I refuse to age gracefully. That is to say, I refuse to age at all, other than for accounting purposes and to get discounts, which seem to kick in at movie theaters and hotels at 62—six years away. This applies to my sperm as well. I fully intend to maintain excellent spermatic health into my nineties, at least. It’s not just that my hard-wired imperative to perpetuate my genes is driving me to keep my options open; I’m not claiming my genes are anything special. It’s more the principle of the thing. Allowing any part of my body to fade just because I don’t strictly need it anymore is a slippery slope.
Admittedly, my motivation may smack of vanity, but in the case of sperm we all have good reason for concern. While the evidence is a bit inconsistent, some medical researchers insist that human sperm are going downhill and have been doing so for at least a century. Men appear to be making less sperm on average, several studies report, and what is made tends to be subfertile, which the World Health Organization describes as sperm that swim poorly, take on a funny shape, fail to reach concentrations higher than 15 million per milliliter, or otherwise struggle to impregnate an egg.
“We’re producing pretty poor sperm compared with those of primates and other mammals,” says Gary Cherr, a reproductive toxicologist at the University of California, Davis. “Even in the most fertile men, there are quality issues.” A recent European report found that one in five young men has underachieving sperm. That is probably one reason why in vitro fertilization (IVF) is becoming increasingly common, with 4 million humans worldwide already owing their existence to the procedure.
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