The Rise and Fall of the American Sperm Count

Believers in the quest to make America great again should consider where there’s evidence things are going down the tubes. There’s hardly a more dismal example than the national decline in sperm production. Last week, scientists published a study confirming that sperm counts are half what they were in the early 1970s -- and not just in America, but in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, too. The more alarmist accounts warned that the human race is teetering on the brink of extinction.

The good news is that our extinction is probably about as imminent as that of cockroaches. But the bad news is that something disturbing is going on. Some scientists worry that the ubiquitous hormone-disrupting chemicals used in plastics, cosmetics and food processing could affect human reproductive health. In doses comparable to typical human exposures, some of these so-called endocrine disruptors will cause a host of problems in lab rats, including lowered sperm counts.