FEELING A BIT HORMONAL
Hormones—chemicals naturally produced by the body—have several important duties, including regulating reproductive functions. In humans, the imbalance of even a single hormone can lead to a host of problems, including obesity, depression, and even cancer. Yet injecting growth hormones into cattle (to make them gain weight faster and require less feed) has become standard practice for the U.S. beef and dairy industries: More than 80% of American cattle are injected with them. In addition to synthetic hormones used to increase milk production, six other naturally occurring hormones have been approved for use in beef by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA): zeranol, estradiol, melengestrol acetate, trenbolone acetate, progesterone, and testosterone.
But after extensive research and testing, the European Commission (the European Union’s executive body) concluded that “no acceptable daily intake could be established for any of these hormones” and connected them to an increased risk of severe hormonal imbalance as well as various types of cancer. Two of these hormones, estradiol and zeranol, are also linked to poor development in children. It’s now illegal for European farmers to inject their cattle with hormones, but the FDA says they’re safe and doesn’t require hormone-treated foods to carry any labeling.
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Hallmark makes cards for 105 different types of family relationships.
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ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES
Chances are, you eat genetically modified, or “GM,” foods every day. Over 105 million acres of GM crops are grown in America—mostly corn, soy, wheat, and canola—common ingredients in nearly every packaged food from corn flakes to soup to fish sticks.
To produce a genetically modified plant, the desired DNA is placed in a carrier, often a virus like E. coli, and implanted in the host plant’s cells. Subsequent generations of the plant then carry the genetic mutation. Most GM crops have been modified to withstand larger amounts of pesticides, or to make the plants last longer and resist damage. One example: “fishberries.” A gene from a species of Arctic codfish that creates an antifreeze protein was infused into the genetic code of strawberries in order to make them more frost-tolerant. Proponents of GM argue that interspecies crossbreeding is simply the next step in plant development.
And because they’re technically “living crops” and not additives, GM foods aren’t required to undergo safety testing before being put on the market. So what could possibly go wrong?
• In 1992 Murray Lumpkin, M.D., then director of the FDA’s Division of Anti-infective Drug Products, warned that DNA doesn’t always break down in the stomach. Some of it can be absorbed by gut bacteria, which could then become resistant to antibiotics or mutate in unexpected ways. The University of Georgia’s Dr. Sharad Phatak says, “When you insert a foreign gene, you are changing the whole metabolic process. Will any one gene kick off a whole slew of changes? We don’t know for sure.”
• Combining genes may lead to new allergic reactions. In 1992 an eight-year-old girl with a seafood allergy reportedly died after eating fishberries. And in 1996 production of a GM soybean containing Brazil nut genes was halted after it was found to cause allergic reactions.
The first, and so far only, safety evaluation of a GM crop was commissioned in the early 1990s by Calgene (now owned by Monsanto, one of the world’s largest agricultural biotechnology companies) for their FLAVR SAVR™ tomato. Though the test was never peer-reviewed, Calgene’s report to the FDA concluded that there were no significant toxic effects…even though several test rats died within a few weeks of eating the GM tomatoes. And no studies were done on their intestines, even though 7 out of 20 rats developed stomach lesions. In humans, this could cause life-threatening hemorrhages or worse.
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Polls show: Only 7% of married women trust their husbands to do the laundry correctly.
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SEND IN THE THE CLONES
Workers at agricultural supplier J.R. Simplot Company noticed that one of their cows was eating the same amount of food as the other cows but was gaining 8 pounds a day (as opposed to the average 3.5-pound daily weight gain). So Simplot cloned the cow. Now they have eight identical cows that all gain 8 pounds a day. That’s a big benefit of animal cloning: It can take the guesswork out of farming, leading to higher yields and higher profits.
But the downside: Animal cloning is a new and unproven technology that may have severe safety implications. Even Ian Wilmut, the lead scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996, warns against eating cloned animals. He says that defects in clones are common, and even a small imbalance in a clone could lead to hidden food safety problems. And the technology is so new that there have been few studies on the risks of eating cloned food.
Nevertheless, in January 2008, the FDA ruled that the meat and milk from cloned livestock are safe for human consumption, despite pressure from Congress to delay the FDA’s decision until additional safety studies could be conducted. (They never were.) What’s more, the FDA does not require labeling, so consumers have no way of knowing whether these products are on their supermarket shelves.
BEAM ME UP
Food irradiation is a process that uses high-energy gamma rays, electron beams, or X-rays (about seven million times more powerful than a medical X-ray) to kill hidden bacteria and insects during food production. So what’s wrong with that? Critics argue that the process allows food handlers to be sloppy with sanitation, knowing that the food is going to be irradiated later. Besides that, irradiation can do some strange things to food.
Meat, fruits, and vegetables that are irradiated can, at the very least, lose some of their vitamin content. And the rays that kill harmful bacteria also kill beneficial bacteria and enzymes. But of even more concern to scientists at the International Institute of Concern for Public Health are the “unique radiolytic byproducts” of irradiation—substances that can cause gene mutations. And while it won’t make your food radioactive, irradiation can form toxic chemicals such as benzene and formaldehyde, both suspected of causing cancer and birth defects.
