I first heard the word ‘obesogens’ two years ago from a colleague, who had been trolling the web in search of stories.

“They’re chemicals that make us fat,” she said.

“Come on – we’re fat because we eat too much and we don’t exercise enough.”

“Well there’s this guy called Blumberg…”

Bruce Blumberg coined the term ‘obesogens’ in 2005, after getting the results of a ground-breaking study of pregnant lab mice fed a marine pesticide called tributyltin.

Around 2001 he’d been looking for sex reversals in snails and flounder as a result of the pesticide. Much to his surprise, he discovered that it was also turning reproductive cells into fat cells. Then he came across a review by a Scottish doctor was suggesting a link between environmental chemicals like DDT, dioxins and organochlorines, and rising rates of obesity. Dr. Paula Baillie-Hamilton had discovered that researchers had been reporting pathological weight loss as a result of ingestion of these chemicals, but failed to highlight any weight gain they may have found. But in very low doses, they were definitely seeing weight gain.

Blumberg decided to launch a mouse study, using the same pesticide, the endocrine-disrupting tributyltin. He wanted to know if fetal exposure would lead to overweight baby mice.

“We found out that a single prenatal exposure to tributyltin at day 16 of development could cause mice to be born with more fat stored at birth and to become fatter later in life.”

Around the time Blumberg was searching for the hormone receptor that was causing the growth of fat cells in the frog’s testes, Retha Newbold, a government researcher in North Carolina specializing in the now banned drug D.E.S., was told by her lab technicians that she would need bigger cages because her mice were getting too fat for them. D.E.S., like tributyltin, is an endocrine disruptor. After reading Baillie-Hamilton’s review, she began designing her own study.

In Missouri, Fred Vom Saal, an expert on the health effects of bisphenol A (BPA), was also getting fat lab mice as a results of trace amounts of BPA. Not surprisingly, BPA is also an endocrine disruptor.

Obesity in Canada has doubled in less than thirty years. Every second adult in the western world is overweight. We have all presumed this is because of the widespread adoption of a western lifestyle full of fattening food and low levels of exercise. But some epidemiologists noted that even newborn babies were fatter than they used to be. As well, animals that live in proximity to people, like farm and lab animals, have become fatter since the 1950s. Was something programming us in the womb to be a little fatter than we should be?

Follow-up studies by Newbold and Vom Saal were positive. By 2007 there was enough evidence for the existence of obesogens that grant money for more studies began flowing from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina.

Retha Newbold has little doubt what is going on. “What we’re doing with these developmental exposures,” she said to me, “is that we’re programming people so that they will develop obesity later on in life and that’s something that’s going to be passed on to future generations. I think we have to really be concerned that our focus is on prevention.”

The Scream by Edvard Munch - National Gallery, Oslo

Norwegian researcher Merete Eggesbø, whose work focuses on environmental toxins and child health, had said that Norwegians prided themselves on their health. We were confronted with this immediately on the flight from Edinburgh – where youth may have been evident, but beauty and health, maybe not so much.

Everywhere we filmed in Oslo and its environs, we were confronted by healthy-looking people. They flaunt it, they really do. Merete told us that she had never seen a fat person until she travelled to the United States as a child thirty years ago. Now, unfortunately, she is beginning to see them in her own Norway. And in analyzing the breast milk of Norway’s mothers she may be getting an idea of why, in spite of her country’s obsession with physical fitness, her countrymen are gaining weight.

On our last afternoon in Oslo I walked around the city while the crew filmed a few more scenic shots.   I searched for the National Gallery. It was hard to find because there are virtually no signs. I finally recognized it from an exiting school group. I went in. There was no charge. There was no metal detector. I checked my coat. The sound of the children echoed around the entranceway. I wandered up the staircase and into Norway’s national art collection. A few rooms down, turn to the right, and the right again, and there were the principal works of Norway’s most famous artist, Edvard Munch. Except for a museum guard, the room was empty.

On the far wall was “The Scream”, a medium-sized painting. It had been stolen a few years before. I checked out the guard. He seemed a bit sleepy. I figured I could get it past him and run like crazy. But…naw. I had more footage to get in Amsterdam; I didn’t want a life of crime and subterfuge to obstruct my science journalism. I’d leave the Munch for another day.   – Bruce Mohun, director, Programmed to be Fat?

Programmed to be Fat? airs Thursday, January 12 on CBC Television’s The Nature of Things.

In the course of making a documentary, the pursuit of the story often leads to other interesting discoveries – and connections.

Such was the case while we were filming Programmed to be Fat?

In this installment of Tales from the Road, our director Bruce Mohun meets the descendant of his ancestor’s foe:

The Baillie-Hamilton clan is well known around the town of Callendar in Scotland. Paula (our reason for the visit)  is an Oxford medical Ph.D. who was the first to publish a paper suggesting a link between endocrine-disrupting chemicals and weight gain.  She is the author of two books based on her research.

Her husband Michael has his own claim to fame: he is the local Laird. He’s also petitioning to become the head of the Hamilton clan worldwide, and owns a lot of land around the town.

We interviewed Paula in the drawing room of their home, a castle the family inherited from Michael’s father. We filmed her with her two youngest children and a litter of cocker spaniel puppies in the library.

I pulled a small, black, leather-bound book at random from the library shelves. It was in Latin, and dated from the 17th Century. Paula admitted she had no idea what books were there. Just a lot, and very old. The hallways of the castle are filled with huge two-hundred year old oil portraits. The building creaks with history.

