before I tell you my story today I want
to start with this free it’s a Bantu
proverb that I learned while working in
southern Africa loosely translated it
means I am because we are
or people are people through other
people so I never represent myself or
tell my story without thanking the
people who make me who’ve made me who I
am first and foremost my friends and
family especially my mother and father
for a lifetime of support my wife
Katherine Kim and my son and daughter
for their continued support I also have
to think the funding was sources for the
research that I’ve done and there’s also
my disclosure I have been funded by the
chemical manufacturers but they have
since decided they don’t like to hang
out with me so much but that’s okay I
want to thank all the students that have
been involved especially the
undergraduates in blue my current
laboratory for providing a great
environment with incredibly diverse
group of people that I’m certain that I
learn a lot more from them than they
learn from me so now my story what a
week ago I was in the Minneapolis
Airport to give a similar talk and the
person that was in the EMA in a
restaurant and the person who took my
order and brought me my food asked why
well what brings you to the Twin Cities
and I said well I’m giving a talk in
McAlester college where my daughter is
on the professor of biology and she said
wow you don’t look like a professor
and I looked up and I said well that’s
funny because you look exactly like a
waitress and I I don’t I you know I
don’t normally judge people by their
appearance but she had the apron and a
nametag in the tablet and and actually
the end of this story it’s not true
that’s that’s the thing where you go key
I wish I had said what I said was thanks
for the compliment but I didn’t really
mean it because I didn’t really take it
as a compliment but not only do I not
look like a professor for most of my
life I haven’t felt like a professor for
most of my life I felt like just a
little boy who likes frogs who’s been
trying to answer this question on his
book that my mom says she read to me as
a baby I don’t remember it but my mom
says it’s true that all changed a few
years ago when a chemical company the
largest chemical company in the world
asked me to use my expertise in studying
frog hormones to try to understand it
the chemical they’re number one selling
product a weed killer atrazine if it
interfered with their hormones so
somehow long story short we examine the
African clawed frog in my lab we exposed
them to this chemical atrazine and we
showed things like this and these are
tests this and you don’t have to have a
PhD you be a frog expert to see that
there’s a difference between the control
and they exposed animals the control
test is if you look at under the
microscope it’s full of sperm soldiers
ready to go
the atrazine treated don’t add our test
is that testicular tubular fill with
cellular debris well some more is if you
look at the young developing larvae you
often find sometimes these are the
kidneys if you’re not used to looking at
frog gonads that this is an individual
that has testes then it has more ovaries
than it has another test is then it has
more over one pair get you in enough
trouble this guy this situation is
certainly not typical of amphibians
there are fish that are naturally am
Aphrodite but not in fib Ian’s we later
show that some of these animals grow up
even though their genetic males
typically become completely functioning
reproductive females even though there
were genetic males we showed that in
other species the coonass look like this
so those that a test is on the top and
all of that junk in the trunk on the
bottom those are all eggs that are
bursting through the surface of this
males test is now I showed this to the
Environmental Protection Agency because
I thought they’d be interested after all
it’s the number one selling chemical in
the world at the time and they said well
that’s not really an adverse effect that
would stimulate us to reassess that
chemical now my wife tells me that there
is nothing more painful in life than
childbirth I’m gonna have to give her
that but I would guess that a dozen
chicken eggs popping out of my testicles
what have to be at least in the top five
most painful experiences the EPA doesn’t
think so I thought more about why this
might happen so for example if this were
your test ish you should make
testosterone testosterone support
Monteux you know I learned that word at
age 49 so when you put two words
together like smoke and fog you get smog
twist and jerk you get to work
testosterone means testicular hormone
it’s literally two male hormone but we
hypothesize that this after scene turned
on an enzyme aroma taste that caused it
to stas thrown to be converted to
estrogen and if you’re a male that means
that you’re using up your testosterone
so you don’t make sperm but it also
means that you’re making the female
hormone when when you shouldn’t be so
then I started to think we published
that we published that in proceedings in
a National Academy of Sciences and and
nature very prestigious journals
journals that that’ll get you a tenured
professorship at a place like UC
