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Antidepressants In the Water Are Making Shrimp Suicidal
Antidepressants may help a lot of people get up in the morning but new research shows they are making shrimp swim into that big bowl of cocktail sauce in the sky. Alex Ford, a marine biologist at the University of Portsmouth, found that shrimp exposed to the antidepressant fluoxetine are 5 times more likely to swim towards light instead of away from it. Shrimp usually swim away from light as it is associated with birds or fishermen.
By hiding the light with a nice thick layer of oil?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I don't think it's that they want to die.
They probably just don't fear the light anymore.
Since you can't really put a shrimp on a shrink-couch and ask it about its feelings, it is very hard to say whether the shrimp are "suicidal" or whether their fear responses are being blunted.
More than a few antidepressants also have some anti-anxiety properties, which are often quite useful in a theraputic context; but for an organism that is tiny and made of meat, "anti-anxiety" and "pro-suicide" might be uncomfortably close...
with a some ground up anti-depressants and a flashlight. hope to catch some happy shrimp.
When the shrinks put me on SSRI to alleviate OCD, the reverse happened: I lost *all* motivation. I could not get up in the morning, and could easily lie 48 hours in bed without eating or drinking, on the edge of sleep. I felt like one of those Buddhist monks who go bury themselves alive in a cave, and self-mummify. I felt no negative emotions whatsoever; I knew the consequences of my behavior but didn't have any drive to stop. Needless to say, this was not good for my studies.
They removed it a month ago. I still feel glad whenever I feel any form of anxiety, however faint. Apparently, this side-effect is quite rare.
Emotions! In your brain!
They don't fear the Reaper
Whereas some people see disturbing potential side effects of our best attempts to regulate brain chemistry, I see a business opportunity and a way to meet heavily-tattooed hot short girls.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
When I saw the headline, I wondered just how a shrimp becomes "suicidal".
Suicide is one intentionally taking their own life, not making behavioral or life-style choices that may increase the chance of an early demise. Unless their intent is to swim toward the light so that they can be killed, "suicidal" is quite sensationalist.
Otherwise, we could start describing all kinds of poor decision making and unhealthy lifestyle choices of humans as "suicidal."
I still feel glad whenever I feel any form of anxiety
Does that worry you? If you can get worked up about anxiety inducing gladness, here comes the total bliss feedback loop! Just watch your heart rate, please.
Eat some shrimp; you'll feel better.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Lots of shrimp are already being affected by this. People take the antidepressants which then get into the wastewater which gets into the ocean. That makes it a real environmental concern (albeit a minor one; other ones are justifiably topping the list at the moment) and not a joke.
IMO it just goes to show that the law of unintended consequences is damn near universally applicable.
Your brain is not a computer.
Unfortunately, the use of antidepressants is still pretty crude. Often it takes multiple tries before the doctor and patient find the right combination.
But they can still be lifesavers. When I was in cancer treatment over a decade ago, I got so depressed that I was absolutely prepared to kill myself. I'd even put by a stock of heavy tranquilizers with which to do the deed. A doctor's assistant was taking some information from me one day and noticed, alerting my primary care physician and they put me on an antidepressant. Within a few weeks I couldn't believe I had ever even considered suicide. Within a couple of months I was off the antidepressants and that was that. This was the late 90's and the cancer treatment was completely successful and I've never had another depressed day since then. There's a lot of problems with the use and overuse of antidepressants, but I'm pretty sure they saved my life (along with a very alert and dedicated doctor's assistant).
We've got to get people to stop flushing old drugs down the toilet or tossing them in the garbage though. They're finding so many pharmaceutical substances in drinking water and soil and now the oceans that we're heading for bigger problems than depression. I can't believe there aren't already good methods for disposal of medications widely in use. All the hormones and antibiotics in my pork chops are bad enough, I don't need to get a pharmaceutical cocktail every time I take a drink of water.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I bet the sea birds eating the shrimp have high levels of Prozac too... humm.. chocolate seagulls....
You, uh, see those things on the ground by the seagulls? Those aren't tootsie rolls. Just a public service notification here.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Okay, after reading the summery of the study. Parasites in shrimp can cause them to travel toward light and swim against gravity. The parasites act as a serotonin modulator. One particular antidepressant Fluoxetine does the same thing. This action can be bad for the shrimp. The level of Fluoxetine was 100 ng/L. How many liters in the gulf? About 2.43400 × 10^18 liters. So we need to dump a littler over 24 million metric tons of Fluoxetine into the gulf to see this concentration? Actually I am asking, I could be wrong on my math.
Oh I get it, waste drugs should not be put into the ecosystem. They can affect animals just as much as humans. But the story this links to is just FUD and the study is behind a paywall.
There's depressed shrimp, bipolar shrimp, schizophrenic shrimp, manic depressive shrimp, pyromaniac shrimp (particularly dangerous at the moment), dementia shrimp, autistic shrimp, megalomanic shirmp, obsessive-compulsive shrimp, sleep walking shrimp, voyeuristic shrimp, shrimp gumbo, shrimp cocktail, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich... That's, that's about it.
My landlord killed himself with valium a few months ago, after a 12 year addiction. It was pretty obvious where things were headed, but his dealer^H^H^H^H^H^Hdoctor kept supplying him anyway. Eventually the temptation to keep upping the dose and feeling good overpowered his desire to live. A did a little research and found that this is a shockingly common problem.
Moral of the story: benzodiazephines suck. And your doctor may be more interested in paying off his student loans and buying a boat than being honest with himself about what's good for his patients.
Anyway, like I was saying, shrimp are the wingnuts of the sea. There's suicidal shrimp, paranoid shrimp, depressed shrimp, manic shrimp, psychotic shrimp, neurotic shrimp, borderline personality shrimp, obsessive compulsive shrimp, narcissistic shrimp, agoraphobic shrimp, social anxiety disordered shrimp, schizophrenic shrimp, munchausen's by proxy shrimp, cyclothymic shrimp, anorexic shrimp, catatonic shrimp, tourette's shrimp, PTSD shrimp, Asperger's shrimp, that's... that's about it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Many human lifestyle choices may be "suicidal". Smoking tobacco causes heart attack, strokes, and many cancers. This is slow suicide, but it's still suicide.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suicide
The usage that pertains to this discussion is:
"the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally especially by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind"
Smoking, watching too much TV, drinking and texting (while driving), having an unhealthy diet, and being an Alaskan Fisherman might all be choices that may considerably increase your chances of meeting an early demise.
However, calling these things suicide, when they lack the actual intent to kill one's self, but calling any of those things suicide is just dumbing down the meaning of the word.
Even deliberate acts that lead to one being killed are not suicide, unless it was with the intent of ending one's life. For example, driving with your headlights off at midnight while high on drugs on a dare is not suicide, even if such a stupid act kills them.
Suicide requires:
1) An act or an instance.
2) A voluntary intent to kill one's self.
As for the original article, unless the antidepressants also gave them sentience so that they would realize, "Holy Bejeesus! I'm a freaking shrimp! Why didn't anyone tell me!?", then I doubt they have intent.
"How is this a troll?"
Let it go, dude.
People get seriously unpredictable when you attack their drug of choice, especially when there is addiction involved.
I happen to agree with you, by the way. Doctors (at least the ones I have been to) are far too liberal with pharmaceuticals. Ever notice the level of blatant marketing in the doctor's office these days? Advertisements on the walls, the clock, every pad of paper, the magazines in the waiting room...
I actually use that as a sort of gauge of "concern" when I enter a doctor's office. The less adverts, the more I feel the concern is my health, not a profit.