Male infertility
In 2016, Japanese scholars created mice by fertilizing the conventional eggs of mice sperm created by IVG. The barrel cells were taken from mice-sama. There was no need for men.
The number of spermatodes in male seeds has fallen by more than 50 per cent over the past 40 years. We produce half less sperm than our grandfathers, and we become more feminine. What is the cause of these mysterious global changes and can they be stopped before it is too late?
Men are doomed, everyone knows that. Young boys die more often than girls. Little boys die more than little girls. Same with teenagers, young people, middle-aged men. By 85 years, two women remain for every living man. But it seems that early death isn't enough for us now we're on our way to complete disappearance.
Last summer, a group of researchers from the University of Jews and the Mount Sinai Medical School published a study showing that the number of sperms in male seeds from the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand had fallen by more than 50 per cent over the past four decades. Data from the rest of the world are not yet sufficient, but there are indications that the trend is global. In other words, we produce half the sperm that our grandfather gave. We're half less fruit.
Scientists have published meta-analysis of epidemiologists, clinicists and researchers who have collected 185 sperm studies of nearly 43,000 men. Data showed that the human race appeared to be on the road to the inability of self-reproducion.
The number of sperms declined from 99 million per million sperm in 1973 to 47 million/ml in 2011, and the fall is accelerating. It's been a while since we're 40 years old, and we'll just be gone.
Swan Shanna, a reproductive epidemiologist from Medchool Gora Sinai and one of the leading researchers, called to ask: are there any good news behind these brutal figures? But she didn't calm me down.
Did Dr. Swan ask for a threat to human existence? - We're on our way. He can lead us to a place where there will be no more naturally conceived children. And perhaps there will be no children at all.”
No sperm, no sperm.
If, unlike grandparents, only half of the fruits, why didn't we notice that?
One of the answers is that we don't need 200 million spermatoes to fertilize the egg. Most men with a reduced number of spermatozoids can naturally start a child. While the decline in the number of spermatodes has probably led to a slight decrease in the number of children conceived, this has been masked by the social causes of fertility decline: people in the more developed countries prefer to have fewer children and start them at a later age.
The number of spermatoes decreased in the 1970s meta-analysis, but prior to the Swan and her colleagues ' study, the results were always estimated as incomplete or preliminary.
Swan personally conducted small studies to reduce the number of spermatoes, but in 2015 she decided that it was time to give a final answer. Together with the Israeli epidemiologist Hagaem Levin, the Danish endocrineologist Niels Jorgensen, and five other scientists, they have started systematic analysis and meta-regression analysis - a sort of statistical synthesis.
"Hagai is a very good scientist, said by Swan. - He was the chief epidemiologist of the Israeli armed forces, so he's very good at the organization. "
They spent a year working with the data. The results they came to were obvious.
Not only has the number of sperms per million sperm decreased by more than 50 per cent since 1973. Almost 60% down and the total number of spermatoes. We produce less sperm, and this sperm contains less sperm.
This time, even scholars who were sceptical about past analyses had to admit that it was almost impossible to refute the study.
When Dr. Jørgensen saw the results in Copenhagen, he said, "No, that's not true." He was expecting to see a decline in the past, and then equating it. But he couldn't argue when the team repeated the numbers again and again. The decline has been and remains sustained.
Changes in sex differences
Almost all scholars have emphasized: the low level of sperm is not only a matter of concern for the reproductive future of humankind, it also signals a large number of other health problems.
We know, for example, that men with poor sperm quality have higher mortality rates. They suffer diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases much more than fertile men.
Male testosterone is also declining sharply. All these effects begin in the morning and extend to adulthood.
One of the most important signs of human sex is the so-called anogenic distance (AGD) - the measurement between anus and the sexual organs. Men ' s AGD is usually twice the length of women - a sharper difference than growth, weight or muscle. The reduced testosterone leads to a shorter AGD. Dr. Swan noted that " catch differences are decreasing " .
