Oil and sperm
Jim Devine: I don't see why the obvious lust for oil has to be based on a view that oil is running out. Lots of people, including yours truly, have a lust for sex without assuming that sex is running out. But in a certain sense sex *is* running out, for reasons parallel to the LONG-TERM energy crisis (as opposed to short-term spikes in supply and demand). http://www.rachel.org/search/index.cfm?St=1 #477 - Sperm in the News, January 18, 1996 This must be the year of the sperm. The NEW YORKER magazine ran a long story[1] January 15th called Silent Sperm --a wry reference to Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING, which made its debut in the NEW YORKER 35 years ago. Silent Sperm describes the 50% loss in sperm count that has occurred in men worldwide during the past 40 years. Furthermore, the January issue of ESQUIRE features an article on sperm loss,[2] titled Downward Motility. MOTHER JONES magazine[3] also began the new year with a sperm story, titled Down for the Count. And the nation's newspaper of record, the NEW YORK TIMES, ran a 4-part, front-page series on increasing infertility in the U.S. January 7-10. By far the most interesting and informative of these articles are by Lawrence Wright in the NEW YORKER and Daniel Pinchbeck in ESQUIRE. Wright and Pinchbeck interviewed dozens of prominent researchers in the field of endocrinology (hormones) and reproductive health in the U.S., Britain and Europe, and their articles offer new human perspectives on the scientific information we have been presenting since 1991 (see REHW #263, #264, #323, #343, #365, #372, #377, #432, #438, #446, #447, #448). Here are some viewpoints that we have not previously offered our readers in our own coverage of this issue: ** Danish pediatric endocrinologist (hormone specialist) Niels E. Skakkebaek says that, in the late 1980s, We had also been wondering why it was so difficult for sperm banks to establish a core of donors. In some areas of Denmark, they were having to recruit ten potential donors to find one with good semen quality.[1,pg.43] ** So Skakkebaek in 1990 studied sperm quality in Danish men. He started with men working in nonhazardous office jobs and laborers who did not work directly with industrial chemicals or pesticides --men thought to be healthy. For decades it had been believed that the average man produced about a hundred million sperm per milliliter of semen, and of that about 20% was expected to be immobile. Skakkebaek reported that 84% of the Danish men he studied had sperm quality below the standards set by the World Health Organization. The men themselves seemed normal in every other respect.[1,pg.43] ** On the basis of the world's medical literature, Skakkebaek calculates that in 1940 the average sperm count was 113 million per milliliter, and that 50 years later it had fallen to 66 million. [1,pg.44] ** Still more serious is a three-fold increase in men whose sperm count was below 20 million--the point at which their fertility would be jeopardized.[1,pg.44] ** In the United States, just as in Denmark, the number of donors with good-quality sperm has become distressingly low. As early as 1981, researchers at the Washington Fertility Study Center reported that sperm count of their donors, who were largely medical students, had suffered a steady decline over the previous eight years. The researchers worried that, if the decline continued at the same rate, within the decade there would be no potential donors who could meet the approved or recommended standards.[1,pg.44] ** The fact is that the number of morphologically normal sperm [meaning sperm with a normal shape] produced by the average man has dropped below the level of those of a hamster, which has testicles a fraction the size of a man's.[1,pg.44] ** In the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the percentage of infertile couples has risen from 14.4 in 1965 to 18.5 in 1995. Infertility is defined as failure to produce a child after a year of normal sex.[1,pg.44] ** There has been little published research comparing racial and ethnic sperm counts, particularly in Africa and many Third World countries. But the studies that we do have show low counts nearly everywhere: the latest count in Nigeria is 64 million per milliliter; in Pakistan, 79.5 million; in Germany, 78 million; in Hong Kong, 62 million.[1,pgs.44-45] ** Pierre Jouannet, director of the Centre d'Etude et de Conservation des Oeufs et du Sperme in Paris, simply did not believe Skakkebaek's conclusions. Jouannet had data on 1350 Parisian men, all of whom had fathered at least one child and therefore were of proven fertility, so he analyzed them, expecting to refute Skakkebaek's studies. To his astonishment he found that sperm counts in his group had dropped steadily at 2% per year for the past 20 years; in 1973 the average count was 89 million per milliliter and in 1992 it was 60 million.
