Two Girls Born For Every Boy In Canadian First Nations Tribe - Health Canada Seeks Pollution Clues

[hatrack]

A small native community living in the shadows of Sarnia's chemical valley has had an unusual distinction: Researchers believe it has one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world. For reasons that are not known, the percentage of male births in the community, known as the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, began to fall precipitously in the mid-1990s. By 2003, newborn girls outnumbered boys by about 2 to 1. It was a dramatic reversal of what is considered normal in human populations - a modest excess of male births - the trend that had previously prevailed on the reserve.

New figures on the reserve's birth rates presented yesterday at a conference in Sarnia indicate that the extent of the male birth dearth may be diminishing, although only slightly. In 2004, equal numbers of boys and girls were born, the first time since the mid-1990s that the reserve has had a birth ratio approaching normal. The next year, however, the number of baby girls once again exceeded boys. Figures for 2006 are not yet available.

Margaret Keith, one of the researchers who compiled the data, cautioned in an interview that annual figures comparing the number of male to female births in a small population can be volatile, but the longer-term trend to fewer male births seems to be persisting.

EDIT

She said that over the past five years, only 42 per cent of births have been male, well under the national figure of 51.2 per cent. While she said she hopes the birth data will revert to normal "to me, it looks like the trend is still there." The unusual birth ratio in the community, which has major petrochemical plants on two sides and is downwind of high-polluting U.S. power plants, has attracted worldwide attention. There is an international trend observed in many industrialized countries, including Canada, the United States, the Netherlands and Japan, to lower-than-expected percentages of male births, although the drop in large populations is very slight.

EDIT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080327.SARNIA27/TPStory/TPNational/Ontario/

[kestrel91316]

1. Am I alone in thinking that maybe, just maybe, a society that is 2/3

female might be an improvement on what we've got? Fewer warriors = less war.

[dbackjon]

2. You should be alone in that thinking

Women can be just as evil, hateful, spiteful and dickish as men.

I have noticed that in the struggle for equal rights for all Americans, that women are among the biggest assholes leading the pack to deny equality to all.

[kestrel91316]

3. Who wages the wars? Who STILL runs the show?

And when you answer that, look at where they have gotten us.

We WOULD do a better job.

[malakai2]

4. Sure

Let's all vote for Margaret Thatcher, or Condi, because as women, they're naturally dovish, and therefore not prone to stupidly fomenting violence.

[dbackjon]

5. And you know this how?

Rather sexist, aren't we now.


If I claimed that as a man, I was naturally better at leading than any woman, I'd get tombstoned. Shouldn't you for your sexism?