Last month, I warned CQ readers about the reliability of World Net Daily, a wire and pundit service that aims for conservative readers. In that case, their news report claimed that illegal immigrants committed as many as 12 murders a day, which would make them responsible for over 25% of all non-negligent homicides committed in the United States. Today, we find out from one of their regular contributors that a crop known for its low price and health benefits will turn red-blooded American men into fashion designers and interior decorators:

If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

Doctors used to hope soy would reduce hot flashes, prevent cancer and heart disease, and save millions in the Third World from starvation. That was before they knew much about long-term soy use. Now we know it's a classic example of a cure that's worse than the disease. For example, if your baby gets colic from cow's milk, do you switch him to soy milk? Don't even think about it. His phytoestrogen level will jump to 20 times normal. If he is a she, brace yourself for watching her reach menarche as young as seven, robbing her of years of childhood. If he is a boy, it's far worse: He may not reach puberty till much later than normal.

While this article is an opinion column and therefore slightly less egregious than the news article from last month, it uses some of the same tricks seen in that WND exclusive. It references vague 'studies' without ever naming them or providing links to them. It assumes that a food element consumed for thousands of years in Asia in signifcant amounts without turning it into a large version of Fire Island has suddenly begun feminizing Americans.

A quick perusal of the Internet about this subject turns up many sites that want to help men enlarge their equipment, with compounds that ironically include soy proteins. It also brings up a similarly hysterical paper on the topic by the Weston A Price Institute, an organization apparently dedicated to restoring animal fats to human diets. Johns Hopkins has a more rational description of the study at hand, which did not study the ingestion of soy by humans but the effect of soy proteins on the offspring of gestating rats. It quite clearly includes this disclaimer:

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report that male rats whose mothers were fed diets containing genistein, a chemical found in soybeans, developed abnormal reproductive organs and experienced sexual dysfunction as adults.

While these findings do not indicate that genistein has a similar effect in humans, researchers say the increasing popularity of soy and soy-based foods, such as tofu and some infant formulas, may warrant further research to determine if genistein exposure in the womb and during breast-feeding influences human reproductive development.

The paper also clearly states that the researchers considered their findings preliminary, and the report states that more research would be necessary to draw any conclusions. A quick Google search does not produce any further developments on this hypothesis, but does include a few examples of the health benefits of soy, such as pain relief and cholesterol reduction. WND includes none of that information for its readers, but instead provides its typically breathless warnings about chemical castration that it knows will gain it the maximum exposure.

WND reminds me of the National Enquirer. It sometimes gets stories right, and most of the time has at least some elements of truth. More often than they should, WND relies on hyperbole and outrageous exaggeration to draw attention to its political agenda. Readers who know this can pick their way through the chaff -- but those readers know better than to waste their time at WND.

Rick Moran and Allahpundit have more fun with this topic.

UPDATE: Should be World Net Daily, not World News Daily. Thanks to CQ reader John R for the correction.

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Tracked on December 12, 2006 8:50 PM