Berkeley but journal said as my mom says
how important can it be Barnes and
Nobles never heard of them and I started
to think though about how my work might
imply things beyond frog so this is a
pond in Lake novel goblin agonda where I
started to think that this agricultural
runoff might not only affect the frogs
and the fish but also the other animals
that are drinking out of the water
including the human set collected
drinking and cooking water from this
same source because see we all make
estrogen in the exact same way and use
it in the same way the connection to
contaminants in water might not be so
obvious for us that this is my village
but things like Erin Brockovich a story
and things like Flint Michigan remind us
that we don’t necessarily have the
resources that we think we have the
clean sources of water a colleague of
mine showed because I don’t study humans
had to work with other people on this
that if you look at men in Columbia
Missouri and compare the atrazine in
their urine
you have atrazine in their urine have a
low sperm count and can’t get their
wives pregnant and by the way this is
the same amount of atrazine point 1
parts per billion that we were using to
chemically castrate and feminized our
frogs another colleague showed and I’ve
mashed it data down now because these
are after seeing levels of men who work
in the fields in California and these
are after seeing levels of men who apply
atrazine in California 2400 parts per
billion
they have 24,000 times the atrazine in
their urine then we use to chemically
castrate frogs and fish 24 thousand
times what we know is already having a
negative impact on men in Columbia
Missouri one of these guys could pee in
a bucket and I kept diluted 24 thousand
times and use the anthracene in their
urine to chemically castrate effeminate
twenty four thousand buckets of 30
tadpoles each then a little boy who
likes frogs learns phrases like
environmental justice because most of
these individuals are latina acts are in
California Mexican Mexican America and
then I thought about the impact that
increasing estrogen would have on humans
because the estrogen after seen has the
same effect than human cells if you take
human cancer cells and we’ve done some
of this work that don’t normally make a
Roma Tate’s or estrogen and give them a
stir zine they start making estrogen
just like we shown in fish and frogs and
rats and reptiles and in birds what’s
more is if you look at prostate cancer
there’s an eight point four fold
increase in prostate cancer in their
factory where they make atrazine in a
community that’s 80% black 80%
african-american their studies showing
that there’s correlations between
atrazine and their drinking water and
breast cancer in a sentence and women in
Kentucky and that’s just a correlation
but their own laboratory showed in 1994
that if you give rats atrazine you
increase the incidence of mammary cancer
or breast cancer above animals that
aren’t exposed this is an interesting
problem because breast cancer the number
one cancer in women is estrogen
dependent and this aroma taste that I’ve
talked about produces the estrogen
during breast cancer that stimulates
those breast cancers to grow and divide
and turn into tumors and spread in fact
the role of aroma taste is so
and breast cancer that the number one
treatment for breast cancer right now is
a chemical called letrozole it works by
knocking out of Roma tastes decreasing
estrogen so that even if you have
cancerous cells they don’t grow and turn
into a tumor that drug though has to
work against the 80 million pounds of
atrazine that we’re using every year
that’s the number one contaminant of
drinking water that does exactly the
opposite I got in trouble because I
pointed out that Novartis oncology in
the year 2000 offered treatments for
cancers that range from breast cancer so
the same company that gave us 80 million
pounds of this contaminant associated
with breast cancer was also selling a
chemical that does the opposite to treat
breast cancer yeah they weren’t too
happy about me pointing that out I
became concerned I’m just a little boy
who like front likes frauds but I became
concerned because if you look at 13 the
top 13 cancers you’re gonna get in this
country blacks african-americans are
more likely to get 11 out of 13 and more
likely to die from 13 out of 13 biology
my colleagues who are experts in Kansas
tell me that the less than 30% of cancer
can be explained by genetics that means
that when the doctor tells you that
you’re gonna get breast cancer more
likely if your brother your sister your
aunt or somebody in your family has it
they’re not telling you have bad genes
necessarily they’re telling that you’ve
been exposed to the same crap as the
rest of your family because if you’re a
minority if you’re an immigrant if
you’re first-generation if you’re
low-income you’re more likely to live in
and more likely to work in areas where
you’re exposed to chemicals that we know
are associated without adverse health
outcomes what’s more is with the ception
of HeLa cells that the cancer cells that
we use to study cancer don’t come from
minorities so even if we find the cure
