Stolen Future Chapter 3 and 4

1.) Tantamount: Equivalent, as in value, force, effect, or signification.

2.) Endocrine: Secreting internally into the blood or lymph, of or pertaining to an endocrine gland or its secretion.

3.) Hypersensitivity: Excessively sensitive, allergic to a substance to which persons do not normally react. 

4.) Caesarean: surgery, a short word for Caesarean section. 

5.) Intrauterine: located or occurring within the uterus/ womb.

6.) Uterine: Of or pertaining to the uterus or womb, related through having had the same mother.

7.) Puberty: The period or age at which a person is first capable of sexual reproduction of offspring, in common law, presumed to be 14 years in the male and 12 years in the female. 

8.) Virulent: Actively poisonous; intensely noxious, highly infective, causing clinical symptoms; violently or spitefully hostile, intensely bitter, spiteful, or malicious.  

9.) DES: used in French names as a contraction of de and the article les.

10.) Circumstantial: of pertaining to, or derived from circumstances, of the nature of a circumstance, secondary, incidental, dealing with or giving circumstances, detailed, particular, pertaining to conditions of material welfare. 

11.) Thyroiditis: Inflammation of the thyroid gland.

12.) Androgens: Any substance, as testosterone or anderosterone, that promotes male characteristics.

Stolen Truth Chapter #2

                                            Discussion Questions

1.) What happened when Colborn started to chase the specter of cancer? (page 19)

2.) How did Colborn respond to Bengtsson’s speech?  What did she think the speech contained?  Did she take any action?  If she did, what action did she take?

3.) What showed up in the tissue analyses done on the wildlife?  Where did they show up again?

4.) What was Colborn’s latest discovery?  When did her discovery come?

5.) Where was the hand-me-down poison found in?  What did they all have in common?

6.) What did the hand-me-down poison disrupt?

7.) Who was John Harshbarger?  What did he contribute to the studies?

8.) What happened when the researcher fed contaminants extracted from the sediments to the fish or applied then to the skin?

9.) A team from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had ruled out viruses, but what did they also rule out?

10.)                   Who researched on an international collaborative effort that was shedding light on how PAHs did their damage inside the body?

Our Stolen Future

                                                    “Our Stolen Future”

                                                         Quote Master

  

Quote #1:  “Long before the abandoned nests with broken eggshells appeared, he noticed the eagles were acting strangely.” (Page 1)

This quote is taken from the first passage about the bald eagles in the Gulf Coast of Florida.  As the title of the chapter (“Omen”) suggests, this quote also foreshadows a catastrophe.  The significance of the quote lies in the fact that the bald eagles have taken up an abnormal behavior which can be very detrimental to the population of bald eagles in Florida.

Quote #2: “But at nesting sites he had visited for thirteen years, two-thirds of the adult birds, easily recognized by their white heads, appeared indifferent to the nesting ritual.  They engaged in no courtship activity.  As Broley noted in his diary, they showed no interest whatsoever in mating.  The birds just “loafed.”(Page 2)

This quote correlates to the previous quote; it is the same incident of where the bald eagles in the Gulf Coast of Florida obtain an irregular manner in which they are neglecting their mating rituals and not engaging in courtship activities.  This irregular behavior of the eagles will jeopardizes the reproduction of the bald eagles and will eventually affect the overall population of the eagles in Florida.  An extinction of the bald eagles might be a consequence of this abnormality.

Quote #3: “Although the symptoms were strikingly similar, the second crash among fish-fed mink could not be linked to DES, and the connection between the two declines remained a mystery.” (Page 4)

This quote is about the decline of the population in minks.  A rapid decline in the minks is shown in both those that are domestically raised and those that are wild.  Initially there was an explanation for the rapid decline of the mink; however, the explanation proved to be useless since the second crash among the fish-fed mink could not be linked to the DES.  This quote’s significance lies in the fact that the real explanation for the decline of the minks could not be found and therefore no solution can be made.  If this were to continue, the whole population of minks would decrease significantly. 

Quote #4: “Significant numbers of dead animals began hitting the beaches as the disease ripped through the dolphin schools inhabiting the deep, open waters a dozen miles offshore.” (Page 8)

This quote targets the dolphin in the Mediterranean Sea; strangely the dolphins have acquired a destructive disease that is rapidly killing off the entire dolphin population in the Mediterranean Sea.  This quotes significance lies in the fact that the both the disease and the cause of the disease are still unknown.  With no information and solution for the harmful disease, there is no cure for the infected dolphins and no hope to save the dolphin population.

Quote #5: “Many of the disturbing wildlife reports involved defective sexual organs and behavioral abnormalities, impaired fertility, the loss of young, or the sudden disappearance of entire animal populations.  In time, the alarming reproductive problems first seen in wildlife touched humans, too.” (Page 10)

This quote is the most significant and powerful one.  All the previous quotes revolved 

around animals and how their population is slowly declining because of the unknown and rapidly spreading disease.  However, the significance in this quote is that humans are starting to be affected.  If the reproductive problems start to affect the humans too, then it would be a serious problem.  Each of these incidents had a clear sign that there was something that was seriously wrong, but the problem is still unidentified.