Fragile Fertility

There has been an alarming decrease in the average sperm count of men worldwide over the last few decades. As this infographic shows, research has revealed a 51 percent fall between 1973 and 2018 - from 101 million sperm per milliliter of sperm to just 49 million. Commenting on the decline, lead author of the study, Hagai Levine, said "I think this is another signal that something is wrong with the globe and that we need to do something about it" adding: "I think it’s a crisis, that we better tackle now, before it may reach a tipping point which may not be reversible”.

Fertility research has in the past been criticized for not taking into account the potentially biased sampling methods of earlier studies, citing also the variable of changing laboratory methods. The researchers in this case though say that such issues have been taken into account - only considering samples where the same count method was used, were of an acceptable size and did not include men known to have fertility problems.