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.
Very usefull study for the Trump administration.
As a showcase of junkscience to be slashed from the future budgets. As any academic drivel affixed with the mention “environmental science”.
But it truly is similar (the neurochemistry is). I find nothing funny abut it. Everybody having nerves uses the same chemistry and has homologous receptors. Human drugs target those receptors and are routinely tested in fruit flies. If flies can have schizophrenia, why does the idea of depression in fish seem funny? I have kept fish; I can tell a depressed one from a happy one.
The other part of it — that traces of drugs in the environment pose any risk to anyone — is malevolently mendacious. So not funny either.
A schizophrenic fruit fly?
Where did the psychologist find a couch small enough for the fly to lay down?
What do do they use for fish? A conch?
The one I know is not a psychologist, he is a geneticist, but I am sure he did provide his flies with a couch at some point. Take a listen to Doug Armstrong (there are many others who can tell a similar story; this is just a good entry point and a showcase for neurobiology):
Schizophrenia is a heritable disease — not exactly a boon for a psychotherapist.
Did anybody read the paper?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.3453/full
30 ug/m³ is enough to make crab intoxicated. It is another question how much fluoxetine you find in treated Western sewage water and how much that is diluted before it is clean enough to crabs survive in any case. It is not necessarily a large effect even when can be detected in the lab.
Talking about intoxication the researchers seem to have dipped aquatic animals in water-ethanol solution.
You mean formaline but only after the behaviour was recorded and specimen dead. 😉
I’m sure I’d rather take my crab with vodka.
If one out of 20 uses fluoxetine 20 mg a day, and 2000 ug of that is excreted in urine, 60 m³ water is spoiled with 30 ng/l. That means all the sewage water that the 20 people create together is contaminated with more than the 30 ug/m³. Then it is diluted so that each Prozac 20 mg user at some point downstream contaminates 60 cubic meters of water (0.008 acre fathoms).
I find this interesting, slightly funny, and something to think about, but not to be scared about.
Presuming the “intoxication” threshold is valid.
Why wouldn’t it be valid? It’s low but not impossible, and the results are statistically significant.
This is not good enough for an ig nobel, but maybe good enough to re-estimate the amount of need for fluoxetine medication.
Fluoxetine gets metabolised. How would crab get exposed to it? The study premises seem therefore questionable. In addition, LC50 values in literature (about 0.8 mg/L in crustaceans) are orders of magnitude higher than the figure you quoted. It’s still astonishingly low compared to >240 mg/kg bw in rodents.
Fluoxetine does not get fully metabolized. It can be found in sewage. Check google scholar. If human patient intake is 20,000,000 ng/day, you get lots of 30ng/l water even if 90% does get metabolized.
We are not talking about toxicity LC50 either, but about behavioral changes that lead to predation.
The crab Prozacced just doesn’t mind the predators. Funny that.
What really gets funny now is the association one can make (if not on data then on the obvious intent) between this study and this other one:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170814162334.htm
Having read that, I immediately suggested a follow-up study that would surely be a heavy-hitter: give oxytocin to policemen, security guards on duty, and to infantrymen in combat, and see how their behavior will change. I predict they will be less xenophobic, among other things.
You are free to believe in the study if you like Hugs. I remain skeptical and convinced patients should have freedom to choose medicating (or not) their own disabling disease, irrespective of atmospheric/oceanic composition CACA, homeopathic, misanthropic and other similar faiths.
Gene October 21, 2017 at 11:21 am
Clearly you have never put your cherry a$$ on the line or in a tactical stack if you imagine that experimenting with soldiers by giving them oxytocin in combat is somehow a good idea.
I can’t even begin to describe to you the utter contempt I have for a subhuman such as yourself worse than worthless, miserable existence. Good men have died so that you have the right to spew such antihuman garbage.
I do not think it is a good idea; neither do I think it was a good idea to give oxytocin to the citizens of the civilized world hoping that it will make them more receptive to paying for the rope that will be used to hang them.
The civilized world is full of bad ideas.
Jaakko,
It’s not as if I’d believe or know. There’s a study with results. Sometimes the results don’t hold. I just don’t see why they should not. This is not homeopathy. I’m neither specialist on the fluoxetine metabolism, so, it is hard to state anything with a high certainty. OTOH, I can confidently say neither are you. A little bit of humbleness does good here. The assumption should be a research paper published in a respected paper is, well, respected and its authors are professional researchers, of course.
