In January we learned that our federal Minister of Health, Tony Clement, NDP Leader Jack Layton, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose and others were tested for 103 pollutants.  The report entitled “Toxic Nation on Parliament Hill” revealed that up to 55 were found in these MPs, such as the known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors PCBs, organochlorines, organophosphates, heavy metals, flame retardants, and more. These people were all born before the enormous increase in environmental toxins began in the 1950’s and they, therefore, started life with their livers still able to detoxify that increasing toxic load, while children born more recently were fed these toxins through their mothers’ umbilical chords, often damaging their livers and reducing their ability to detoxify.  Furthermore, these MPs had their children before their sperm and eggs could be similarly attacked by those poisons our governments are supposed to protect us from. 

The Human Genome Project conducted by the US National Institutes of Health recently added to its mandate the Environmental Human Genome Project, when some 200 genes were identified which are particularly sensitive to specific environmental toxins. Many of these turned out to be regulatory genes and, therefore, of importance to the fetal development and later to all body functions and cell repair. The environmental toxins threatening these genes are known to inhibit the body’s natural detoxification pathways, and cause cancer, low birth weight, inability to conceive, birth defects. In the November 30, 2006, issue of Nature the discovery of a protein p63 was reported which, when inhibited or damaged by environmental toxins and their associated nutritional deficiencies, results in the death of female eggs. Back in the 1940’s, experimental research by Andre Voisin showed that merely depriving animals of manganese resulted in sterility, even though the animals appeared otherwise perfectly healthy.  Subsequent provision with this trace mineral made them fertile again. Today, our soils are becoming more and more mineral deficient due to standard farming methods, and simultaneously our environment has become an ever-increasing toxic soup resulting in cancer and other chronic diseases.

Cancer and infertility now appear to have parallel functions. Central to cancer is understanding a tumor protein p53 located in every single cell of the body; its job is to ensure that potentially faulty cells are killed (apoptosis) before they proliferate and become cancer cells.  It is well-known that environmental toxins classified as carcinogens turn off p53 and that substances like beta carotene can turn it back on (the principle supporting the highly successful Gerson therapy). As reported in the November 30, 2006, issue of Nature, a parallel process has been discovered in another protein: p63.  It regulates the health of female eggs in their formative stage, then called oocytes; p63 identifies oocytes damaged by toxins or radiation and kills them, often all of them, causing sterility.

A plethora of research has confirmed that sperm count, quality and motility in the industrialized world is down by as much as 55%, compared to the 1950’s, and in some countries the fear that all men will be sterile within 80 to a 100 years is seriously discussed. The causes of this impending disaster are well documented in humans as well as animals across several genera and include some 50 specific pesticides such as 2,4-D, polychlorinated biphenyls, DDT, excessive ozone in the air, heavy metal exposure in food and dentistry as well as wood preservatives, radiation, trichloroethylene found in medical cleaning fluids and dry cleaning chemicals, certain pharmaceutical drugs, all conventional cancer therapies, and even disposable diapers which, in addition to containing carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting chlorine, may also cause scrotal temperatures to be slightly higher, thereby inhibiting the development for subsequent sperm production.

Infertility in both sexes ranges now from 15% in China to 30% in Europe .  While infertility in men is primarily caused by estrogenic substances, for women the whole process from conception to birthing a viable baby is a hazardous journey during which exposure to pesticides, stored flame retardants in fat tissues, or using a lice treatment medication just once, and drinking water containing mere traces of nitrates from fertilizers  - all during that most vulnerable first trimester runs a 70% risk of a miscarriage or stillbirths. Miscarriages and stillborn babies happen now at twice the rate in the US than in China , and on some North American Indian reserves, often located close to toxic dumps, the rate of stillbirths is 50%. In these communities another problem is the declining sex ratio in favor of mostly girls: pesticides are xeno estrogens, i.e. chemical analogs of female sex hormones, and as all fetuses in their earliest stage are female, the differentiation of roughly 50% of them into subsequent male children is prevented by this excess of phony female sex hormones in the pregnant women. 

Barriers to conception include especially the prolonged use of the birth control pill and an even just slightly lowered thyroid function (also due to pesticides and radiation).  Unexpected barriers to fertility have turned up in soy products so popular as substitutes for meat, fish and eggs.  Soy has powerful contraceptive properties due to is estrogenic content as well as a compound found called genistein which effectively stops sperm from reaching the egg. Apparently, the actress Julia Roberts was a case in point; when she stopped eating soy products she finally became pregnant. The hype about low-fat foods, and the desire to be pre-pubescently slim, do not support Mother Nature’s protocol for pregnancy. Low maternal body weight causes miscarriages not only because they don’t have enough body fat to support a developing fetus, but low body weight happens to reduce iron and vitamin B levels, especially folic acid without which a viable baby is impossible.

Similarly, a dogmatic insistence on a strict vegetarian diet devoid even of eggs prevents pregnancy especially in women whose ancestors relied on animal proteins making her genetically predisposed to requiring them. Nutritionist Susie Langley of Toronto described women who ate a vegan diet, generally on the run, and were thus lacking in most B vitamins, some important essential amino acids, and also being too low in essential cholesterol to permit synthesizing the sex hormones required for pregnancy. They became pregnant as soon as they started to eat differently. (Medical Post, April 8, 2003)  As World Wild Life Fund scientist Theo Colborn observes: “The endocrine system is so fine-tuned that it depends upon hormones in concentrations as little as a tenth of a trillion of a gram to control womb environment, as inconspicuous as one second in 3,169 centuries.”

