Earlier this week, The New York Times had a story about fish and depression. Apparently, it’s a thing because… Science!
“The neurochemistry is so similar that it’s scary,” said Julian Pittman, a professor at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Troy University in Alabama, where he is working to develop new medications to treat depression, with the help of tiny zebrafish. We tend to think of them as simple organisms, “but there is a lot we don’t give fish credit for.”
Gosh.
Well there’s good news, apparently thanks to the depression treatments of higher animals, including homo sapiens and their pets, the ocean is being flooded with Prozac. Oh, wait, that’s bad for crabs according to Portand State University:
Prozac in ocean water a possible threat to sea life, PSU study finds
(Portland, Ore.) October 17, 2017 – Oregon shore crabs exhibit risky behavior when they’re exposed to the antidepressant Prozac, making it easier for predators to catch them, according to a new study from Portland State University (PSU).
The study, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, illustrates how concentrations of pharmaceuticals found in the environment could pose a risk to animal survival.
For years, tests of seawater near areas of human habitation have shown trace levels of everything from caffeine to prescription medicines. The chemicals are flushed from homes or medical facilities, go into the sewage system, and eventually make their way to the ocean.
In a laboratory, the PSU team exposed Oregon shore crabs to traces of fluoxetine, the active ingredient in Prozac. They found that the crabs increased their foraging behavior, showing less concern for predators than they normally would. They even did so during the day, when they would normally be in hiding.
They also fought more with members of their own species, often either killing their foe or getting killed in the process.
“The changes we observed in their behaviors may mean that crabs living in harbors and estuaries contaminated with fluoxetine are at greater risk of predation and mortality,” said researcher Elise Granek, a professor in PSU’s department of Environmental Sciences and Management.
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Ah well, due to all that Prozac at least the fish will be happier, and the crabs will remain…crabby.
Well, at least we know Prozac works to increase the self esteem and self confidence of the crabs in Portland, Or. Soon, they’ll be having awards ceremonies and give out participation trophies.
Or it could be making them suicidal. They simply pretend to be eating but in reality they are approaching the predators and boldly saying EAT ME
But doesn’t the increased availability of crabs help the survival/life of their predators? Doesn’t anybody care about their well being?
While it may seem amusing to poke fun at such ground-breaking research, the leakage of pharmaceuticals into the ocean waters may reflect an existential threat to many of the higher forms of sea life we cherish. Just imagine the potential carnage of all those whales caught up in fishing nets due to overexposure to Viagra, Cialis and similar recreational drugs.
Article stated these crabs were dosed with the chemical in the laboratory. GUARANTEED that dose was many orders of magnitude higher than anything that could possibly exist in the OCEAN, for Pete’s sake.
Parts per billion? Parts per TRILLION? Even measurable? Where? It matters. And measured by whom?Where has a concentration of Prozac been measured IN THE OPEN OCEAN that could affect the behavior of wildlife? (Crickets, of course!)
This was the junkiest possible “junk science” just to create an alarmist headline, nothing more. Yes, we SHOULD address residual pharmaceuticals in waste water, but headlines like this, and experiments that sound like they were done by a fifth-grader, are not helpful. And I sure as hell hope my tax dollars didn’t pay for it!
If Prozac will help me catch more crabs in Newport Bay, then I’ll load up on the stuff and put pills in the pots.
Zebra fish are widely used for genetic studies.
We recently bought about $200 of oysters, clams and crabs at Nehalem Jetty Fishery for a birthday celebration. Delicious!
I was amused by their description of the use of a clam-gun.
A .357 magnum needed for those fast moving and ferocious biting clams? LOL
Not vicious but definitely fast. When I was a kid we’d catch clams by hand, and if one was caught it was arm’s length deep by the time we caught up to it.
A clam-gun is a four inch diameter vacuum plunger tube. You put it over the clam sign and yank the handle to suck the clam out faster than it can dig down.
Sounds as if you got a good deal.
For the cost of boat, fuel and gear, I’d be better off just buying off the pier, too.
I think I will stay with the .357 mag on the man-eating clams.
https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.U0Rp2qlp73cwukSpMlxPnwEsDh&pid=15.1
Do all clams have signs? “Happy as a clam” prior to meeting up with a clam gun. Clams lives matter!
