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Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

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Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#451

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No one argues that every women have a right to very high paying top status jobs, yet we try to structure society so that more women achieve that.

I'm not sure what you're implying and how you're relating this to my point, so I can't address it in relation to that unless you'd like to elaborate.

Society is structured in a way that marginalizes women (among others) and denies them opportunity, and feminists have fought to enfranchise women economically and politically for more than a hundred years. As this movement picks up steam, people who were privileged under this system (mostly men like myself) can perceive this as "losing" rights. But what we're actually observing is increased parity.

Let's say there are two objects moving parallel to each other, one moving faster than the other. Let's say we impart a force on the lagging object and it starts to catch up. If you're looking from the frame of reference of the leading object, than without anything else to compare to, you might look at this object catching up and perceive yourself to be slowing down. But we know this is an illusion, because we imparted no force to the leading object; it's moving at the same speed.

It's important to broaden one's perspective.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#452

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Yep, I can confirm this based on personal experience with a gynecologist telling my wife that at 35 the pregnancy is considered a "geriatric pregnancy" (apparently some docs now call it "AMA"...advanced maternal age). This shocked both of us, frankly. We were aware of what the actuarial tables will tell you regarding birth defect rates related to maternal age, but hearing the term geriatric in your mid-thirties is qu…

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You can basically draw a straight line for female fertility declining between 90% at 31 and 5% at 40. https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-d...

Calling the second half of that geriatric is completely appropriate because you’re dealing with significant age related declines.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#453
post #156

My wife and I have a beautiful daughter about to turn 2. But she wouldn't have existed if it weren't for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Had to stab her stomach with needles for a while to make hormones to mass produce eggs and then they took my sperm to put into her eggs and see which ones took. Five viable pairings happened. Three were put into her and out came the one kid. Other two are in cryo for future use, and h…

We did IVF and have a wonderful little boy. Would do it again to have our kid, but my goodness, the expense was overwhelming. We had to go into a non-trivial amount of debt to do IVF and I don’t know how anyone makes it work (short of what we did) we tried for 8 years to conceive naturally. Tangentially, we spent some time looking at adoption and the total cost going through an agency I think would’ve been about the…

Adoption is crazy expensive, and a super hard process compared to, you know, just popping one out yourself.

I sort of understand why, but I still think it’s a bit counterproductive.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#454

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> I get reliably downvoted for suggesting this, but we need vastly better labelling across the board These companies shouldn't be able to use these ingredients in the first place, labels or not. It's not our job to read lists of 30+ ingredients and their wikipedia entries to know if we're at risk or not

This is of course an ideal, but in our brutal reality corporations owe no moral obligation to the society they are profiting from. They are only driven by capital and brand propagation. Sometimes a moral approach is taken as a compromise, to continue operating in peace, etc. We are left with defending ourselves as best as possible and sometimes the onslaught is too much, as indicated by multitudes of lawsuits and ent…

That’s why regulation exists.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#455

So this trend has been going on for a while now, I looked a bit into it about 5 years ago here's what I found: - Tons of popular and legal products/chemicals are "endocrine disruptors"[1] (fancy term for mess with hormones). - The FDA/EPA doesn't deny that, they don't themselves even really require tests for long-term health effects in humans (too difficult). Instead they give animals a 1000x+ dose and look for immed…

Perhaps we need to invest in more testing, and then work on a whitelist instead of blacklist approach.

>Can we get more QA spending?

You already lost.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#456
post #49

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Do you intend to become elderly? Perhaps not so great news in 50 years when you are looking for a nursing home.

This comments feels a little ambiguous, and driving replies for two separate issues. At a societal level, is an imbalanced population pyramid a problem? Yes, and many countries are solving this by opening up immigration options. Should an individual opting not to have children be expected to have negative consequences in old age? IMHO, no.

> Should an individual opting not to have children be expected to have negative consequences in old age? IMHO, no.

The question is then who will care for these people when they get old? Other people's children? So other people should have children, put the effort to raise and educate them for your benefit? This is a very egotistic view.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#457

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Pornhub causing the fall of civilization and not nuclear proliferation or global warming? That's a new one.

You clearly don't hang out with enough catholics & evangelicals. In all seriousness this is a mainstream-ish opinion in some religious circles.

And yet: the catholics and evangelicals seem to be having no trouble conceiving.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#458

> Swan also recommends reducing exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals by being a savvy consumer Most hygiene products get away with listing diethyl phthalate as 'Parfum'. What we need is not savvy consumers what we need is regulators to get serious.

Why do people even buy "most hygiene products"? They're all bullshit, bad-smelling chemical industry effluent. A gallon of concentrated Just Plain Old Soap® retails for $40 and stands dilutions 10-to-1, is enough for all personal and household uses for an entire family for years.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#459

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This has been my exact experience too. Wife and I...no trouble conceiving. Friends in late 20's to early 30's have had a lot of trouble conceiving, i.e. they needed to do IVF. Not sure what's going on with that, and this is purely anecdotal, but I've been hearing people having troubles having kids a lot it seems.

Are you guys really bragging about your fecund sperms on HN? What’s your secret? Is it the microdosing?

I wonder if it's because this is probably the only place they feel they can get away with bragging, but have been "proud" of their "accomplishment" for some time now.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#460

> “Levels of testosterone have been reported to be declining during the same period of time that the sperm production rates were measured in this meta-analysis.” Testosterone is the new canine tooth.

This is mostly a joke, but for a few friends that have had trouble, I've recommended getting into squats and deadlifts (weightlifting more generally).
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