Stop Oyster Abortions!

How many people know that Prozac is an abortifacient?

Yes, it seems oysters spontaneously abort when exposed to Prozac in streams and lakes. How would they be exposed?

Well, as I've pointed out in the past, people don't fully metabolize the drugs they take. The unmetabolized drugs used by your neighbors and friends pass out through their urine and enter the water supply.

In the United States, water treatment plants don't filter out pharmocalogically-active drugs like hormonal birth control pills or Prozac. So oysters will continue to suffer. To quote Yahoo News (which made this a headline news story):

"The study found that the drug causes female mussels to release their larvae before they're able to survive on their own.

'The results from this study were quite alarming. When larvae are released too early [i.e., aborted - editor's note], they are not viable, which only contributes to the problems faced by struggling populations of native freshwater mussels,' co-investigator Rebecca Heltsley of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, N.C., said in a prepared statement."

Now, no one bothered to note that spontaneous abortion is a known side-effect of Prozac.
And few people realize that RU-486 also works as an anti-depressant. As Plan B, and other high-dose morning-after abortifacients become popular, this problem will just get worse, not better. But no one wants to talk about it.

In fact, it isn't possible to find a news story that indicates Prozac causes abortions in people. Its abortifacient ability apparently only becomes newsworthy when it affects oysters.

Similarly, no one talks about the effects of the birth control pill on the nation's water supply, except insofar as it harms fish.

And virtually no one discusses how the increased presence of all of these drugs in the first world water supplies might be linked to low fertility rates in first-world countries.

People used to eat oysters to increase their sexual prowess. Looks like that tradition will go by the wayside soon.