Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a history of repeatedly sharing unfounded conspiracies that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls.
Experts dispute the claims from Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, and told CNN’s KFile his theories that “sexual identification” and “gender confusion” among children could be from their exposure to “endocrine disruptors” found in the environment are completely unfounded.
“I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disruptors because our children now, you know, we’re seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion,” Kennedy said on his podcast in June last year. “These kinds of issues that are very, very controversial today.”
Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormones and endocrine system, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Such chemicals are commonly found in pesticides and plastic, and can affect reproductive functions and increase the risk of obesity. Kennedy on multiple occasions misconstrued endocrine disruptors’ studied ability to cause some male frogs to become female and produce viable eggs, suggesting that these chemicals could have similar effects on children and change their sexuality.
CNN spoke to multiple experts who said there is no link between endocrine disruptors and children’s gender and sexuality. While sex in in frogs is determined by environmental factors such as temperature and chemicals, Dr. Andrea Gore, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at University of Texas at Austin, said the sex of humans is determined at the moment of…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply