Illness and early maturation of girls- troubling realizations

In class today, the idea that the degenerative disease Alzheimers may be directly related to the hormones and drugs that livestock are given, was raised. It's a worrisome though, especially since the disease is becoming all the more common. This is not a theory I'd heard before. To my knowledge, there had not been any widely-accepted theories as to the cause of the illness, and everything from genetics to long-term exposure to the television was under investigation.

Also troubling is the idea that these same drugs and hormones, forced upon these nonhuman animals "for their own protection" may be the cause for early sexual development in young girls. I had certainly heard that this was becoming an increasing problem, with girls as young as 10 starting to menstruate. I am just glad that, if it had to happen somewhere, it is the United States. That sounds awful, I suppose, but when you think about it, it would be far worse for this same event to take place early in some other cultures, where body mutilation of sexually mature girls is a sacred tradition, and leaves emotional and physical scars...and even can be lethal, in some cases if the unfortunate victims bleed out after the ceremony. I know for certain that many African Tribal nations have this practice, and perhaps some South American tribes do, as well.
Fran Hosken writes a compelling, but very graphic essay on this issue here:
http://http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/first/hosken.html

I'll warn you now that there are actually diagrams showing how the mutilation effects the women it has been performed on, and it is not something comfortably viewed.

Here is a short passage: "Many colorful myths are related all over Africa as reasons for the operations. Though all the myths are still believed by the ethnic groups involved inn the rural areas, many of the reasons are contradictory, and none of them are compatible with biological facts.
Most Africans who practice these operations believe that excision is a custom decreed by the ancestors; therefore, it must be complied with. Most often, men refuse to marry girls who are not excised. Since marriage is still the only career for a woman in most of Africa and the Middle East, the operations continue. "No proper Kikuyu would dream of marrying a girl who has not been circumcised," stated Jomo Kenyatta, the revered leader of Kenya, in his book, Facing Mount Kenya, which was written in the 1930s and continued to be published, and is also sold in tourist shops in Nairobi.
As President of Kenya for life, Kenyatta had great influence on Africans well beyond the borders of Kenya, and his much quoted statement is responsible for the mutilation of many thousands of helpless little girls and untold suffering and deaths."