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30% of Americans don’t know what year the September 11 attacks took place. (It was 2001.)
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Just as with other controversial food-related issues, some scientists say irradiation is perfectly safe. The FDA maintains that irradiation is an “effective way of combating food-borne illness.” Their findings, however, are based on studies done in the 1950s. Consumer safety groups continue to lobby for new tests, but U.S. food regulations currently allow the irradiation of wheat, white potatoes, spices, dry vegetable seasonings, fresh eggs, fresh produce, and meat and poultry. Wholly irradiated foods must be labeled “irradiated” or “treated with radiation” and display the radura symbol (a flower inside a green circle). But no special labeling is required on manufactured products that contain irradiated ingredients, and the FDA is considering a new rule that would allow some irradiated foods to be marketed with no labeling at all.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Americans have the largest, cheapest food supply in the world. And much of the bounty has come from advances in food science, including genetic engineering and cloning. Americans also have one of the lowest rates of food-borne illnesses, thanks in part to irradiation. So should we just relax and chow down? Maybe, or maybe we need more long-term, large-scale testing. And maybe we should know what we’re eating. Award-winning microbiologist Dr. John Fagan advocates the labeling of all newly introduced foods. “Without labeling,” he says, “it will be very difficult for scientists to trace the source of new illness caused by modified foods.” In the meantime, there is a large-scale study of the long-term health effects of modified foods—it’s happening right now, and we are the test subjects.
“Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on Earth, with a top speed of 120 ft/sec, is a cow that has been dropped out of a helicopter.”
—Dave Barry
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Getting your tongue pierced can
sometimes lead to endocarditis—inflammation of the heart valves.
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NOT-SO-GOOD
VIBRATIONS
Why does Earth hum? Because it doesn’t know the words.
WHAT’S THE BUZZ?
Bob and Leona Ehrfurth of Green Bay, Wisconsin, have a problem: Their house hums. Or sometimes it’s more of a rumble. “It’s like there’s a semitruck parked right outside with the engine running,” said Leona. “It doesn’t matter if the windows are open or closed, you still hear it,” added Bob. “We could move, but why should we have to? We didn’t cause it.”
The question is: What did?
SOUND REASONING
• Local authorities haven’t been able to find the cause. But one possibility is that it’s a phenomenon simply called “the Hum”—the background noise that our planet makes. Instances of the Hum have been reported all over the world as a persistent low-frequency noise that sounds like an idling truck. Individual Hums are so localized they’re often given a specific geographical name—for instance, the “Bristol Hum” or the “Taos Hum.”
• Some speculate that those who report these Hums are simply suffering from a condition called tinnitus, where the patient hears sound in the ear, typically ringing, that has no outside source.
• A second possibility: spontaneous otoacoustic emissions, or noises that human ears generate all on their own. Most people never notice them, but a small segment of the population does.
• A third possibility is that people are hearing the effects of ocean waves colliding. When waves with similar frequencies traveling in opposite directions collide with each other, they create a pressure wave that carries all the way down to the seafloor. All of those pressure waves pounding the seabed generate a frequency of their own that may be audible on land.
But the true cause of the Hum—and the noise in the Ehrfurths’ house—remains a mystery.
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How’s the fish? The Maldives Hilton recently opened the world’s first underwater restaurant.
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THE CURSE OF
CRISTIANO
Take the world’s highest-paid soccer player and the world’s most famous hotel heiress. Add a witch and a sorcerer, and what do you have? A story tailor-made for The World’s Gone Crazy.
SOCCERY
European soccer fans take their sport very seriously. So sports tabloids and Internet sites were flooded with lurid headlines in 2009 when 25-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo, superstar of the fabled team Real Madrid, was sidelined by an injury that refused to heal—and the injury was blamed on a witch. And, as an added bonus, professional celebrity Paris Hilton had managed to work her way into the story.
OCCULT OF PERSONALITY
It began on September 25, 2009, when an anonymous letter showed up in the clubhouse of Real Madrid. It read:
This is not personal. I have nothing against this great club. I am a professional and someone has paid very well for me using my powers. I have been hired to make Cristiano Ronaldo suffer a serious injury. I can’t promise it will be serious but he’ll certainly be out of action—more than playing!
The letter went on to claim that the curse was already working; it was responsible for breaking Ronaldo’s recent scoring streak. The story was picked up by the tabloids, and everyone got a chuckle out of it…until five days later, when Ronaldo was fouled in a game and went down hard. The diagnosis: “ankle traumatism and Grade-1 ligament sprain.” Bad news.
The letter writer was soon discovered to be a Portuguese “occult practitioner” named Pepe the Witch. And this wasn’t his first tangle with Real Madrid. Since 2003 he’s cursed the club several times, targeting such megastars as David Beckham and Sergio Ramos. Not surprisingly, Pepe also likes to play the media: When asked why he cursed Ronaldo, he cryptically explained he was given 15,000 euros by a “jilted lover” who was a “non-European and a very wealthy heiress from a well-known family.”
