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Maybe it's progress as testicles just become more efficient.
A single sperm, for impregnation? No - it's a regular dance in there (if you're old-fashioned & go about it the ages-old way). It requires timing & a fair amount of cooperation for the sperm to impregnate - there are lots of materials that outline the process, if you're interested.
In vitro is different - but there, I believe, the sperm are cultured (or mechanically harvested & either concentrated or simply unleashed en masse, as it were) & more-or-less bucketfuls are generated, if they're needed in that quantity.
And people are still breeding like rabbits. There's no signs that the population is going to dwindle or drop dead anytime soon. The world's population is continuing to increase. You don't need 100 million sperm to impregnate a woman...it literally takes 1!
In my completely non researched, non scientific opinion, I think it largely comes to two factors:
1) Obesity. Pretty Simple correlation as I understand it.
2) Estrogen type compounds in our water. I have read in a handful of places that female hormones from "The Pill" and most other forms of contraception, are passed in the urine, and aren't removed or treated or tested for in our water. Atrizine, a common fertilizer, does the same thing. Also, hormones from dairy herds probably have something to do with it.
I get irked when people dismissively say, "there are more chemicals today" or "its all the chemicals in our food." If you try and nail them down they squirm and point at words that they can't pronounce but don't have any idea what it actually means. "Chemicals in our food" and "Toxins in our body" are the 21st century equivalent of "Evil Spirits" and "Female Hysteria." There is something innate in Humans that causes us to be fearful of something bad attacking our well being.
Our parents and grandparents suffered from far worse air and water quality than we did, especially if they were in cities.
I do genealogy and of my ancestors who lived in polluted cities, many died of respiratory illnesses. Many in those days also died of food poisoning due to lack of refrigeration and many probably died from polluted water. I don't feel like googling the polluted water but with the dyes and other pollutants from the old mills, there is no way the water was clean. They said you could tell what the factory was producing that day by the color of the water in the river.
I don't know that answer to the original question but it could be the food. Many of our food products aren't even allowed into Europe due to the pesticides used on them, the hormones in our beef, the antibiotics in chicken. Just because our regulations are less strict doesn't mean that we are right. The producers are more interested in making money than in health.
BTW, our grandparents did not eat the sort of food that we eat today. What they called "food" was what we call "organic." They didn't have chemicals to use so they were not eating chemicals along with their food.
Could be cell phones, video games, food...I don't know.
In my completely non researched, non scientific opinion, I think it largely comes to two factors:
1) Obesity. Pretty Simple correlation as I understand it.
2) Estrogen type compounds in our water. I have read in a handful of places that female hormones from "The Pill" and most other forms of contraception, are passed in the urine, and aren't removed or treated or tested for in our water. Atrizine, a common fertilizer, does the same thing. Also, hormones from dairy herds probably have something to do with it.
I get irked when people dismissively say, "there are more chemicals today" or "its all the chemicals in our food." If you try and nail them down they squirm and point at words that they can't pronounce but don't have any idea what it actually means. "Chemicals in our food" and "Toxins in our body" are the 21st century equivalent of "Evil Spirits" and "Female Hysteria." There is something innate in Humans that causes us to be fearful of something bad attacking our well being.
Our parents and grandparents suffered from far worse air and water quality than we did, especially if they were in cities.
I would bet dollars to donuts the decrease is being caused primarily by obesity. The rates of obesity in adults have increased by 5 times since the 1960s-1970s and the majority of the obese adults back in the 1960s-1970s were not the men of prime reproductive ages being measured. Nowadays in the US about 75% of adult men are either overweight or obese. Since excess body weight has been linked to infertility in both women and men, it therefore corresponds that a huge increase in excess body fat in a male population would reduce the fertility of the males in this same population.
I would bet dollars to donuts the decrease is being caused primarily by obesity. The rates of obesity in adults have increased by 5 times since the 1960s-1970s and the majority of the obese adults back in the 1960s-1970s were not the men of prime reproductive ages being measured. Nowadays in the US about 75% of adult men are either overweight or obese. Since excess body weight has been linked to infertility in both women and men, it therefore corresponds that a huge increase in excess body fat in a male population would reduce the fertility of the males in this same population.
Or.. look at it from the other side: obesity is rampant because we're told to eat less meat and more grains. Per capita beef & dairy consumption is way down from two generations ago. Do we really need more meat & dairy?
In regards chemicals in our food: it takes ultra sensitive lab methods to detect the minuscule amounts residual in our food. Even if we concede that these chemicals do cause problems, we have to ask, how much of a problem do they cause? Given that we're bigger, stronger, healthier and live longer than ever, the answer has to be "so little the effect is lost as noise in the data. Other factors must be over-compensating for the damage." Not to worry.
I'm referencing an "accidentally motivated" study from 1942; in which a doctor researching hormonal influences in humans had noticed a trend in his laboratory cats & decided to apply the scientific method to their "menu" & record the results. He started the study in 1932 & recorded results of generations of cats for an entire decade:
Group one was fed raw meat scraps including organ meats and bone, and raw milk (closest to nature for cats).
Group two was fed the same scraps but cooked, and were given pasteurised (heat treated) milk (same items but processed/unlike nature).
Group One: Healthy. Averaged 5 kittens per litter with few birthing problems, and most died of old age. After 9 generations there was no change in their health status.
