One of the questions I have often asked myself is whether I want to be right – or to be effective in driving change? Too often, things that I was talking about as risks decades back now prove to be emergent realities – like the story covered today in The Observer.
“it’s official: men’s sperm count is falling rapidly. Now scientists must tell us why.” That’s how the paper headlines Robin McKie’s article. And, sadly, this is an area I covered extensively way back in 1985 in my book for Viking/Penguin/Pelican, The Poisoned Womb: Human Reproduction in a Polluted World.
That was the book that poet Ted Hughes sent to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister – and then wrote a poem about in his role as Poet Laureate. I could call that impact, but here we are with evidence that sperm counts in men in the West have more than halved in the past 40 years – and are continuing to fall at around 1.5% a year.
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