RE: Oil and sperm
Title: RE: [PEN-L:30980] Oil and sperm hey man, most men don't care about the sperm as much as the act of sex itself. ;-) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 8:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:30980] Oil and sperm Jim Devine: I don't see why the obvious lust for oil has to be based on a view that oil is running out. Lots of people, including yours truly, have a lust for sex without assuming that sex is running out. But in a certain sense sex *is* running out, for reasons parallel to the LONG-TERM energy crisis (as opposed to short-term spikes in supply and demand). http://www.rachel.org/search/index.cfm?St=1 #477 - Sperm in the News, January 18, 1996 This must be the year of the sperm. The NEW YORKER magazine ran a long story[1] January 15th called Silent Sperm --a wry reference to Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING, which made its debut in the NEW YORKER 35 years ago. Silent Sperm describes the 50% loss in sperm count that has occurred in men worldwide during the past 40 years. Furthermore, the January issue of ESQUIRE features an article on sperm loss,[2] titled Downward Motility. MOTHER JONES magazine[3] also began the new year with a sperm story, titled Down for the Count. And the nation's newspaper of record, the NEW YORK TIMES, ran a 4-part, front-page series on increasing infertility in the U.S. January 7-10. By far the most interesting and informative of these articles are by Lawrence Wright in the NEW YORKER and Daniel Pinchbeck in ESQUIRE. Wright and Pinchbeck interviewed dozens of prominent researchers in the field of endocrinology (hormones) and reproductive health in the U.S., Britain and Europe, and their articles offer new human perspectives on the scientific information we have been presenting since 1991 (see REHW #263, #264, #323, #343, #365, #372, #377, #432, #438, #446, #447, #448). Here are some viewpoints that we have not previously offered our readers in our own coverage of this issue: ** Danish pediatric endocrinologist (hormone specialist) Niels E. Skakkebaek says that, in the late 1980s, We had also been wondering why it was so difficult for sperm banks to establish a core of donors. In some areas of Denmark, they were having to recruit ten potential donors to find one with good semen quality.[1,pg.43] ** So Skakkebaek in 1990 studied sperm quality in Danish men. He started with men working in nonhazardous office jobs and laborers who did not work directly with industrial chemicals or pesticides --men thought to be healthy. For decades it had been believed that the average man produced about a hundred million sperm per milliliter of semen, and of that about 20% was expected to be immobile. Skakkebaek reported that 84% of the Danish men he studied had sperm quality below the standards set by the World Health Organization. The men themselves seemed normal in every other respect.[1,pg.43] ** On the basis of the world's medical literature, Skakkebaek calculates that in 1940 the average sperm count was 113 million per milliliter, and that 50 years later it had fallen to 66 million. [1,pg.44] ** Still more serious is a three-fold increase in men whose sperm count was below 20 million--the point at which their fertility would be jeopardized.[1,pg.44] ** In the United States, just as in Denmark, the number of donors with good-quality sperm has become distressingly low. As early as 1981, researchers at the Washington Fertility Study Center reported that sperm count of their donors, who were largely medical students, had suffered a steady decline over the previous eight years. The researchers worried that, if the decline continued at the same rate, within the decade there would be no potential donors who could meet the approved or recommended standards.[1,pg.44] ** The fact is that the number of morphologically normal sperm [meaning sperm with a normal shape] produced by the average man has dropped below the level of those of a hamster, which has testicles a fraction the size of a man's.[1,pg.44] ** In the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the percentage of infertile couples has risen from 14.4 in 1965 to 18.5 in 1995. Infertility is defined as failure to produce a child after a year of normal sex.[1,pg.44] ** There has been little published research comparing racial and ethnic sperm counts, particularly in Africa and many Third World countries. But the studies that we do have show low counts nearly everywhere: the latest count in Nigeria is 64 million per milliliter; in Pakistan, 79.5 million; in Germany, 78 million; in Hong Kong, 62 million.[1
Re: Oil and sperm
Silent Sperm describes the 50% loss in sperm count that has occurred in men worldwide during the past 40 years. Yeah, but who's counting? Tom Walker 604 255 4812
