Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is known for his questionable scientific claims and regurgitating of unproven conspiracy theories -- one of them being that chemicals in our water are making children gay and transgender, CNN reported.
In a June podcast, Kennedy blamed the alleged phenomena on "endocrine disruptors," and while scientists say endocrine disruptors are present in pesticides and plastic and can affect reproductive functions and increase the risk of obesity, there is no evidence that they can affect human sexuality.
A Kennedy campaign spokesman told CNN that Kennedy's words are being "mischaracterized."
"He is not claiming that endocrine disruptors are the only or main cause of gender dysphoria,” the spokesperson. “He is merely suggesting that, given copious research on the effects on other vertebrates, this possibility deserves further research.”
On the June 2022 episode of his podcast, Kennedy said, “If you expose frogs to atrazine, male frogs, it changes their sex and they can actually bear young. They can lay eggs, fertile eggs."
“And so the capacity for these chemicals that we are just raining down on our children right now to induce these very profound sexual changes in them is something we need to be thinking about as a society,” he added.
Speaking on an episode of Jordan Peterson’s podcast (which has since been removed from YouTube) Kennedy said children are “swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals" and that the herbicide atrazine can “chemically castrate and forcibly feminize” frogs, saying “if it’s doing that to frogs, there’s a lot of other evidence that it’s doing it to human beings as well.”
New York University pediatrics and population health assistant professor Dr. Linda Kahn said that comparing frogs to humans is an “apples and oranges thing" and "it’s not appropriate" since humans metabolize and excrete atrazine from the body within 12 hours.
Read more at CNN.