This is just a rule of thumb, but sometimes it appears if people rather follow their first intuition than give the benefit of doubt to themselves. It leads to hubris in areas they are not professionals. I’m not an expert here, so I’ll shut up now.
What the policy will be should not be left to ‘crabologists.
(Serious) Question: Is Prozac addictive?
What I’m really asking is whether there actually is any active ingredient in there?
Because if there was and due to its ‘activity’ on the intended brain chemistry, it would be addictive.
There would be Prozac Junkies prowling the streets looking for their next fix.
(The wicked side of me says, ‘thank fook they’re all still confined inside science labs, or somewhere, ANY where!)
Anybody and everybody with actual experience of the stuff knows its only effect is due to the Placebo Effect – hence why it comes in endlessly changing and multicoloured pills and or capsules. Getting and opening a new prescription every month is just like Christmas.
That some people do derive actual benefit (let’s have some empathy here) is a damn good reason that clowns like this should keep their faces shut. Not only is he a clown, he is a Bad Clown
Those of us with extensive life knowledge will recognise a rather pathetic attempt to attract a mate, via the supposedly desirable characteristics of ‘being ‘sensitive and caring’
The guy’s dumbness goes exponential when he cannot see the soaring divorce rates and dearth of babies in the Western World.
The girls ain’t buying – they have empathy (genetically) built in and can see a fraud coming from a million miles away
The active ingredient is fluoxetine. I don’t think it is addictive. Just not always good for you.
No it is not addictive. Addictive molecules work on dopamine. Fluoxetine is a serotinergic agent.
PETA …. granted, there is quite a large placebo effect in this area, but you would be wrong to assume that antidepressants have no effect above placebo. Just sayin.
Being an Aquarist for decades, I hate the fact that Fish can be tortured in experiements.
“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.”
Says that then proceeds to turture zebra fish.
medication for depression does as much harm or more than it helps. I have seen this first hand. Depresion medication makes people more instable in many cases, and even causes them to kill themselves
Plus diagnosis, being unhappy with a life you short changed yourself on is called “depression”. The answer is to change your life for the better, not take pills. Well over 50% of people who are given these meds don’t need them, psychologists diagnose as depression far too readily.
There is of course clinical depression, a chemical imbalance in the brain, which is a different matter of course and many do need some medication, but the vast majority just need a kick up the arse, not medications.
How on earth did we make it through some of the worst periods of human history without depression meds one might wonder.
The fact we are sensitised, not desensitised, is why this phonema is as it is.
Physchologists, most of these hacks promote mental weakness and therefore provide the need for psychologists
‘Helsingfors’ innerstad, 106,000 Prozac users with a socialist city council.
Just commenting Helsinki. I have nothing against psychology or psychiatry.
Also, if Fish can suffer, depression, why do they have no protective rights? Answers on a postcard to contradiction@Steve Milloy.com
You really couldn’t make this stupidity up and it is actually terrifying and a descent into a culture that makes the Dark Ages seem like a era of rational conduct. SMC’s link to the insane hoemopathy story shows there are people even crazier than the members of the green cargo cult.
How is this going to ever be stopped? Now I need some Prozac, it’s just too depressing.
Maybe it is really antidepression drugs that are responsible for the climate change that we have been experiencing. I am sure that it is possible to modify one of the popular climate simulations to show that such is the case. Maybe decreasing the use of such drugs can stop our global climate from changing.
So does it follow that people on Prozac are at more risk of predation and mortality? After all, if the biology is so similar??
Now that science can’t tell the difference between a guppy and girl, I fear to visit any doctor who graduated in the last decade. The next generation need not worry about climate change—just stay away from the researcher and doctor that thinks you’re equivalent to a guppy as far as biology goes. You may end up being fed guppy food and given clean water in your tank. Science is most certainly dead at this point.
From here:
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/6850741#section=Non-Human-Toxicity-Excerpts
Of course, this isn’t about fluoxetine. It’s about peppermint oil.
Please be careful which flavor “Climate Toothpaste” you choose!
(You might also want to lay off the peppermint patties.8-)
The DEA has used bulk testing from area neighbourhood sewers to identify high drug use rates such as opioids, meth and cocaine etc, that is excreted via bodily wastes. While not specific to any household or individual, it does identify general communities at risk and provides a general level of general abuse of illegal substances. Cities downstream from other large cities also have some level of detectable elements of many substances, both legal and illegal in major river systems. It isn’t just in the oceans albeit oceans are diluted by many orders of magnitude than closer to the source such as a sewage outflow or lesser, a river system. This is why we want to think twice about drinking tap water in certain jurisdictions throughout the world, especially densely populated areas of earth utilizing river water directly. It all accumulates the further downstream you go, and city water purification doesn’t get all these trace substances out from raw river water. It may pass water standards for basic clean water, but many trace substances cannot all be filtered out mechanically or with other chemicals.