kommen it may not be applicable to
people who would need it the most so I
think what’s happened is my interest in
this aquatic organism has taught me a
great deal about this aquatic organism
because we all start out as aquatic in
the amniotic fluid and these chemicals
that I study in my tadpoles can cross
the placenta in fact we now know that
you that your children will be exposed
over 300 synthetic chemicals before they
leave the womb and most of them we have
no eye
dia what the biological impact is for
after thing we do know from rats which
are a proxy for us that if you give rats
atrazine an epa lab showed those rats
are more likely to have an abortion of
those rats that don’t have an abortion
the sons are born with prostate disease
of those rats that don’t abort the
daughters are born with impaired memory
development such that when they grow up
their offspring experience retarded
growth and development and it was these
studies that move me to most it made me
realize I can’t just be a little boy who
likes frogs because see that rat on the
bottom that rat on the bottom never saw
atrazine the rat on the bottom was
affected by atrazine that it’s
grandmother was exposed to rat on the
bottom never saw atrazine the rat on the
bottom was affected by atrazine that
it’s grandmother was exposed to so when
i think about my little girl my son the
fact that my grandchildren that your
grandchildren could be affected by
chemicals that were using today it moved
me in a very different way than just a
little boy who likes frogs it’s just a
correlation but we already know studies
have already been done by the Center for
Disease Control and others that if you
get pregnant during peak anthracene
contamination you’re more likely to have
babies with birth defects including
malformed genitals in the mail babies
the EPA has acknowledged this but they
say quote a monetary value is assigned
to disease impairments and shortened
lives and weighed against the benefits
of keeping it chemical and use a
monetary value if you look at California
I’m often giving this talk outside of :
in California where the fifth or seventh
depends on you talk to you largest
economy in the world because of
agriculture not because of tech or or
Hollywood we produce 50% of the us’s
food half of the us’s food comes from
California as a result we use more
pesticides than any other state and 90%
of the workers are Latinas if I put in
red here the top ten counties for
agriculture these are the counties to
30% that makes us the fifth
this economy in the world what if I plot
unto that the thirty poorest towns in
California environmental justice so the
people who make us the fifth largest
economy in the world are the same people
who are paying that cost that the EPA
talks about and so when I thought about
this is a little boy who likes frogs it
motivated me to cross the line
so to speak Crocs in that line cost me
the chemical manufacturers set out to
discredit me with personal attacks they
said hey is biologist turned activist
turned activist a turn you can’t be a
scientist and an activist
they tried to discredit me but when they
were interviewed by New Yorker magazine
I said it simply wasn’t true I must be
crazy I must be making it up they said
and I quote I am troubled by a
suggestion that we have ever tried to
discredit anyone our focus has always
been on communicating the science and
setting the record straight I am
troubled at the suggestion that we’ve
ever tried to discredit anyone we’re an
earth what I’ve got an idea that they
tried to discredit me well it turns out
they settled out of court 105 million
dollar lawsuit and all of their secrets
strike their secret like how are we
gonna get Tyron notes came out from
their meetings their strategy became
public and look what the first goal of
the science was in their program where
on earth did anybody get the idea that
they would ever try to discredit anyone
I had to make a change
academia my adviser told me don’t be an
advocate let the science speak for
itself
but I had to think about this that we’re
being rewarded in the ivory tower
promoted for publishing things that the
public doesn’t have access to I changed
my mind about this philosophy because
agenda the company says on your website
they assume no obligation to update
forward-looking statements to reflect
actual results pardon my language but
who says like that but what
concerns me more is that the EPA says
that the ultimate decision of whether or
not to ban after scene is much bigger
than science it weighs in public opinion
and I thought the EPA is counting on my
mom the EPA is counting on you to help
it make its decision and I’m publishing
my work in journal said you can’t get in
Barnes and Noble
we have to change the way we do things
in the ivory tower there’s the
philosophy by a great thinker that goes
like this those who have the privilege
to know have the duty to act
this guy said that by the way and I
didn’t grow up privileged I don’t know
about you all I know is that now I’m
here now you are here you are privileged
and you have a duty and I’ve reason that
we can change the path but only if we
act now while it is still the future
you