Turns out there was some personal history there, too. Ironically, my ancestor, Lord Charles Mohun, and Michael’s ancestor, the Duke of Hamilton, had a duel over an estate back in 1712 – in the Rose Garden of Hyde Park in London – and managed to kill each other: one of the most famous duels in English history. The story is captured in the book Duke Hamilton is Dead! by Victor Stater.

When I mentioned it to Mike he denied knowledge, but I suspect the revenge factor still simmers – they have long memories, these Scots.

Duke of Hamilton

Lord Mohun

All images from Wikipedia.

Alison researches the long-term effects of fetal exposure to toxic chemicals. Results so far point to links to type 2 diabetes, hypertension, infertility and obesity.   Alison has focussed much of her research (with rats) on the effect of nicotine, and is now also studying man-made chemicals and over-the-counter natural health products.

Alison spent a full day with our crew  in the lab – tune in January 12 for some ‘must see’ rat shots!

Thanks to the technology at cloud.li

Next post: what parents have to say about their adult children!

Trevor Greene, the subject of our documentary Peace Warrior, was the recipient of the Physical Rehabilitation award, for his inspiring dedication to his recovery from the horrifying axe attack he endured while serving as a soldier in Afghanistan.

When Trevor spoke after receiving his award, you could have heard a pin drop even though there were 800 people in the banquet hall. Trevor’s wife Debbie and daughter Grace were there, along with his parents Dick and Bess Greene.

The “Evening of Inspiration” was exactly that, and raised almost $650,000 for the Coast Mental Health Foundation. Our congratulations to all of the award recipients, for showing us it is possible to triumph over the most daunting kinds of adversity.

We are so honoured that The Downside of High has won a Gold World Medal in the Health/Medical documentary category at the 2011 New York Festivals International Television & Film Awards.

“It took a lot of courage for the young people we profiled in the documentary to go public with their history of mental illness,  and particularly to connect it to marijuana use. So it’s very gratifying to see the documentary they made possible get this kind of prestigious recognition,” says producer Sue Ridout.

The New York Festivals Awards have been around for 54 years, but this is a special year: it’s the first time a lifetime achievement award will be handed out (to the legendary documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles).  It feels particularly meaningful to get a Gold World Medal at the 2011 Festivals.

The Downside of High was directed and written by Bruce Mohun, story-produced by Maureen Palmer, produced by Sue Ridout. Director of photography John Collins, editor Tim Wanlin, music composer Tim McCauley.

Many of the scientists we’re talking to as we film our upcoming documentary Programmed to be Fat? are busy travelling to meet the other scientists we’re talking to. There are a lot of meetings this year, as people try to figure out which tests will be most effective to arrive at some kind of conclusion about obesogens.

If that’s a word you’re not familiar with yet, you will be. Obesogens are environmental chemicals, man-made and naturally occuring, believed by some leading scientists to be contributing to the obesity epidemic – especially for people under the age of 50. (So being fat might not be our fault. Controversial? Oh yes!)

We met one of the experts in this field, Alison Holloway, at the Society of Toxicology meeting in Montreal. But to see her work, we had to travel back to Toronto with her, on the train.

(No free ride for the crew. Alison put them to work marking ‘lay tests’, in which students have to write grant requests in language that any lay person can understand. That’s cameraman Max Lindenthaler on the right, and soundman Patrick Brereton.)

More on what happened when we reached our stop later.

]]> http://dreamfilm.ca/blog/tracking-down-a-story/feed/ 0 http://dreamfilm.ca/blog/saving-marriage/ http://dreamfilm.ca/blog/saving-marriage/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:37:31 +0000 dreamfilm http://dreamfilm.ca/?p=1298 As the popularity of common-law unions has continued to climb, organizations that advocate marriage are campaigning to save matrimony – with some very visual, and sometimes controversial, approaches.

The Church of England’s angle of aggressively trying to sell marriage in the Church caught our eye early.   We just show them “hawking their wares” at a wedding fair in Thoroughly Modern Marriage. But the move that caused a lot of controversy was their offer of free baptisms if you “bought” a marriage in the Church. This was because they discovered 1 in every 5 couples who got married in the Church of England already had children. So they thought, “well we may as well offer to baptize them”. Problem is, the Church does not condone sex before marriage. There was an uproar and the idea was dropped.

And in addition to groups pushing for people to GET married, there’s also a well designed movement to KEEP people married.

Huge billboards in the US make arguments that appeal to our self-interest:  ”Married people live longer…Married people make more money”

And the Smart Marriage movement has a massive following with conferences, retreats and marriage classes.

The battle for the hearts and minds of couples, like marriage itself, is not likely to disappear anytime soon.

For instance, roughly 80% of Canadian women get married at some point in their lives. We’ve kind of forgotten about this as we’ve become fixated on divorce statistics. (The divorce rate is 38%, by the way, although most people bandy about the idea that it’s 50%. It’s still high but a long way from 50%.)

In fact, we met a group of young female university students who were all desperate to get married, very worried they hadn’t met their future husbands yet (at 19/20, thinking if it didn’t happen soon, they might be 40 God forbid with a 10 year-old.)  It would be easy to assume that young, hip, modern women these days might not really want marriage after seeing the broken relationships of their parents, cohorts, etc. But overwhelmingly they want it – and bad, super bad. They also said they wanted a more traditional life, less work, more time at home with hubby and kids. Hmm!

But as you’ll see in the documentary, truly one of the most intriguing aspects of modern marriage is the variety. A legal union of two people is as different as the two people within it.

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