Mother Nature has a timetable.  She likes fresh eggs.  If you are 40 years old and look 25, your eggs are still 40 years old and so is your uterus and your fallopian tubes are already “likely to be as scared as antique furniture”, as Julie Vargo and Maureen Regan observe in their excellent book “A Few Good Eggs”.

 Addiction – in both sexes – to tobacco, coffee, and alcohol present serious barriers to conception, successful pregnancies, and healthy children. In women, the addiction to exercise  and the fear of becoming fat is especially serious. You do become quite fat while pregnant, and Nature expects you to enjoy that.  Becoming pregnant requires the mentality of a cow chewing cud while blissing out on a sunny pasture. The whole process from love-making to raising a healthy toddler is languid, timeless, random, and non-goal-oriented. One cannot have a baby and assume to return to work as if nothing had happened.  Unfortunately, most of us have frantic lifestyles (often imposed, not chosen) fundamentally at odds with Nature. Our lives are also unnaturally due to light pollution which interferes with normal ovulatory cycles.  Conceiving a baby and going through a successful pregnancy is not likely to happen on the run, like drive-through banking. Babies are not another career move or a house renovation. Anything Nature does provides more than an acquisition – it is a revolution. The great peace activist and scientist, Professor Ursula Franklin of the University of Toronto put it charmingly in the 1989 Massey Lectures when she observed: “Although I was intellectually quite prepared for the birth of my first child, I was stunned by the degree of randomness that this event created in my life. It took me a while to understand that it was pointless to plan my days the way I used to … I needed different schemes to deal with the un-planable.”

Indeed, this surrender to Nature may explain why couples who adopt a child, after having given up on conceiving themselves, wind up getting pregnant after the adoption. Relating to a child often prepares the body for conception, perhaps because the fundamental change of pace from goal-oriented to primarily relational supports the production of all the right hormones in the brain where the chemistry of conception and sexuality is orchestrated. I saw this frequently when I ran an adoption agency in the 1970’s.  In my experience, both the adoption and the surprise pregnancy made such families very happy.

But there is something even worse than not being able to have a baby and that is having one that is born with its nervous system and organs damaged – caused by the environmental toxins’ ability to interfere with the absorption of vitally necessary nutrients which become unavailable for building healthy organs and brains. The most  definitive proof for this comes from the three decade-long study by Dr. Elizabeth Guillette conducted in Mexico where she compared children exposed to agricultural pesticides during their fetal stages with those whose mothers were never exposed to them.

More recent research has shown that a child’s IQ is seriously compromised in the uterus by the mother’s exposure to mercury, and the June 3, 2005 issue of Science reported that exposure to pesticides in the womb, especially methoxychlor used in vineyards, programs the genes in the fetus such as to predispose the child later in life to various diseases and infertility.  These so-called epigenetic trans-generational actions are also possible through certain pharmaceutical drugs, such as the now well-known case of DES (diethylstilbestrol), once used to control nausea during pregnancy (magnesium supplementation and avoidance of refined wheat, salt, and sugar generally does the trick perfectly and causes no harm).

Even slightly deficient nutrition has the same disruptive power across generations, as Dr. Pottenger showed in his famous experiment with some 900 cats over several generations: the third generation was always sterile.

After interviewing Theo Colborn about her famous book “Our Stolen Future” and Professor Guillette about her project in Mexico , I became so concerned about the future of humanity that I decided to publish an excellent book by Toronto ’s Dr. Patrick Hewlett, a fertility physician with more than 30 years’ experience in fertility medicine. His new book, “We Can’t Have A Baby”, is a “practical guide to the management of infertility – with and without the new technologies.” This book is supremely practical. No fluff here and a keen insight into why the high-tech approach is not necessarily good. Couples with fertility problems often endure high-tech experimentation and need information on what works and what doesn’t. Dr. Patrick Hewlett takes a patient-centered view which has fortified him against being bamboozled by high-tech pipe dreams. He teaches couples how Nature works with and for you. Dr. Hewlett’s chapter “You are what you eat” is especially helpful.

In this connection the recent discovery by University of Saskatchewan by Dr. Roger Pierson and his team is encouraging: conception was thought to be possible only during a few days every month but is now known to be possible so frequently as to be seen like a “wave” process.

Favoring patience and natural approaches is important because test-tube babies have double the risk of major birth defects and often are dangerously underweight at birth.  According to two major studies in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002, it is not clear yet whether the quality of the eggs and sperm are the reason, or if the invasive process itself is to blame. Other technological interventions result in multiple births with several babies not being viable.

Mother Nature made rules more despotic than any carved in stone.  They are encoded in something less negotiable, namely dynamically interdependent organic matter. Her three main dictates have been identified by Malthus, Darwin , and modern toxicology.  Malthus noticed that creatures die out if their numbers outstrip the food supply. Darwin taught that animals are completely dependent upon their environments to which they must adapt, or become extinct, if they don’t evolve into environmentally compatible forms (e.g. dinosaurs into birds). Today, modern toxicology teaches us that if you mess with the quality of the food supply and ignore, even the tiniest bit, Mother Nature’s protocols for the creation of babies and the maintenance of health, then our numbers will rapidly decline until there is no tomorrow. The hardy cockroaches, which are hundreds of millions of years old and even saw the dinosaurs come and go, will prevail instead.