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The iVoodoo application lets you use your iPhone as a voodoo doll.
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Celebrity-watchers knew that this could only be Paris Hilton. Also known for her media savvy, Hilton let the story simmer for a while before hinting to Life & Style Magazine that she may have hired Pepe. Why? She’d had a failed relationship with Ronaldo in June 2009 after meeting him at a Los Angeles nightclub, where, according to reports, the two “lip-wrestled all night and ran up a $20,000 bar tab.” The subsequent fling was short, and, according to inside sources, Ronaldo dumped her. “I can’t stand it when someone is mean,” Hilton later complained. “I want a man anyway, not someone who runs about like a little girl.”
When Pepe was asked to remove the curse, he refused, assuring fans that he would do “everything possible to prevent Cristiano Ronaldo from continuing his career in football.” To make sure, Pepe constructed a voodoo doll of Ronaldo and said he would stab it in the spine “over and over” and wouldn’t stop even if “Ronaldo’s crying mother” knelt before him.
LIMPING ALONG
Although the incident made for some titillating headlines, few people actually took Pepe’s “curse” seriously. But after a few weeks passed by, Ronaldo was still in pain. He persevered and kept playing, but then reinjured the ankle in a game on October 10th. Through early November, he was unable to play or train with the team. His doctor was baffled; the ankle should have been healing, but it wasn’t. Ronaldo was sent to a specialist in the Netherlands, who couldn’t figure it out either. Now some people started seriously wondering: Was the curse real?
To be on the safe side, “a person very close to Ronaldo” (his mother, according to some rumors) decided to get some help—and hired the “Sorcerer of Fafe,” a 46-year-old Portuguese man named Fernando Nogueira, who claimed he could cast a spell to disarm Pepe’s curse and heal the injured ankle. “I have lit candles next to a picture of Cristiano to put the matter to an end,” said Fafe.
Did it work? By late November, Ronaldo’s ankle had healed and he’d returned to the team, where—for a time, anyway—he could get back to the business of being one of the world’s most famous soccer players.
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The red part of a turkey’s head is called the snotter.
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DISTRACTED DRIVERS
Are you driving your vehicle down the road right now? Then don’t forget to look up and check traffic every now and then while you read these fascinating stories.
CLEAN GETAWAY
When police noticed water pouring out of the cab of a truck traveling down a road in China in June 2009, they assumed the truck had mechanical problems and pulled it over. Instead of a leaky radiator, the officers found the driver naked and soaking wet from having just taken a shower—behind the wheel. He explained that his air conditioner had broken, and his wife (in the passenger seat) helped him rig up a “sprinkler kettle system” to keep him cool, complete with a bicycle wheel suspended above him to accommodate a shower curtain. To keep the dashboard dry, his wife held a sheet of plastic over it. The man was cited for reckless driving.
DANCIN’ FOOL
Romanian police are searching for a truck driver who posted a video on the Internet of himself dancing: He claps his hands, stands up in his seat, and then jumps out of his seat, mugging for the camera with his hand either barely on or not on the steering wheel, while his truck is speeding down the highway. So far, police have been unable to locate the man.
CAP’N CRUNCHED
Concerned drivers in Needham, Massachusetts, called to notify police that a vehicle was driving erratically, crossing double yellow lines, and tailgating other cars. When police caught up to the driver they found him eating a bowl of cereal with milk. His excuse for the reckless driving: “I was hungry.”
NIT-PICKING
In Canada, talking on a cell phone while driving can get you a $500 fine under the “Distracted Driving” laws. But according to Ontario’s transportation minister, Jim Bradley, the law doesn’t go far enough. “There
are many other activities occurring during driving that are just as dangerous, if not more so. The other day I was almost side-swiped by a man who was completely distracted while picking his nose. And I don’t mean just a nose scratch—he was in up to his knuckle.” Bradley proposed raising the fine to $850. A rival politician, Randy Hillier, scoffed at the idea: “What’s next? No eating broccoli with dinner due to the possibility of passing gas into the atmosphere thereby increasing global warming?”
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Vulcan, a town in Alberta, Canada, has a tourist center that looks like a space station.
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BUS DRIVER MANIAC
In San Antonio, Texas, in 2008, onboard security cameras recorded a bus driver reaching into his shirt pocket, getting his phone, starting to text…and then slamming into a stopped car, causing a massive pileup. The bus was carrying disabled passengers. There were no serious injuries, but the driver was fired.
IF ANYONE SHOULD KNOW BETTER…
In 2009 Amanda Meyer, a police officer in Jacksonville, Florida, was driving her cruiser when she glanced down at her dashboard-mounted computer. When she looked up, there was a tanker truck stopped at a railroad crossing. She swerved…but not in time to avoid the 40-mph collision. Thankfully, the gas tanker was empty, but Meyer, who suffered minor injuries, was cited for reckless driving and fined $149.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy Page 29