Prozac in the Water Makes Fighting Fish More Mellow

Had Teresa Dzieweczynski chosen to publish her recent findings as an updated children's classic, rather than as a research paper, she could have titled it If You Give a Fish an Antidepressant. The book would probably be less charming than If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. But it would also be, unfortunately, more realistic. Our pharmaceuticals are steadily trickling into the homes of fish and other animals. And—as the hero of the original book could have told us, his house in disarray after fulfilling the whims of a hungry rodent—there are consequences. Dzieweczynski, a psychologist at the University of New England, looked at just one of the drugs that's crept into American waterways: fluoxetine, better known as Prozac. It's an antidepressant that makes the hormone serotonin linger in the brain for a longer time. Antidepressants of this type are commonly prescribed, and they commonly get into the water as ...