Have you seen the film Children of Men?
In it, the world is reeling from war, depression and civilisation collapse due to one reason:
Human infertility.
Set in 2027, the human race has experienced total human infertility for 18 years. Not a single new child born for close to two decades.
Sounds like a great film right? But too far-fetched for reality? Well, it may be more realistic than we realise.
Research by Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist found sperm counts in the west had plummeted by 59% between 1973 and 2011.
She states her current projections predict sperm counts will reach zero by 2045. Just 24 years away!
Approximately half the world's countries have fertility rates below 2.1 births, which is the population replacement level. This fell from a high of 5.04 births per woman in 1964.
One reason fewer children are being born is the remarkable progress in the education of women worldwide. Educated women tend to have fewer children.
But the bigger issue is the decline in sperm counts. If Swan is right, this is an existential threat to humanity.
What's the cause?
"Everywhere chemicals" found in plastics, cosmetics and pesticides according to Swan. These chemicals combined with unhealthy lifestyle practices wreak havoc with our bodies, disrupting hormonal balance.
Could we really see a situation where sperm counts reach zero? It sounds fanciful, too outlandish to be true, but it's possible.
More research is needed into the impact of harmful chemicals such as phthalates and bisphenol-A, but it wouldn't hard to avoid plastic and chemicals as much as possible.
The good news is we have the ingenuity and the resources to turn things around. But if we don't act, men could be fitting blanks in the not too distant future.
Dear Mr. Stevenson, You are an excellent writer; this is an important article. I am a retired surgical pathologist following the endocrinological literature on hormonal disrupters. The endocrinologists with the most susceptible children - boys - have very unique insight and solutions. I would like to take a contrarian view. Sperm counts are only falling in the West. Add women-education-induced subreplacement R rate in the West - voila, a wonderful subreplacement R rate. Each Westerner (and perhaps Chinese) born adds to global warming to a larger degree than other cultures. . There are unfortunately large portions of the planet where R rates are high. The R rate is an indicator of how close we are to solving the big kahuna - climate change. Have no doubt, potentially irreversible climate change is occurring in the here and now. We need a radical transformation of developed and partially developed economies that drive climate change. Then we need, as a wise (???????) planet to educate women in all parts of the world where they are either denied education or cannot access it. This will lead to a global subreplacement R rate and perhaps save the planet from daily highs of 125 degrees F or hotter. If you think the current migration "crisis" is a crisis, watch the massive equatorial out-migration to the north and the south to escape unliveable daily temperatures. It will lead to the apocalyptic calamities you describe. Anyway, that's my story and I am sticking to it, lol! Kindly, Peter H. Dohan, MD, Portland ME peterdohan1@gmail.com