13-Yr Study Of Montana Roadkilled Deer Shows 2/3 Of Bucks Surveyed Had Abnormal Genitalia By 2000

[hatrack]

Hard as it is to be a voice in the wilderness, Judy Hoy has been sounding an alarm in southwestern Montana for more than 13 years. For years she's been documenting, through autopsies, photos, articles and scientific papers, changes — mutations, really — she's observed in various ungulate species in the valley. In particular, she's seen malformed genitalia among male white-tailed deer. Such observations are not unique. More and more scientists are documenting reproductive changes in male animals ranging from cricket frogs to polar bears. But the response from public health and governmental agencies has been underwhelming.

White-tailed deer came into Hoy's purview 30 years ago when her husband, Bob Hoy, began collecting road-killed deer as a warden with the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Service, or FWP. Beginning in 1980, Judy Hoy, a former elementary school science teacher, used some of the roadkill to feed wildlife she nursed at her Bitterroot Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. In 1996, the Hoys noticed something strange among the roadkill. "It started with Buck No. 9," Judy said. "We called him that because he was the ninth buck we had seen with malformed genitalia."

Of 54 male deer aged 3 months to 1 year they examined beginning in late 1996 through 1997, only about a third had what the couple, over decades of observation, had come to consider a normal scrotum in size and shape and the normal placement of genitals. Thirty had a scrotum that was misaligned, with one testes positioned in front of the other, one had no scrotum, one had misplaced organs, and nine had ectopic (positioned between the body wall and the skin) testes.

The next year, 25 of 49 males had anomalies in their genitals. Between 1998 and 2000, two-thirds of the bucks examined had abnormalities. Hoy took notes, kept data, shot photos and began calling Montana's FWP. She tried to interest them, or wildlife scientists in the University of Montana's Wildlife Biology program, in further study. At first, FWP personnel and others seemed interested, but it wasn't long before Hoy felt the door close in her face. A few different times she showed photos or deer carcasses to state officials or veterinarians, who she recalled would agree in her presence that what they were seeing were malformations, only to file a report that termed them "normal variations." In the case of one buck, pathologists at the Montana FWP wildlife research laboratory wrote in a response to Hoy that the cause was "vehicular impact." Hoy said the animal had been hit from the front and there was no damage to its hindquarters.

EDIT

http://www.miller-mccune.com/science_environment/divining-the-secret-of-deformed-roadkill-1441

[FirstLight]

1. wow...just wow

from the island of plastic in the pacific to the milions of tons of pharmacopea- related pollution in the water supply...you would THINK someone would get on this...

but hey, we still don;t have non-combustable engines in all our vehicles yet, it should have been done decades ago.

we are collectively screwn, i fear.

[hedgehog]

2. I'd say all the drugs are a drop in the bucket compared to all the agricultural

chemicals which behave like hormones.

[IADEMO2004]

5. Roundup ready venison! a Monsanto meat like product n/t

[Mnemosyne]

18. Watch 'The Future of Food', scariest. movie. ever. n/t

[kristopher]

3. When a wide array of experts

conclude that a lay-person's anecdotal conclusions are false, just what "this" are they supposed to "get on"?

[Hekate]

8. Good question. The mothers of Love Canal who did the initial surveys were told ...

... they had "housewife statistics," as though women with deformed and dying children were too dumb to see what was in front of their eyes, as though women who in other parts of their lives were capable of going door to door asking pointed questions and taking surveys somehow weren't capable of planning and carrying out these actions when it was their children's lives at stake. Of all the dismissive things a government and a major corporation were capable of saying, that was probably the most revolting to me, a woman.

The current layperson in question is also a woman. She is also a science teacher, which means she knows a thing or two about observation and keeping records. Beyond that, she has spent 30 years dismembering wildlife, which even for an ordinary butcher in a shop means observing whether the internal organs are healthy or diseased, much more so for someone who has studied dissection in college science (elementary school science teacher = someone who has a college degree = someone who took some college science classes).

This goes beyond anecdotal evidence. She's asking for help from professionals in confirming what she has found. She is being dismissed, although probably not as "a housewife."

Back to the question I started asking shortly after Bush the Lesser took office: Who does it serve? In this case, who does it serve to dismiss her findings?

Hekate

[Mojorabbit]

11. As a woman married to a hunter

Hunting is source of revenue for a lot of states. Perhaps this might be a reason? I know licenses for hunting deer can be very expensive plus there is the money brought in by the accommodations for those arriving hunters. My husband is planning a trip to S. Dakota to hunt antelope and the bill for that trip is getting bigger by the day.