to start with this free it’s a Bantu
proverb that I learned while working in
southern Africa loosely translated it
means I am because we are
or people are people through other
people so I never represent myself or
tell my story without thanking the
people who make me who’ve made me who I
am first and foremost my friends and
family especially my mother and father
for a lifetime of support my wife
Katherine Kim and my son and daughter
for their continued support I also have
to think the funding was sources for the
research that I’ve done and there’s also
my disclosure I have been funded by the
chemical manufacturers but they have
since decided they don’t like to hang
out with me so much but that’s okay I
want to thank all the students that have
been involved especially the
undergraduates in blue my current
laboratory for providing a great
environment with incredibly diverse
group of people that I’m certain that I
learn a lot more from them than they
learn from me so now my story what a
week ago I was in the Minneapolis
Airport to give a similar talk and the
person that was in the EMA in a
restaurant and the person who took my
order and brought me my food asked why
well what brings you to the Twin Cities
and I said well I’m giving a talk in
McAlester college where my daughter is
on the professor of biology and she said
wow you don’t look like a professor
and I looked up and I said well that’s
funny because you look exactly like a
waitress and I I don’t I you know I
don’t normally judge people by their
appearance but she had the apron and a
nametag in the tablet and and actually
the end of this story it’s not true
that’s that’s the thing where you go key
I wish I had said what I said was thanks
for the compliment but I didn’t really
mean it because I didn’t really take it
as a compliment but not only do I not
look like a professor for most of my
life I haven’t felt like a professor for
most of my life I felt like just a
little boy who likes frogs who’s been
trying to answer this question on his
book that my mom says she read to me as
a baby I don’t remember it but my mom
says it’s true that all changed a few
years ago when a chemical company the
largest chemical company in the world
asked me to use my expertise in studying
frog hormones to try to understand it
the chemical they’re number one selling
product a weed killer atrazine if it
interfered with their hormones so
somehow long story short we examine the
African clawed frog in my lab we exposed
them to this chemical atrazine and we
showed things like this and these are
tests this and you don’t have to have a
PhD you be a frog expert to see that
there’s a difference between the control
and they exposed animals the control
test is if you look at under the
microscope it’s full of sperm soldiers
ready to go
the atrazine treated don’t add our test
is that testicular tubular fill with
cellular debris well some more is if you
look at the young developing larvae you
often find sometimes these are the
kidneys if you’re not used to looking at
frog gonads that this is an individual
that has testes then it has more ovaries
than it has another test is then it has
more over one pair get you in enough
trouble this guy this situation is
certainly not typical of amphibians
there are fish that are naturally am
Aphrodite but not in fib Ian’s we later
show that some of these animals grow up
even though their genetic males
typically become completely functioning
reproductive females even though there
were genetic males we showed that in
other species the coonass look like this
so those that a test is on the top and
all of that junk in the trunk on the
bottom those are all eggs that are
bursting through the surface of this
males test is now I showed this to the
Environmental Protection Agency because
I thought they’d be interested after all
it’s the number one selling chemical in
the world at the time and they said well
that’s not really an adverse effect that
would stimulate us to reassess that
chemical now my wife tells me that there
is nothing more painful in life than
childbirth I’m gonna have to give her
that but I would guess that a dozen
chicken eggs popping out of my testicles
what have to be at least in the top five
most painful experiences the EPA doesn’t
think so I thought more about why this
might happen so for example if this were
your test ish you should make
testosterone testosterone support
Monteux you know I learned that word at
age 49 so when you put two words
together like smoke and fog you get smog
twist and jerk you get to work
testosterone means testicular hormone
it’s literally two male hormone but we
hypothesize that this after scene turned
on an enzyme aroma taste that caused it
to stas thrown to be converted to
estrogen and if you’re a male that means
that you’re using up your testosterone
so you don’t make sperm but it also
means that you’re making the female
hormone when when you shouldn’t be so
then I started to think we published
that we published that in proceedings in
a National Academy of Sciences and and
nature very prestigious journals
journals that that’ll get you a tenured
professorship at a place like UC
Berkeley but journal said as my mom says
