones in cow's milk and beef. But the truth is that all anyone knows for certain is that the signs of sexual development in girls are appearing at ever younger ages. Among Caucasian girls today, 1 in every 7 starts to develop breasts or pubic hair by age 8. Among African Americans, for reasons nobody quite understands, the figure is nearly 1 out of every 2.

 

************ See TIME.com for the remainder of the article *************

 

 

My comments (I would appreciate a discussion on this issue):

 

I wondered why they didn't mention in the article how and wherepeople might get high concentrations of the chemicals mentioned.Isn't it a fact that animals eat food with pesticides and other chemicals(DDT derivatives and such) and store them in their fat, only to be secretedin the fat in milk and in the animal fat that people eat in meat? Therefore if children

eat lots of cheese and high fat meat (or the pregnant mothers do) then they are more

likely to have more of these toxins the body. If TIME magazine had mentioned

this do you suppose they would have been sued by the meat and dairy industries?Reading the article, you think there's nothing that can be done to preventearly puberty from happening. But I think that people have the right to know thatthey don't have to just sit back and wait for their destiny. They shouldknow that cancer, early puberty and other ills are not inevitable.Finally, I'm wondering if there have been any studies of vegan/vegetariangirls and age of puberty/menarche. I believe a study like this would bevery important, because girls getting their periods earlier and earlier is abig problem! Girls are losing their childhood! I see 5-8 year-old girls with"breast buds" all the time.Thanks,Tracy