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Counting sperm, ‘I tried counting mine once, but I went blind with exhaustion’

Among the many varieties of end-of-the-world stories we like to tell ourselves, the infertility apocalypse is the least violent, and therefore the most interesting in human terms. But the sperm crisis really isn’t here yet, or even looming on the horizon.

Unfortunately, that’s the way human beings work: ignore the problem or put up with it until it becomes unbearable, and only then do something about it. It’s a strategy that has served us well enough in the past, but will do us increasing damage as the problems become more complex. It’s very unlikely, however, that falling sperm counts will be the one that finally gets us.Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

August 7, 2017

LONDON, U.K.—“I tried counting mine once, but I went blind with exhaustion,” tweeted one reader of the BBC website after it reported that sperm counts were down by half in the past 40 years all over the developed world. And it’s true: they are hard to count. The little buggers just won’t s...

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