how important can it be Barnes and
Nobles never heard of them and I started
to think though about how my work might
imply things beyond frog so this is a
pond in Lake novel goblin agonda where I
started to think that this agricultural
runoff might not only affect the frogs
and the fish but also the other animals
that are drinking out of the water
including the human set collected
drinking and cooking water from this
same source because see we all make
estrogen in the exact same way and use
it in the same way the connection to
contaminants in water might not be so
obvious for us that this is my village
but things like Erin Brockovich a story
and things like Flint Michigan remind us
that we don’t necessarily have the
resources that we think we have the
clean sources of water a colleague of
mine showed because I don’t study humans
had to work with other people on this
that if you look at men in Columbia
Missouri and compare the atrazine in
their urine
you have atrazine in their urine have a
low sperm count and can’t get their
wives pregnant and by the way this is
the same amount of atrazine point 1
parts per billion that we were using to
chemically castrate and feminized our
frogs another colleague showed and I’ve
mashed it data down now because these
are after seeing levels of men who work
in the fields in California and these
are after seeing levels of men who apply
atrazine in California 2400 parts per
billion
they have 24,000 times the atrazine in
their urine then we use to chemically
castrate frogs and fish 24 thousand
times what we know is already having a
negative impact on men in Columbia
Missouri one of these guys could pee in
a bucket and I kept diluted 24 thousand
times and use the anthracene in their
urine to chemically castrate effeminate
twenty four thousand buckets of 30
tadpoles each then a little boy who
likes frogs learns phrases like
environmental justice because most of
these individuals are latina acts are in
California Mexican Mexican America and
then I thought about the impact that
increasing estrogen would have on humans
because the estrogen after seen has the
same effect than human cells if you take
human cancer cells and we’ve done some
of this work that don’t normally make a
Roma Tate’s or estrogen and give them a
stir zine they start making estrogen
just like we shown in fish and frogs and
rats and reptiles and in birds what’s
more is if you look at prostate cancer
there’s an eight point four fold
increase in prostate cancer in their
factory where they make atrazine in a
community that’s 80% black 80%
african-american their studies showing
that there’s correlations between
atrazine and their drinking water and
breast cancer in a sentence and women in
Kentucky and that’s just a correlation
but their own laboratory showed in 1994
that if you give rats atrazine you
increase the incidence of mammary cancer
or breast cancer above animals that
aren’t exposed this is an interesting
problem because breast cancer the number
one cancer in women is estrogen
dependent and this aroma taste that I’ve
talked about produces the estrogen
during breast cancer that stimulates
those breast cancers to grow and divide
and turn into tumors and spread in fact
the role of aroma taste is so
and breast cancer that the number one
treatment for breast cancer right now is
a chemical called letrozole it works by
knocking out of Roma tastes decreasing
estrogen so that even if you have
cancerous cells they don’t grow and turn
into a tumor that drug though has to
work against the 80 million pounds of
atrazine that we’re using every year
that’s the number one contaminant of
drinking water that does exactly the
opposite I got in trouble because I
pointed out that Novartis oncology in
the year 2000 offered treatments for
cancers that range from breast cancer so
the same company that gave us 80 million
pounds of this contaminant associated
with breast cancer was also selling a
chemical that does the opposite to treat
breast cancer yeah they weren’t too
happy about me pointing that out I
became concerned I’m just a little boy
who like front likes frauds but I became
concerned because if you look at 13 the
top 13 cancers you’re gonna get in this
country blacks african-americans are
more likely to get 11 out of 13 and more
likely to die from 13 out of 13 biology
my colleagues who are experts in Kansas
tell me that the less than 30% of cancer
can be explained by genetics that means
that when the doctor tells you that
you’re gonna get breast cancer more
likely if your brother your sister your
aunt or somebody in your family has it
they’re not telling you have bad genes
necessarily they’re telling that you’ve
been exposed to the same crap as the
rest of your family because if you’re a
minority if you’re an immigrant if
you’re first-generation if you’re
low-income you’re more likely to live in
and more likely to work in areas where
you’re exposed to chemicals that we know
are associated without adverse health
outcomes what’s more is with the ception
of HeLa cells that the cancer cells that
we use to study cancer don’t come from
minorities so even if we find the cure
kommen it may not be applicable to