[kristopher]

12. Do you think the Univeristy of Montana is in on 'it'?

'It' being the conspiracy you are suggesting. The article states that both the State FWS and the University were consulted, and strongly suggests that other experts were also contacted.

I just find it not credible that all of these people are corrupt. I've had a lot of experience investigating and verifying the accuracy of lay observations and frankly, they are most often badly flawed.

[Hekate]

14. Perhaps you have a point. What do you suppose is happening to Tumbulu's male sheep?

... out in California?

Etcetera.

Hekate

[kristopher]

15. It's hard to say...

But I would argue that unless there is evidence to connect the two sets of observations, it is poor logic to invoke one uninvestigated incident to lend validity to an incident that has been investigated and dismissed as being not anomalous.

[Hekate]

16. I respect your educated opinion, but I also respect people on the ground who are dealing with this

... stuff, anomalies as you say. Like the DUer raising sheep, the woman documenting what she is finding in deer -- and the mothers of the children of Love Canal.

Something is wrong in all these different places. Environmentally wrong.

Hekate

[XemaSab]

19. .

[Indenturedebtor]

23. Dude Keas are no forkin joke

I saw one spend about 40 minutes insistently chewing the rubber off of a protesting woman's shoe.

Very Sharp those little buggers.

[kristopher]

21. I can understand that belief.

However what is happening is that you are experiencing what is known as confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Confirmation bias (or myside bias<1>) is an irrational tendency to search for, interpret or remember information in a way that confirms preconceptions or working hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. These biases in information processing are distinguished from the behavioral confirmation effect (also called self-fulfilling prophecy), in which people's expectations influence their own behavior.<2>

Biases can occur in the collection, interpretation or recall of information.<3> Some psychologists use "confirmation bias" for systematic biases in any of these three processes, while others restrict the term to selective collection of evidence, using "assimilation bias" for biased interpretation.<4> In many reasoning situations, people avoid confirmation bias and test hypotheses in a genuinely informative way.<3> The bias appears in particular for issues that are emotionally significant (such as personal health or relationships) and for established beliefs which shape the individual's expectations.<3> Biased search, interpretation and/or storage have been invoked to explain belief perseverance (a well-established finding that beliefs remain when the evidence for them is taken away)<5>, attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more polarized as the different parties are exposed to the same evidence) and the irrational primacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series).<6>

Confirmation bias can lead to disastrous decisions, especially in organizational, military and political contexts.<7><8> It is one of the sources of overconfidence in personal beliefs.<9>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

If you really want to address things that are harmful to the biosphere, it is extremely important to focus our limited resources (including attention and emotional support) on challenges that can be verified.

In this case, why would you *choose* to dismiss the evaluation by experts that have seen the evidence? I understand that real problems are often identified at the point where it impacts people's lives and that means we shouldn't dismiss out of hand concerns such as those voiced in the OP; however when that evidence has been reviewed by a variety of experts (including non-interested parties) and found to be unconvincing, what further action should follow?

[Sal Minella]

24. The anomalies have been dismissed WITHOUT being investigated

is the problem. No one is saying all the figures in authority are corrupt -- My personal confirmational bias (or maybe it's just that time of the month) is that anyone with the political power to investigate is afraid of where the investigation might lead, and chooses to look the other way.

Edit to add: If the anomalies were one-in-ten, I wouldn't try to argue with you pooh-poohing a science teacher's efforts. But two-thirds of the bucks with anomalies -- I seriously doubt this is a figment of her imagination.

[kristopher]

25. The University and others saw the evidence.

You didn't.

Confirmation bias.

ETA: The article even plays on/relies on confirmation bias. It presents a valid problem - the introduction of new compounds with unknown impact into the environment - with a body of evidence that was dismissed by NEUTRAL experts as being within the range of natural variability. Are you telling me that there are no legitimate examples to use to make the larger point? Or is this a case of provocative journalism that works to incite people against legitimate authority the same way as the nutjobs on the right do?

[Sal Minella]

26. I am not going to try to tell you ANYTHING, dear heart . . .

except that "seeing the evidence" and "investigating causes of the evidence" are two entirely different things.

In the science world where I grew up, a sixty-percent rate of anomalies would not be considered within range of normal variability or normal incidence of mutation.

Or do you think a lay person (especially a flighty female type) is not capable of diagnosing a sixty-percent anomaly rate?

Do you believe she would have to have a Ph.D. in ungulate anatomy to see there's something wrong?

[kristopher]

27. Why are you trying to interject sexism?

My remarks and conclusions have nothing to do with the sex of the person that gathered the evidence so why are you trying to create the impression that it does?

What I think is that there is probably some sort of problem with the sampling and/or observations that isn't being communicated in the article. For example, scraping up road kill isn't a very precise or well thought out sampling regime and experience with chopping that road kill up for food hardly qualifies someone as an expert in anatomy.

