(OPINION) Michael Snyder – Even if we weren’t facing an apocalyptic future of our own making, humanity would still be doomed due to the nightmarish reproductive crisis that we are now facing. Just about every measure of human fertility that you can measure is dropping precipitously, and this is particularly true in the western world.
As a result, we have vast numbers of young adults that are either infertile or that deeply struggle with fertility issues, and the number of babies born with birth defects has been soaring. It gets worse with each passing year, and the future for humanity is exceedingly bleak unless we find a way to turn things around.
Dr. Shanna Swan has been closely studying these issues for decades, and she is now warning that the “current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival”… Sperm counts in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent since the 1970s. At the same time, men’s problems with conceiving are going up: Erectile dysfunction is increasing and testosterone levels are declining by 1 percent each year.
“The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” warns Mount Sinai fertility scientist Dr. Shanna Swan in her book, “Count Down” (Scribner), out Tuesday. “It’s a global existential crisis.” Sadly, she is not exaggerating one bit. There is simply no way that the human race will be able to avoid a dramatic population decline if these trends continue.
Previously, Dr. Swan made headlines when she warned that sperm counts dropped by a staggering 59 percent between 1973 and 2011… In 2017, she sounded the alarm with a meta-analysis of 40,000 men that showed that sperm count fell a whopping 59 percent between 1973 and 2011.
We are already seeing the effects. Worldwide fertility has dropped by 50 percent between 1960 and 2015. The United States has a total birth rate that is 16 percent below what it needs to replace itself. Though there are obvious factors at play (couples are conceiving later and opting to have smaller families), Swan argues that the issues run deeper than personal choice.
What would our planet look like if worldwide fertility plunged by another 50 percent? Global population growth has already come to a standstill in most areas, and there are some countries that are already starting to experience significant declines. Men, in particular, are becoming infertile at a frightening rate.
According to Swan, sperm counts have gotten extremely low… Today the average male is nearing that number at 47.1 million sperm per milliliter. Compare him to his father, who had an average of 99 million sperm per milliliter, and it’s clear that this is a deeply worrying trend. READ MORE
