MSNBC: Pass it on: Sons of infertile men may be next

Submitted by anthony on Wed, 2008-09-17 23:47

Article here. Excerpt:

'As puberty kicks in, scientists believe they may start to see sons who’ve inherited the problems of their fathers, an issue that many couples may not have considered in their quest to have children.

“This is the generation we’ve created,” said Dr. Tommaso Falcone, who chairs the obstetrics and gynecology department at the Cleveland Clinic and directs the Reproductive Endocrinology Research Laboratory. “We may have tens of thousands of boys born with infertility.”

Genetic fallout for ICSI sons is still a largely unexplored issue in the field of infertility, which affects an estimated one in eight couples in the United States, or about 7.3 million people, according to RESOLVE, a national infertility group. Up to 40 percent of cases are attributed to problems with the man, including damaged sperm, low sperm or no sperm at all.'

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Comments

Remember from high school biology? The infertile men will have fewer sons so the bad trait will mostly be removed from the gene pool. If that doesn't happen then there's some other factor at work such as the evironment causing the problem.

It seems to me this is simply news filler, since common sense indicates that there should have already been established an equilibrium level of infertility. Even though there are often fluctuations in the commonality of a given genetic mutation, before the problem self-corrects. Maybe we're at the high end of a "cycle".
-ax

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Submitted by axolotl on Thu, 2008-09-18 04:09

I think the issue at hand is more that men with damaged or low sperm counts are able to have biological children of their own because of modern medicine, and as such the next generation will have a higher level of those issues. But as you suggest, removing medicine from it would self-correct, so I don't see the issue.

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Submitted by ItsDan on Thu, 2008-09-18 14:47

Male infertility is largely an environmental issue, closely tied to pharmaceuticals polluting our water supply. A big contributor is flushed-down-the-toilet birth control pills and other female 'hormonal' remedies.

If it were women showing the shocking losses in fertility that men are suffering, it would be a capital-C national crisis, with front-page above-the-fold headlines and hastily assembled government research and intervention teams.

But it's just men, so ... yawn...

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Submitted by Ragtime on Thu, 2008-09-18 16:45

That's interesting, ItsDan. Maybe I should have read the article!
-ax

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Submitted by axolotl on Thu, 2008-09-18 21:13