If crabs are like lobsters, the way to catch more crabs is to use more baited pots. It was discovered that lobsters are not actually trapped, but farmed. Sixty percent of the diet of lobsters captured in the traps was found to consist of the bait used to lure them into the traps. The lobsters just go in and out of the traps eating the bait, until they are unlucky enough to be in the trap as it is pulled from the water after being big enough to harvest or actually get to big to get back out.
More baited traps equals more food for lobsters and more food for lobsters equals more lobsters.
A bit more plausible than homeopathy, but not much. Apparently, by this claim, any detectable level of an evil chemical will have an effect (and the sort of effect it has in humans in a vastly higher dose).
A lesson from Nixon’s War on Cancer is to not let zealots near a lab capable of detecting to parts per billion.
As a grunt in that war, I learned some important lessons.
Life science wasn’t yet then sufficiently advanced for money thrown at it to reap any rewards.
Climate science is even more in its infancy now than was life science then.
Today we can detect very low levels of chemicals, and detection methods keep improving. But you have to know what chemical you are looking for. Most plants produce toxins as a defense mechanism. We don’t know these toxins, so we can’t detect them yet. Organic produce is guaranteed to contain only natural toxins.
A detectable level of a chemical is a moving target. Methods keep improving – but you have to specify the chemical, not its effects. Plants create natural but mostly unidentified toxins as a defense mechanism. An “Organic” label means that your produce contains only natural toxins.
Don’t forget though dosages are determined by the weight of the patient. Those widdle fishies only weigh about 1/100 or 1/500 of what we weigh so a dosage diluted to 1/500 is still the same as we take given their weight
Zebrafish are indeed small, if not tiny. A big one is about two inches long.
They belong to the minnow family.
Nope, that is not how it works. The last part of your post is wrong. You are mixing up dosage and concentration. If you have to take 10 ml of cough syrup in order for it to be effective and you diluted it to 1/500 then you have to take 5 litres of that dilution to receive the same amount of active substance as 10 ml of concentrated syrup.
Fluoxetine, or any drug that works by interacting to receptors for that matter, is only active if it reaches certain concentration in the target tissue. Let’s suppose that the concentration of fluoxetine in the brain has to be 1 micromolar or higher to be active as an antidepressant. If the concentration on sea water is 1 picomolar, (1000 times lower) fluoxetine is not going to be active no matter how big or small the animal is. Unless there is a very efficient way of accumulating fluoxetine in the body, not discovered yet. In fact, the opposite happens, fluoxetine is metabolized in the liver, excreted and degraded.
We recently bought about $200 of oysters, clams and crabs at Nehalem Jetty Fishery for a birthday celebration. Delicious!
I was amused by their description of the use of a clam-gun.
Pharmaceuticals must also find an effective active site in the organism. It is not simple inorganic dilution. The organism has a low chance of encountering ONE molecule of a waste pharmaceutical, then that one molecule must trigger an active site.
In this case, since the dose is in the water the fish is taking in, size of the fish doesn’t matter. A bigger fish will process more water and hence absorb more of the chemical.
You are right Tom. Starting with the unwritten presumption fluoxetine passing through the body unchanged. European Medicines Agency disagrees. So does Forensic Medicine, Medical Academy, Bydgoszcz, after concluding fluoxetine stable in biological material stored at +4°C and +25°C for a period of only one month.
Naturally this didn’t prevent EPA detecting fluoxetine in Mississippi sediment, but in only one sample, at 1.26 ng/g. But not norfluoxetine, a major degradation product/metabolite, in any sample. EPA detected norfluoxetine in Mississippi water, which is remarkable taking into consideration it is practically insolubility in water (<9.51e-05 mol/L).
Spot on. Prozac is odd too in that it inhibits the enzyme pathway which metabolizes Prozac itself!!! CYP 2D6..it takes weeks of dosing to achieve therapeutic levels in plasma.
That explains Sponge Bob Square pants then.
http://ct.weirdnutdaily.com/ol/wn/sw/userpics/funny_pictures/215.JPG
But seriously, with all these drugs dumping into the pristine, sustainable biosphere, has no one considered recycling?