people who would need it the most so I
think what’s happened is my interest in
this aquatic organism has taught me a
great deal about this aquatic organism
because we all start out as aquatic in
the amniotic fluid and these chemicals
that I study in my tadpoles can cross
the placenta in fact we now know that
you that your children will be exposed
over 300 synthetic chemicals before they
leave the womb and most of them we have
no eye
dia what the biological impact is for
after thing we do know from rats which
are a proxy for us that if you give rats
atrazine an epa lab showed those rats
are more likely to have an abortion of
those rats that don’t have an abortion
the sons are born with prostate disease
of those rats that don’t abort the
daughters are born with impaired memory
development such that when they grow up
their offspring experience retarded
growth and development and it was these
studies that move me to most it made me
realize I can’t just be a little boy who
likes frogs because see that rat on the
bottom that rat on the bottom never saw
atrazine the rat on the bottom was
affected by atrazine that it’s
grandmother was exposed to rat on the
bottom never saw atrazine the rat on the
bottom was affected by atrazine that
it’s grandmother was exposed to so when
i think about my little girl my son the
fact that my grandchildren that your
grandchildren could be affected by
chemicals that were using today it moved
me in a very different way than just a
little boy who likes frogs it’s just a
correlation but we already know studies
have already been done by the Center for
Disease Control and others that if you
get pregnant during peak anthracene
contamination you’re more likely to have
babies with birth defects including
malformed genitals in the mail babies
the EPA has acknowledged this but they
say quote a monetary value is assigned
to disease impairments and shortened
lives and weighed against the benefits
of keeping it chemical and use a
monetary value if you look at California
I’m often giving this talk outside of :
in California where the fifth or seventh
depends on you talk to you largest
economy in the world because of
agriculture not because of tech or or
Hollywood we produce 50% of the us’s
food half of the us’s food comes from
California as a result we use more
pesticides than any other state and 90%
of the workers are Latinas if I put in
red here the top ten counties for
agriculture these are the counties to
30% that makes us the fifth
this economy in the world what if I plot
unto that the thirty poorest towns in
California environmental justice so the
people who make us the fifth largest
economy in the world are the same people
who are paying that cost that the EPA
talks about and so when I thought about
this is a little boy who likes frogs it
motivated me to cross the line
so to speak Crocs in that line cost me
the chemical manufacturers set out to
discredit me with personal attacks they
said hey is biologist turned activist
turned activist a turn you can’t be a
scientist and an activist
they tried to discredit me but when they
were interviewed by New Yorker magazine
I said it simply wasn’t true I must be
crazy I must be making it up they said
and I quote I am troubled by a
suggestion that we have ever tried to
discredit anyone our focus has always
been on communicating the science and
setting the record straight I am
troubled at the suggestion that we’ve
ever tried to discredit anyone we’re an
earth what I’ve got an idea that they
tried to discredit me well it turns out
they settled out of court 105 million
dollar lawsuit and all of their secrets
strike their secret like how are we
gonna get Tyron notes came out from
their meetings their strategy became
public and look what the first goal of
the science was in their program where
on earth did anybody get the idea that
they would ever try to discredit anyone
I had to make a change
academia my adviser told me don’t be an
advocate let the science speak for
itself
but I had to think about this that we’re
being rewarded in the ivory tower
promoted for publishing things that the
public doesn’t have access to I changed
my mind about this philosophy because
agenda the company says on your website
they assume no obligation to update
forward-looking statements to reflect
actual results pardon my language but
who says like that but what
concerns me more is that the EPA says
that the ultimate decision of whether or
not to ban after scene is much bigger
than science it weighs in public opinion
and I thought the EPA is counting on my
mom the EPA is counting on you to help
it make its decision and I’m publishing
my work in journal said you can’t get in
Barnes and Noble
we have to change the way we do things
in the ivory tower there’s the
philosophy by a great thinker that goes
like this those who have the privilege
to know have the duty to act
this guy said that by the way and I
didn’t grow up privileged I don’t know
about you all I know is that now I’m
here now you are here you are privileged
and you have a duty and I’ve reason that
we can change the path but only if we
act now while it is still the future
you
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