Men don't just make less spermazione. They are also becoming less similar to typical men.
I assumed that Shana Swan would call the cause of these changes a mystery. I thought if we found out what caused the fall in the number of spermatodes, we could solve the associated health problems immediately. But as it turns out, it's not a secret: we know what the problem is. And she's hiding in front of everyone.
The anomaly is still developing in the morning.
The Department of Growth and Reproduction is located on the sixth floor of the National Hospital in Copenhagen. I went there to meet a 82-year-old paediatric andendocrineologist Niels E. Skakkebek who founded the department in 1990.
Men ' s fertility and men ' s reproductive health, Sakkebek, are in a full crisis.
" Here we are, in Denmark, an epidemic of infertility, he said. More than 20 per cent of Danish men cannot have children. "
About something that went wrong, Skakkebek suspected since the late 1970s when he was treating an infertile patient. He's never seen such anomalies in egg cells before. When he met a second patient with the same anomaly in a few years, he started looking for a connection.
What he found was a new form of egg cancer cell, a rare disease that had doubled. Turns out these cells are developing in the patient's mother's morning.
Later, Skakkebek referred to the combination of these rare symptoms as the " disgenesy of testicles " . It includes hypospatia (retrition), cryptorchism (freedom of testicles), poor sperm and testicle cancer. Sakkebek suggested that these disorders were common and related to the violation of the masculinity of the match.
What happened to these babies before they came to light?
Plastic
To say there's only one answer, it means exaggerating. Stress, smoking, obesity-- all of this depresses the number of sperms. But much more has been influenced by the industrial revolution, oil and chemical of the twentieth century. That's when, in the '70s, people started swallowing a number of compounds that affected our hormones, including the most important ones, the estrogen and the testosterone.
" The chemical revolution has started since the beginning of the nineteenth century, if not before, it speaks. But it is after the Second World War that hundreds of new chemicals have entered the market for a very short period of time. "
The chemical revolution has given us great things: new medicines, new sources of food, faster and cheaper mass production. But she was experimenting on a living human body.
Suddenly, there was a huge amount of chemicals in our blood that had never contacted a human body before.
When the chemical affects your hormones, it's called an endocrine destroyer. Many of the compounds used for the manufacture of soft and flexible plastics (e.g. fthalates) or for their reinforcement (e.g. bisphenol A or BPA) are very strong endocrine disruptors.
Ftalates and BPA, for example, simulate the estrogen in the bloodstream. If you have a lot of fthalates in your system, you'll be producing less testosterone and less sperm. The reproductive system of the male fruit will be changed when the fthalates are affected in maternal womb: it will be growing less similar to men.
Women with elevated fthalates in urine during pregnancy were more likely to be born to sons with shorter anogenic distance, shorter penis and small seeds.
"When the testosterone is starting to produce the testosterone, about the eighth week of pregnancy, they produce it less than the norm, Dr. Swan explains. - That's the whole story. So the fthalads reduce the level of the testosterone. The testicles do not produce it properly, and the anogenic distance becomes shorter. "
Chemical mutations are inherited
The main problem is that these chemicals are everywhere. BPA can be found in bottles for water, food containers, etc. The fleets are even more common:
They are covered by tablets and food additives; they are used in smearing substances, emulsors and synergistic substances.
Not to mention medical devices, cleaning and packing, paint and plastic, pharmaceuticals and textiles, nail polish, liquid soap and hair gel.
Ftalates are used in tubes that move food in factories, so
You can find them in milk, yogurt, sauce, soup. Also, in small quantities, eggs, fruits, vegetables, macaroons, noodles, rice and water.
It turns out that almost all women and men in the United States have measurable levels of phthalates, risk inevitable.
Moreover, there is evidence that the effects of these endocrine disruptors are growing from generation to generation because of what is called epigentic inheritance.
Typically acquired features, such as reducing the number of sperms caused by obesity, are not passed from father to son. But the changes caused by ftalates and BPA are inherited.
