Four of five comments concerning my March 8, 2013 letter to the editor said I lied. I quoted but didn’t list references for three studies, all of which should have been headline news.
This is the reference for the study reporting important new findings concerning epigenetic changes connected to five brain disorders, including autism and ADHD. It should be of interest to all parents: “Identification of risk loci with shared effects on five major psychiatric disorders: a genome-wide analysis.” – Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, The Lancet, Early Online Publication, 28 February 2013, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)62129-1.
The review I quoted stated how extremely lethal neonicotinoid insecticides are to birds. Just one or two seeds coated with a neonicotinoid kills a bird. The reference for the review is “The Impact of the Nation’s Most Widely Used Insecticides on Birds” – March 2013, Dr. Pierre Mineau and Cynthia Palmer, American Bird Conservancy.
Other studies have proven that neonicotinoids are responsible for killing wild pollinators and honey bees. Without pollinators, we will lose at least one third of our common foods.
The March of Dimes says premature births happen to 1 in 8 babies born. Premature births are a definitive symptom of disruption of the fetal thyroid hormones during development. Each year that there was a significant increase in premature births, there was a corresponding increase in prevalence of birth defects in mammals born the next spring. The highest level of premature births at 12.8% also corresponded to a sudden very high use of neonicotinoids and glyphosate in 2006. Multiple reviews and hundreds of studies indicate that Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, which cause human babies to be born premature, are likely the same EDCs killing bees and causing mammals (including human newborns) and birds to have a high prevalence of birth defects.
These correlations should be investigated.
Judy Hoy
Stevensville