Group Two: Began developing problems from the first generation, with increased deaths in the litters, smaller litter sizes, poorer mothering, noticeable dull rough coats.
"From the second generation onwards there were vision problems, common infections, and dermatitis, arthritis, heart disease, allergies, gingivitis and periodontal disease, inflamed joints and nervous tissue, skeletal malformation (Ca bone density fell from 17 % at the start, to 4% by the fourth generation).
Fertility declined rapidly, as did litter size and perinatal mortality increased. Behaviourally the group on cooked food became progressively more aggressive to handlers and each other. Interestingly gastrointestinal parasitism was a major problem in the cooked food group, not the raw food group The most common cause of death in adults in the cooked food group was from pneumonia and lung abscess, and in kittens was from diarrhoea and infection.
By the ninth generation on cooked food the cats were completely sterile and had stopped reproducing."
I am not suggesting raw diets for humans; just thinking the least possible processed food without chemicals, hormone's, etc ...
BTW, our grandparents did not eat the sort of food that we eat today. What they called "food" was what we call "organic." They didn't have chemicals to use so they were not eating chemicals along with their food.
That is wrong. You're exhibiting a logical fallacy known as "the appeal to antiquity" or "appeal to nature."
Pesticides as we know them started in Sumeria when they dusted crops with sulfur. By the time Columbus sailed, arsenic, lead, and mercury were applied to crops as pesticides.
After the discovery of tobacco, they started using nicotine sulfate extracted from tobacco leaves.
What do you think Don Corleone was spraying on his tomatoes in "The Godfather"? I bet it was a bit more nasty than MiracleGro.
The fertilizer industry began 300 years ago. They started treating phosphates with sulfuric acid for 200 years. Phosphate mining has been a thing for just as long. 2/3 of the world's food supply couldn't be grown without it.
Even so called "natural fertilizer" such as manure has bad environmental consequences.
That is wrong. You're exhibiting a logical fallacy known as "the appeal to antiquity" or "appeal to nature."
Pesticides as we know them started in Sumeria when they dusted crops with sulfur. By the time Columbus sailed, arsenic, lead, and mercury were applied to crops as pesticides.
After the discovery of tobacco, they started using nicotine sulfate extracted from tobacco leaves.
What do you think Don Corleone was spraying on his tomatoes in "The Godfather"? I bet it was a bit more nasty than MiracleGro.
The fertilizer industry began 300 years ago. They started treating phosphates with sulfuric acid for 200 years. Phosphate mining has been a thing for just as long. 2/3 of the world's food supply couldn't be grown without it.
Even so called "natural fertilizer" such as manure has bad environmental consequences.
I'm not so sure that use of these chemicals was commonplace. I think this is more of a distraction than anything.
I can remember my grandfather using things like lime, wood ash, chicken manure. Never at all did he EVER use arsenic, lead, or mercury. He didn't need them as he kept a really good compost pile as fertilizer and to amend the soil. I have a pretty good compost pile too and have never needed a pesticide in my small vegetable garden. The plant nutrients are in the compost and those are taken up by the plants. With healthy plants in the first place, you don't need anything else. Some people do have to place something around the garden to repel deer or rabbits though. But those substances don't get onto the actual plants, that I know of.
Don't use fresh manure, of course, but not too many people are that dumb. Most people grew their own vegetables in the past and when you have a small, home garden, your plants are less susceptible to pests.
I'm not saying that in some parts of the world, some of these substances may have been used at some point, but I don't really think it was commonplace. I have heard of arsenic being used to preserve seeds but that's just hearsay and probably over 100 years ago and not commonly used. Rural old time gardeners wouldn't have had access to these chemicals--they depended upon methods like crop rotation and using what they had--manure from the chickens, ash from the fireplace, compost made from vegetable peelings. And don't smoke around tomato plants, lol--tomatoes and tobacco are related and cigarettes could give tomato mosaic virus to your plants. Old time small gardeners knew this stuff and much more.
No joke. The most recent study seems to be good science and a reduction of 52% in fertility over just 40 years means that "Western Man" will likely die out sooner rather than later.
Researchers suspect, and I concur, that this is somehow related to industrialization...the combination of substances we are all exposed to and ingest in various ways. This would include food, food containers (plastics of various sorts), air, water and other similar factors.
So, the debate question or topic would be whether, based on such results, you believe that those who have been "crying in the wilderness" for decades about environment, food and other poisons we have integrated into our society and culture - are slowly going to be the end of us???
Note - life span has stayed the same or increased due to medical intervention - so these things don't always kill us early, but rather cause hormonal and DNA changes that destroy our normal reproductive cycles.
Part of the world which were not fully industrialized 40 years ago do NOT have this drop in sperm counts.
So, your take...your guesses as to why? Or, do you not believe the science?
Maybe it's progress as testicles just become more efficient.
Precisely.
A male body produces about 1500 sperm per second, some 3 trillion over the average life of a man. And as a society we're still pumping out babies. Reproduction rates have fallen, but that's a socio-economic function (the higher a family's income, the fewer children they gave) and it's intentional. Were it not, condoms and birth control pills and vasectomies and tubal ligations would no longer be common among western men and their mates. But they are.
Because western civilization has all the sperm it needs.
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