Activated Carbon in one form or another (Pac, Gac) works wonders at removing organics in the the treatment process.
OOPS! But it’s “carbon pollution” so I guess it has to be ruled out.
+1000
Does this mean I should schedule psychotherapy for my cichlid? He’s been aggressive, and only leaves his cave to eat food!
Yes, but he really has to wantto change…..
Troy U? Portland State?
I suspect that, as is usually the case, these results are not statistically rigorous for several reasons:
1) Insufficient sample size
2) Not correcting for systematic errors
3) Corrupted or insufficient controls
4) Lack of double blinding (usually the experimenter is aware of the results he wants)
5) Outright corruption (personal, philosophical, or grant money perversion (GMP)-see Eisenhower’s Dartmouth farewell speech)
6) Lack of defined targets for the study defined BEORE the study begins (Endpoints pre-determination and subsequent evaluation to see if these are statistically corroborated)
In the soft sciences, unlike the hard sciences, experimenters are often incapable of handling these scientific method operations, especially at doing 6). They run a “study” and find out what happens (open endpoints-this is a no-no) afterwards. It turns a study from objective to subjective.
What is so difficult about the scientific method? Hypothesis-Experiment-Evaluate?
Bub
“They also fought more with members of their own species, often either killing their foe or getting killed in the process.”
=======
Some of the side effects of Prozac are diarrhea and headache. So if a crab has a headache and another crab is crapping on him that would be reason enough for a fight!
Years ago I worked on the impact of pesticides on marine fish, especially larval fish. We ran into several problems. What could be demonstrated as causing mortality in the lab at extremely tiny levels could not be duplicated, not even close, in the wild. In the wild unless we knew specifically what we were looking for, original compound and metabolites, we just could not find it. We did ultimately demonstrate that drift of certain pesticides into a relatively pristine environment did cause mortality of several organisms, e.g., fiddler crabs. One problem with fish larvae often we had a higher mortality rate in the control than in the experiment. Still the environmentalists have been screaming about one chemical or another since Rachael Carlson. DDT didn’t ‘sterilize’ the world, nor did the far more toxic, although relatively short lived organophosphates and carbamates. Now in Europe and here it is the neonicotinoids. By the way, latest of honey bees at least, is that hive collapse is the result of a mite and improper control methods. There also may be a problem with the lack of genetic diversity in the queens being imported, apparently from Australia (?).
Note that Australia has no problem with mites due to strict import controls, nor does it have any problems with neonics. A good negative control, if there ever was a need for one.
+1000
Feynman.
I was under the impression that this site concerns climate science. I am a biotechnologist and as I read all the posts here I am reminded of the comment by Albert Einstein that the shoemaker should stick to his last.
“I am a biotechnologist and as I read all the posts here I am reminded of the comment by Albert Einstein that the shoemaker should stick to his last.”
And what is the “task” of the biotechs who are overdosing crabs with the active ingredient of prozak? It has the appearance of an environmental assault on our existing waste water systems so that gullible people accept the suggestion that they be replaced with something else.
(Bill Gates wouldn’t happen to be selling environmentally sustainable sewage treatment plants, would he?)
And the moral of the story is watch your municipal government and your waste water treatment plants, because I suspect this could get incredibly expensive and incredibly stupid, incredibly fast. And the other moral of the story is, Nike was just a start up company in the US (along with many even better shoe makers). Actually shoe making has an illustrious history in the US. It all started with a patent filed by an immigrant from SA for a machine that made shoes, and continued with the first plants in New England.
Bill Gates wouldn’t be selling environmentally sustainable sewer treatment plants, would he?
Omni Processor – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omni_Processor
Omni Processor is a name proposed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a group of physical, biological or chemical treatment processes to process fecal sludge – a mixture of human excreta and water – in developing countries.
Oh yes, here they come to a municipal government near you.
But did they expose the predators to the same levels of fluoxetine?
I’d be careful going in the water from now on….there is evidence Prozac turns a few otherwise harmless persons into mass murderers. Watch out for the homicidal crabs.
Crabs on Prozac may be too confident – overestimating their strength and then falling prey to predators. C’mon. Visualizing crabs that are high made me… well, smile. I’d love to see such a sea-shore!