"WTF???!!" Trivia

Distress of 9/11 may have led to miscarriages of male fetuses!!!

"Researchers found the male fetal death rate increased in September 2001 and subsequently affected the ratio of boys born in a later month, according to the study published in the journal BMC Public Health.

The authors hypothesized that this might be a case of "communal bereavement." Even without direct relationships with the deceased, pregnant women may have been distressed by the attacks, resulting in miscarriage, according to the research.

"A huge population saw the consequences and carnage onscreen," said lead author Tim Bruckner, who is an assistant professor of public health at University of California Irvine, about the effects of 9/11. He examined this topic "because pregnancy is sensitive to stressors. I wondered whether pregnant women might have a physiological reaction to witnessing harm.""

[---]

"Bruckner examined only miscarriages of boys, because male fetuses are believed to be more sensitive than females to stress hormones.

Previous studies have suggested that the percentage of male births drops after natural disasters, economic decline or catastrophes."

Jeeze. Yet when they grow up, they're the first ones at the scene!

I had always thought the natural ratio was around 103 boys to 100 girls, or thereabouts, not counting the wide-spread practice of deliberate sex selection favouring boys.

In fact, I remember being told eons ago, that through some sort of natural compensatory response, the ratio of male births increases during times of war, theoretically to make up for the loss of males in battle. But I guess even that isn't true:

"The finding of a small but significant increase in male births during and after war has been documented in Europe and the U.S. in both the First and Second World Wars (10–12), and in the U.S. for the Korean and Vietnam Wars (13). However, studies of the Balkan Wars (14) and of the Iran–Iraq war (15) did not reproduce these findings. Proposed biological explanations for the observed increase in sex ratio during war include stress to adult males, affecting the viability of XY-bearing vs. XX-bearing sperm; changes in the age structure of the population; and higher frequency of intercourse, leading to conception earlier in the menstrual cycle, all of which have been associated with increased sex ratios in other studies (16–18). Alternatively, evolutionary explanations argue that the increase represents an adaptive equilibrium after the decimation of males during war (13), although critics argue that the increase does not last long enough to compensate for wartime casualties (19, 20)."

Kinda makes me feel sorry for the guys, and I'm sure they'll expect some sort of special consideration after they hear about this.