Getting agitated, are you, about declining sperm counts? The Guardian called the fall in numbers ‘shocking’; for the Telegraph, never one to underplay these things, ‘Sperm count collapse could spell doom for humanity’. Really? It feels like one of those stories about species extinction, helped by the undeniable resemblance of spermatozoa to tadpoles.
You may have noticed that women are markedly less agitated about all this than men, at least the three I spoke to. For once – hah – it’s not women who have all the angst about procreation. All the Bridget Jones business about body clocks, biological sell-by dates and egg freezing was formerly the preserve of women. Now men can share the grief…welcome, progenitors.
There are a few considerations that should give us pause. The first is that even if sperm counts are declining by ‘almost 60 per cent’ if you read the Telegraph or 52 per cent if you read the Guardian, that leaves us with quite enough male gametes to fertilise the entire female population, even without recourse to extensive polygamy.
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