IVF Could Become a Required Procedure for Human Reproduction

The recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that embryos should be considered human beings caused an uproar across the nation and a rush to protect in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a technique to assist in fertilization.  It is an expensive and time-consuming process, so practitioners usually produce a number of embryos and select the most promising ones for implantation.  This leaves leftover embryos.  If they are considered “persons,” what do you do with them?  This will get resolved in such a way as to allow IVF to continue to be available to those who need it.  It is too beneficial a procedure to be inhibited.  It is also a procedure that could become increasingly required in supporting fertility rates across the world.

In Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Intersex is Rising, Sperm Counts Are Falling, we discussed results of the ever-increasing level of poisons we are producing in our environments.  In particular, the concern was with endocrine-disrupting compounds and their effects on the intersex incidence and the global decrease in male sperm count.  Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are those that are sufficiently similar to human hormones that they can fool the body’s hormone receptors into responding at an inappropriate time or trigger a response altogether inappropriate.  Encountering such chemicals is particularly risky if the occurrence is in the fetal stage where growth and development depend on hormonal surges at the correct time and with the correct intensity.  Body function depends critically on proper hormonal function, making encounters with these disrupting chemicals dangerous.

Endocrine disruptors cannot be avoided.  They have become an integral part of our lifestyle, being produced by plastics, pharmaceuticals, herbicides, pesticides, and numerous other products used in our households.  As the production of EDCs has inexorably increased (and continues to increase), sperm count in males across the globe has been falling, along with the quality of the sperm being produced.  Consider these findings from the BBC article How pollution is causing a male fertility crisis.

“In 2022, Levine and his collaborators published a review of global trends in sperm count. It showed that sperm counts fell on average by 1.2% per year between 1973 to 2018, from 104 to 49 million/ml. From the year 2000, this rate of decline accelerated to more than 2.6% per year.”

“Seemingly small changes can have a powerful effect on these highly specialised cells, and especially, their ability to fertilise an egg. The crucial aspects for fertility are their ability to move efficiently (motility), their shape and size (morphology), and how many there are in a given quantity of semen (known as sperm count). They are the aspects that are examined when a man goes for a fertility check.”

“Sperm count, explains Levine, is closely linked to fertility chances. While a higher sperm count does not necessarily mean a higher probability of conception, below the 40 million/ml threshold the probability of conception drops off rapidly.”

At the current rate of decline we are only a few years from this 40 million/ml threshold, and we will accelerate down past it. 

Protect the IVF process and strive to make it cheaper and more efficient.  There may come a time when it will be needed if we wish to propagate the human population.

You can learn a little about a lot of things or you can learn a lot about a very few things. Guess which is the most fun.