Feel free to believe what you want but I think it is a poorly documented story that makes dubious claims.

[Sal Minella]

28. As it happens, "scraping up road kill" is a commonly used and generally accepted

method of sampling for scientific studies of wild populations.

But please don't let this fact interfere with your pontificating.

[kristopher]

29. Another personal attack?

That's twice now, and that's too bad.

[Sal Minella]

30. Addendum

I do not mean to imply that road-kill sampling is a good method; it is widely accepted only because the manpower and financial resources required for more statistically valid methods are usually not available.

A less-than-perfect sampling method is better than none at all.

[kristopher]

31. I retract my objections

I contacted the University of Montana by email and was told by a faculty member familiar with the data presented by Hoy that the researcher Hoy had direct contact with died several years ago. I sent a link to the article and asked if they could elaborate on their role as described in the article. This is the reply; (I've deleted the names):

"As I recall, *** examined photos of deer and said that several of them showed malformations. I know he wasn't presented information that suggested cause and effect, and am pretty sure he didn't know what percentage of the population showed these malformations. So far as I know, Dr. *** and I were the only faculty members at UM who discussed this issue with Ms. Hoy."

So the underlying information missing from the article is that the UofM apparently saw some photos from the preliminary stages of Hoy's record-keeping with no context.

That places the remarks in the article about the deformations being within the range of natural variability in a totally different context.

[Hekate]

4. This makes me wonder what a survey of fertility doctors who treat men would find...

Something is seriously wrong in Montana, and it can't possibly be confined to the wildlife. Nor would this stop at the borders of the state.

Hekate

[Tumbulu]

6. My male sheep are the same and this is N. Calif.

I finally had the vet come out to help me castrate as my castrations kept going wrong only to find that my flock has over 1/3 ectopic testes. This is an organic flock and has been since 1994. This is not from their feed or medical treatments.

I had been pondering what is with my flocks genetics...

[Thickasabrick]

10. Wow....so if it's not the feed....I'm wondering if it's all the drugs that

are flushed down into water systems. Like the fish who are both male and female that they attributed to this problem with our water.

[Shallah Kali]

17. ariel fungacide drift might be the cause of the deer abnormalties

She described examining different endocrine-disrupting compounds, like a detective at a murder scene, eliminating suspects until she met up with chlorothalonil, a broad-spectrum fungicide. It had been the go-to fungicide in 1994 when neighboring farmers in Idaho were fighting potato blight.

The government monitors pesticide use, and Hoy learned chlorothalonil (sold under the commercial names of Bravo, Echo and Daconil) had been applied on potato fields in heavy doses in 1994 and for several subsequent years. Many of the fields where it was used lie directly west of the valley across the Bitterroot Mountains.

In 2007, Hoy found a scientist, Diane Henshel of Indiana University, interested in conducting a study of air circNighthawk with Underbiteulation pattern, which Hoy suspected might bring chlorothalonil wafting into the valley. Henshel studies environmental pollutants, particularly pollutants' effects on developing organisms. She visited Hoy and examined animals at the rehabilitation center and reviewed Hoy's data and photos.

In 2008, three of Henshel's graduate students completed a baseline risk assessment for the Bitterroot Valley through air modeling. They found pesticides used in Idaho — but not in the Bitterroot — have been found in the valley, including chlorothalonil. And they confirmed that a metabolite of the chemical is chemically akin to cyanide and is many times more toxic to the endocrine system than is chlorothalonil. The authors recommended sampling of more pesticides in air, water and soil and testing of xylene, a toxic chemical released from a surgical-products manufacturer in the county. They also suggested testing possible synergistic effects of multiple pesticides in use in the valley, commonly referred to as a "cocktail effect" of chemicals.

Are you in an area where crops are grown even many miles away? This might be what is involved with your sheep as well...

EWG Air Monitoring Finds Toxic Pesticides Drifting From California Farm Fields
Airborne Poisons Found in More than 60 Percent of Tests (1999 report)
http://www.ewg.org/reports/cadrift

[PDJane]

7. And yes, it's happening to human populations too......

India in particular has has some problems with male infertility, in a land where that is a cultural Very Big Deal.

And yes, some of it has been traced to deliberately infertile plants; one of Monsanto's bright ideas.

[GodlessBiker]

9. Misformed scrotums can't be good.

[YoungAndOutraged]

13. Wolves are obviously to blame

:sarcasm:

[Nihil]

20. Probably about the same proportion as for the male SUV drivers who hit them ...

:hide:

[postulater]

22. That's probably what has happened to Baucus.