Uncertain risks and the risks of certainty.

Abstract

There are few things as important to par? ents as their children, and in the search for tips on how to protect the health of their youngsters, parents often turn to the most user-friendly form of continuing education available?the news media. It can be a smart move, but there are also risks attached. This overview points to the media's strengths and weaknesses, with the goal of suggesting how educators might help to improve the natural symbiosis between science and journalism. While offering a window into how print journalism works, my focus will be on a topical example with special relevance to reproduction and child development? hormone-mimicking pollutants. Thirty years ago farmers liberally sprayed DDT on fields throughout America. At that time scientists had not yet recognized the devastating effect this toxic chemical could exert on animals, much less people. Then came troubling reports of the pesticide's feminizing effect on wildlife. Some heavily exposed male birds exhibited at least partially developed female sex organs (1). The most visible symptom of the pesticide's reproductive havoc was a lethal thinning of eggshells in bald eagles and other birds (2). In gulls, which are less susceptible to shell thinning, DDT-exposed females began cohabiting with other females?the so-called lesbian gulls (3). DDT appears to exert these changes by mimicking the female hormone estrogen (1). Although the United States banned the pesticide in 1972, DDT remains a very contemporary threat. Trace levels of the compound continue to contaminate pro-