Please forgive me for blogging about an article published back in September. Pregnancy wasn't exactly on the ol' radar screen back then, you know? OK, now that that's out of the way, let's move on, shall we...
Hold on, first just a little context:
Just about half the world's amphibian species (frogs, salamanders, and caecilians) are in decline because, frankly, they don't take too kindly to all the habitat loss, increased UV radiation, and climate change we throw their way. One of the main culprits to which people have been pointing in recent years has been the fungus Chytridiomycosis, or "chytrid fungus" for short, which has been found in frog populations worldwide. This fungus, which inhibits the uptake of oxygen through the skin, may explain why species are disappearing in what are obstensibly the most pristine of habitats.
Sorry for the Saturday afternoon science lesson. Now on to the post. For real this time.
So I was reading this article today on the BBC News site about the link between frog declines and pregnancy tests. The article stood out, seeing how one does not normally associate frogs and stick-peeing. The third paragraph said this:
In the 1930s, African frogs were exported for use in human pregnancy tests and it is suggested they may have carried a fungal disease with them.
Wait, what?
Did you know about this? This is completely new to me. Do you know what pregnancy tests used to entail? Well, thanks to the good people at the BBC News science desk, I do now.
It wasn't always a game of "Is that a blue line? Well, sort of, but it's more a kind of cool taupe. Does that count?" No, back in the 30's and 40's, a doctor would inject a woman's urine under the skin of a Xenopus laevis, the African clawed frog. If the frog ovulated, you were pregnant.
Wow.
Also, apparently lab-raised frogs weren't good enough, so doctors imported wild frogs from Africa (OK, am I the only one who thinks this might be just a tad bit wasteful? Using wild-caught frogs from southern Africa? There I go again, recontextualizing my own specific moral framework... Bad z.d.! Bad!), and some of these frogs happened to carry the chytrid fungus that has been plaguing amphibians around the globe.
OK, but beside the whole pregnancy-tests-causing-worldwide-extinction angle, I still can't get over the idea of a frog pregnancy test. Can you imagine a frightened, embarrassed teenage guy going to the grocery store and nervously scanning the shelves looking for this?
Actually, I'd probably pay to see that. The box, I mean, not the suffering of others. What kind of person do you think I am?
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