A fishing guide buddy of mine had in a pond at his lodge in Chile a pet salmon, which he called Nemo. Then one of his clients caught it and gave it to the cook. He couldn’t eat it.
But at least it wasn’t sushi.
fluoxetine, the active ingredient in Prozac…………
………..They also fought more with members of their own species,
another side effect is suicidal thoughts
Or manic behavior.
Soon to be headlines in NYT … Maniac crabs on Prozac assault beaches maiming thousands. Kelp Triffids on Prosaic assault west coast of California. CO2 attacks mid-west states. Run for your life but there is nowhere to go!
Aren’t suicidal/homicidal thoughts generally considered signs of depression? I would think Tim Halla’s idea of manic behavior would be more likely.
The definition of type II rather than type I bipolar is the subject only being manic on antidepressants in type II.. The effect will sometimes change radically depending on the state of the person’s bipolar syndrome.
“In a laboratory, the PSU team exposed Oregon shore crabs to traces of fluoxetine, the active ingredient in Prozac. They found that the crabs increased their foraging behavior, showing less concern for predators than they normally would. They even did so during the day, when they would normally be in hiding.
They also fought more with members of their own species, often either killing their foe or getting killed in the process….Crabs more crabby….”
Well how crabby do you think the crabs who are not on drugs but are paying for rehab, addiction, treatments, crimes, accidents, bad schools and stupid voters on drugs? The control group of crabs: far more crabby.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KlUlZNYzKk0/UKUFIfeQOaI/AAAAAAAAAN0/WdBmv8FqKxQ/s1600/Live_Mud_Crab.jpg
“These are sharp you know.”
Correction: “Well how crabby do you think the crabs are who are not on drugs but are paying for…”
and should include but not be limited to:
higher insurance rates, poorer quality employees, increased use of food stamps, targeted demographics, and a corrupted worthless FDA which is an arm of the multi-billion dollar psychotropics industry.
Reminds me of the Honda Element commercial:
Prozak crab realizes he isn’t all that!
It’s all over folks. It isn’t going to be possible to scrape these endemic nut jobs out of academia whilst leaving some sort of structure intact. We are literally deep into a new Dark Age and hoping against hope for some kind of Renaissance.
Progressive socialist academics are like drug dealers, there are always many candidates to replace those taken out of action. Besides, they both claim to be able to cure everyone’s miseries.
Most of this drivel that masquerades as science in today’s academia would wither and die if the US government NSF/NIH grant pool were reduced by 90%.
Dr. Richard Lindzen has proposed just such a remedy to clean out the climate change swamp critters. But all of biology snd rcology sciences would long-term benefit also from such a pruning.
Right on!
Just one of the many needed reforms which the Trump administration has so far not done.
I am deeply disappointed, but not so much that I’ve stopped contributing.
Show less concern for predators but fight more with other crabs…seems like a conflict to me, logically.
Sounds like many American’s these days.
Now I have heard of everything. Just when I have read of climate toothpaste. Wot next!
Now it’s climate toothpaste with fluoxetine!
Climate Eez, personal lube.
I certainly understand the entertainment value, but there’s more to it, and I believe if you hear me out, you might get where I’m coming from.
We have a mega flaw in the waste water treatment plants. They do not remove these chemicals, and if you think about how much of this and nutrients are getting through the system. Think about the other elicit drugs like crack. That was one of the first tip offs. A PD in the US started tracking drug houses using the sewerage system, with pin point accuracy. Estrogens, triclosan, and all kinds of stuff.
You get the drift.
This is where your ears should perk up.
All the hysteria about climate change and eel grass being destroyed by it, is masking the real problem with the same symptoms, and the source is being ignored. Same with oysters, and clams.
I get very pissed off listening to Senator Whitehouse rambling on about fairy tales, while the bays, and those that depend on them get ruined.
Environmentalists don’t seem to have a concept of how evolution works.
Nor of any other science.
The point of the story is that people from Portland State University are a danger to Oregon shore crabs.
I thought it was the fish oil.
But this post pales in comparison to this beauty:
Have Homeopaths Reached Peak Stupid?
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2014/11/have-homeopaths-reached-peak-stupid.html
Stupidity has no limits but that article… wow, just wow.
Why not voodoo accupuncture?
you are at serious risk of underestimating the human capacity for more stupidity.
