Altering Eden: The Feminization of Nature

by Deborah Cadbury

A cautionary exploration of the effects of toxic pollution on the environment examines how exposure to chemicals that mimic the female hormone estrogen has had a massive effect on both human and animal fertility rates and health. 10,000 first printing.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Canon, Environment

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Deborah Cadbury is an award-winning British author and BBC television producer specialising in fundamental issues of science and history, and their effects on modern society.
After graduating from Sussex University in Psychology and Linacre College, Oxford she joined the BBC as a documentary maker and has received numerous international awards, including an Emmy, for her work on the BBC's Horizon strand.

She is also the highly-acclaimed author of The Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, The Feminisation of Nature, The Dinosaur Hunters, The Lost King of France and Space Race.

(Source: Wikipedia, HarperCollins)

Reviews

[Sancho · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another alarming book of the style of Silent Spring (Carson, 1962). Cadbury exposes the great amount of hormone-disrupting chemicals flooding our society: from pesticides to plastics.

Cadbury analyzes and explains how the disruption of hormones alters growth and biological functions in humans and non-human animals and impacts the development of fetuses, especially of the genitals. She also talks about these chemicals' impact on breast and vaginal cancer on women several years after their mothers had ingested medicines with certain hormones in them.

It is scary to understand how little has changed since Silent Spring, and then since The Feminization of Nature. We are trapped in a poisoned world, everything surrounding us has a potentially harmful effect on us and on our children, born or unborn. Even those who know the most about these issues recognize that they cannot escape.

And it is not a matter of being chemicals-paranoid, it is real. The OMS recommends in-flight fumigation (yes, with passengers trapped in the plane) in addition to two more doses to the surfaces of the plane, to avoid malaria and other diseases to enter e.g. Europe from Latin America. Cadbury reports high levels of poisons such as DDT in humans in Central America, mainly because of "indoor fumigation and direct spreading on humans." How do you call this flight thing then? What will happen to us? Would you travel with your new-born child on one of these flights?

I really think we are dooming ourselves as species to extinction. Evolution will never be able to cope with the rapid generation and release of chemicals into the environment.

Now back to the book. It was entertaining and easy to read. I think it is a well written book and the author manages to transmit her message in simple and understandable words. Recommended!

[Pamela]

This book is extremely informative and even scary. Apparently, the Children of Men scenario is very, very real. Other the past 50 years or so, sperm counts have been dramatically decreasing. There has been a rapid influx of cancers in the reproductive organs of both men and women. Even in the animal kingdom there have been sex organ issues leading to the decrease in the number of animals. What is truly amazing is that animals have been shown REVERSING their sex! The book opens with scientists catching (and releasing) alligators. They found smaller male genetalia and some in the middle of a sex change; some males even carrying eggs. It also opens with a young graduate student who found cells in the human male testes that are precursors to cancer. These abnormal cells are like those found in a fetus, as if the cells did not develop properly. These abnormal cells show future testicular cancer. They developed in the womb; there is no escaping it. No one believed him at first; now his ideas are widely accepted.
These cancers and other reproductive issues are linked to chemicals that mimic the female hormone estrogen. In a sense, the world is becoming female.
I am still working on it. My move really screwed up a lot of my reading. I am thinking about starting over. :/

Yeah...as interesting as this is...I kind of feel like I'm reading a text book. I'm not smart enough for this. :(

[Genetic Cuckoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply a wonderful and scary book in equal measure. Well written and clever, it explores many ways in which we are inadvertently altering the world around us. It gives the reader many things to think about and is sometimes quite shocking. It is a fascinating book.