Your father gives you his low level of spermatosis, and your level becomes even lower after you're exposed to endocrine disruptors. Therefore, even after 40 years of decline in the number of spermatodes in male seeds, their base level continues to fall.
Spermatosis on the verge of extinction
In May this year, the 13th International Symposium on Spermology was held on the small Swedish island of Lidingo. 100 spermatologists in one place is a good reason for humor. But the meeting wasn't a joke.
Dr. Sakkebek warned us that the symposium would be dissatisfied with Dr. Swan's meta-analysis. But instead, I witnessed the final elimination of doubts.
The key event of the symposium was the panel discussion following the report of the co-author of the Methanalysis of the Jewish University/Gora Sinai Hagai Levina " Spermatosis on the verge of extinction " .
" Chemical producers must prove that their chemicals are safe, Levin said. And I don't feel like I need more evidence that it's the chemicals that destroy our endocrine system.”
The symposium organizer, the Swedish spermatologist Lars Bjorndal, called for caution. “I respect epidemiological studies very much, but we must remember that mathematical correlation is not enough to conclude the link between the increase in the production of plastics and the fall in the level of spermatoes”, he said.
The same lines sounded out of the hall. The manufacturer and designer of the laboratories, David Mortimer, noted that sperm research methods in the 1970s were very unreliable.
But Levin' already had an answer.
“We also questioned as old studies and conducted a separate analysis of samples taken since 1995, he said from the stage. - So, the fall curve has become even better. "
" I never said that there was no reduction in the number of spermatodes " , Mortimer was confused.
As a result, the symposium called on the world to recognize that men ' s reproductive health was important for the survival of humankind, that its deterioration was alarming and should be studied, and that, as long as research in that area, the world was spending less attention and money than it should.
Mortimer finally signed a statement.
No need for men
Is there anything we can do about it? Over the past 20 years, attempts have been made periodically to limit the number of endocrine disruptors in plastics, but this has changed little.
One chemist was replaced by another, who was ultimately dangerous, too. That's what happened to BPA: he was partially replaced by BPS, which might be even more harmful.
Chemical giants, of course, refute the claims that the product that makes them billions of dollars is causing terrible damage to the human organism. Like tobacco companies with oil lobbyists, they finance their own research to prove that their products are harmless.
There's a page on the American Chemical Council website, the industry trade association. It's almost all about the rebuttal of Swan's study. Chemical company lobbies claim that they " used unverified methods, non-conventional data analysis and its findings were criticized by the scientific community " . Among the critics are the late Elizabeth Whelan, President of the United States Council for Science and Health. This Council finances Chevron, DuPont and other giants of plastic business.
We have an ECO.
Mar Goldstein, urologist and surgeon from Cornell Medical Center in New York, is not concerned about future humanity. “Yes, the number of men with infertility, due to the decline in the quality of sperms, has grown considerably, - He admits it. - But we have ECO and other methods of treating infertility. "
It is true that the treatment of infertility has already given many men a chance to become fathers. Their stories show that the challenge can be solved.
But this treatment is very expensive, and it's obviously not an option available to all. It is unlikely in the future to support fertility at a level close to the present.
Chris Wall, NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia, tried six years to start a baby. Wall's spermatodes were less than 2 million per milliter. This is very small, but if the world ' s sterility epidemic does not go down, it will be the average for men by 2034.
For a few years, they tried to borrow kids in a normal way. Then six internal attempts were made. Then there were several rounds of ECO. When it didn't work, they thought about adoption. But then they were offered surrogate motherhood, and it worked. Now they have a healthy, healthy 4-year-old daughter.
As long as men are still needed to survive the species, and even those who depend somewhere above the zero spermatosis level, medicine offers a chance. But the problem of innovation is they never stop. New technology, known as ECO-gametogenes in vitro (IVG), offers prospects for converting embryonic stem cells into sperm.
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