Perhaps the politicians are overthinking the best way out of the Paris Accord. A drop of laxative into one of Gaia’s constipated volcanos should do the trick to lower her fever. Mt Agung seems ready.
jaakkokateenkorva
October 20, 2017 at 11:14 pm: According to Ren, the solar pulse on the 24th, might just do that, if the idea is correct….
Never underestimate the power of a placebo…
With the rampant TDS epidemic, Xanax sales are exploding.
“Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/style/anxiety-is-the-new-depression-xanax.html
Best line from article:
“Every generation, going back to Periclean Greece, to second century Rome, to the Enlightenment, to the Georgians and to the Victorians, believes itself to be the most anxious age ever,” Mr. Stossel said.
So says Xanny the Nanny
“Oregon shore crabs exhibit risky behavior when they’re exposed to the antidepressant Prozac, making it easier for predators to catch them, according to a new study from Portland State University (PSU).”
It is because prozac can lead to suicidal ideation. Had the shore crab bothered to read the black box warning on the label they would know that.
Wait… what? Am I to understand that crabs get high on Prozac and when it wears off, they get depressed? And sometimes have fights and zonk each other?
And zebrafish – what about the zebrafish? Did anyone test Nemo (clownfish) to see if he had a reaction, adverse or other wise, to prozac?
Would that work on my hissy feral kitty? She has mood swings and back spasms and thinks my shoes are attacking her.
I’m am constantly amazed at the sheer stupidity of these studies. Maybe the fact that we are not gill breathers escaped the researchers.
Somehow …. I think the probability of a crab ending up on my plate served up with a side of butter is a greater threat to the crabs than Prozac.
“For years, tests of seawater near areas of human habitation have shown trace levels of everything from caffeine to prescription medicines.”
Let’s rewrite that statement so as to subject it to reasonable sanity:
For years, tests of seawater near areas of human habitation have shown the same trace levels of human habitation expected of any area near to where human habitation occurs.
Like that groundbreaking study a few years ago finding that people living in dense urban areas are exposed to more air pollution than their country cousins.
“They also fought more with members of their own species, often either killing their foe or getting killed in the process.”
Similar to the effects of Prozac and other antidepressants in humans, if you investigate late
Twentieth and early Twenty-first Century mass murders thoroughly. Thanks to psychiatry and Big Pharma, big profit-makers backed by phony science.
Prozac side effects are also due to the wide range of metabolic clearance rates. Above I mentioned this drug is not only depedependent on CYP2D6 enzyme for primary metabolic clearance, the drug INHIBITS this enzyme!!! The range of CYP2D6 activity in the population falls between extensive metabolizer to complete inhibited. About 5% of the population lacks any level and become toxic after a few days.
This same enzyme converts hydrocodone to hydromorphone, a much more powerful opioid..this is why we have a national opioid problem. Simple genetic testing would make these problems go away. Along with those on Prozac flushing it down the drain and supposedly poisoning fishes and lower life forms.
I love the precise jargon of rigorous science – “It’s scary!” He’s obviously pandering for tenure.
Another study that involves trips to ocean resorts…
From “trace levels” of a random list of substances to constant levels of Prozac throughout ports, estuaries and bays. Gross assumptions leading to gross assumptions.
Yet, no lists of actual measurements of their chosen medications’ in ocean waters.
Must be too obvious hat way.
Sounds like party school PSU students just wanted easy access to anti-depressants and other “medications”. along with trips to the beaches.
Or they have certain tooth paste snake oil alarmists for teachers…
That explains why I feel soooo much more relaxed, after a long, leisurely snorkel around a salt water reef!
Those pesky little Oregon shore crabs can see ionizing radiation, too:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/17630377_The_visual_response_of_the_purple_shore_crab_Hemigrapsus_nudus_to_ionizing_and_non-ionizing_radiations
I didn’t check the crabs for meds, though. Prozak was developed in 1974, three years after I did the research. To confound the PSU research, crabs have access to their own version of happy pills:
https://www.anxiety.org/five-foods-that-make-you-happy-seaweed
Taxpayers should believe in man-made climate doom, but without antidepressants? This could be the first time mankind is celebrating Halloween and April the 1st at the same time.