Male infertility is having a moment. A
Gen Z–founded Silicon Valley start-up, The New York Times recently reported, wants to monetize “sperm
racing”; the internet is full of advice on “spermmaxxing”; and last month Health and Human
Services Secretary RFK Jr. called the
male fertility decline an “existential crisis,” claiming that in the 1970s, men
had “twice the sperm count our teenage boys do today.” Last year he also asserted
that “a teenager today has less testosterone than a 68-year-old man.”
Unsurprisingly, the HHS secretary’s
facts were off: The study he relied on doesn’t specifically mention teenage boys, about whom there is not enough data to support such a claim; the
threat is not an “existential” one; and the point
about 68-year-old men is just made up (fertility absolutely does decline with
age, even if our gerontocracy doesn’t want to believe it).
Still, he’s correct on the big picture: Some indicators suggest male fertility is declining. Sperm counts
and sperm concentration declined worldwide by more than half
between 1973 and 2018, according to one major data
analysis. Many other studies show similar trends, although there are dissenting
findings, and the issue remains somewhat controversial.
One in 20 men face reduced fertility—hardly a reason to put humans on the endangered species list, but a
legitimate public health concern and an understandable source of anxiety for
those hoping to start families.
The issue has been preoccupying the right-wing manosphere for years, part of a collage of anxieties about masculinity that have fueled
the rise of Trump. Sadly, Trump’s actual policies are poised to make the
problem of male fertility decline much worse.
While researchers may not know exactly
what’s behind the sperm count decline, they have identified some significant
factors. A large
body of research
shows that water, air, and soil pollution is a huge factor in the drop in male
fertility. Among pollutants, several of the biggest culprits are heavy metals,
pesticides, dioxins, and phthalates. Towards the end of his term, President Biden
imposed new rules on coal-fired power plants, limiting their freedom to dump arsenic,
selenium, and mercury into the groundwater. Those heavy metals affect male sperm quality by disrupting endocrine functions and
altering hormone levels. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to roll
back that rule.
Not content to allow polluters to
poison the water, the Trump administration, with Congress’s help, shredded much of the Clean Air Act last year, significantly
weakening dioxin regulation. Dioxins, too, disrupt
the endocrine system, with devastating impact on spermatogenesis—the development of sperm cells into sperm capable of
fertilizing an egg.
Given
the link between air pollution and male infertility, it is not surprising that
wildfires, which have a horrendous impact on air quality, directly affect male reproductive
health. Researchers at the University of Washington who studied male sperm
counts in the wildfire-ridden years from 2018 to 2022, found that sperm count
and quality declined consistently during every major wildfire year. Trump’s EPA
has specifically rejected climate as a legitimate reason for regulating air
pollution. That means that numerous Biden-era regulations intended to ease
climate change have been rolled back, a policy trend almost certain to make the
climate crisis much worse, and to make climate disasters like wildfires even
more frequent. In addition, Trump’s anti-immigration,
anti-DEI policies—burdensome bureaucratic paperwork
requirements forcing agencies to show that they are complying with the
administration’s bans on diversity hiring and immigration restrictions—are
weakening our ability as a society to fight and prevent such fires, by
complicating and delaying the grants localities receive for that purpose. His cuts to
the U.S. Forest Service—thousands lost their jobs in the DOGE rampage, and
another bloodbath is underway with a “restructuring” this year closing many
regional offices and research facilities—are likely to make matters even worse.
Then there is the administration’s
lenient stance on pesticides, which 21 different studies over the last
20 years have shown reduce
the sperm quality of male mice and rats. The Trump administration has angered
even its MAHA base through its indulgent attitude
toward pesticide manufacturers—particularly after it sided with Bayer, the maker of Roundup, in a Supreme Court case. Glyphosate, the chemical in Roundup, is associated with reduced
sperm motility, among many other health problems.
“Forever chemicals,” so called because
they are pollutants that persist in the environment and in our bodies for an
alarmingly long time, also present a well-documented threat to sperm. PFAS, the most common type of these—found
in drinking water, food, firefighting gear, and soccer fields, to name a few
sources—disrupt hormones and endocrine functions and harm sperm quality,
viability, and also ability to swim, which is called “motility.” Biden
established the first-ever nationwide limits on PFAS in drinking water, a rule
that the Trump EPA now wants to roll back.
Then there are phthalates, plasticizers,
and so-called “everywhere chemicals,” because they are everywhere in our
households and daily lives. Researchers in the U.K. found that exposure to phthalates slowed
sperm motility and caused the resulting DNA to fragment, an effect that
worsened with each additional dose. The Trump administration did study the
problem and announce a plan to regulate workplace exposure to phthalates—good—but
troublingly, in a move widely criticized by scientists and public health
advocates, announced that it wouldn’t regulate phthalates in
household or other consumer goods.
What’s curious about this apparent
contradiction between stated concern and policy is that the pollution threat is
no secret on the right. Kennedy and other MAGA-friendly influencers do correctly
blame pesticides, endocrine disrupters, what RFK Jr. calls “the toxic soup”
surrounding us all. But they talk about it
without acknowledging how Trump’s pro-polluter policies are exacerbating the
situation.
Instead, RFK Jr. and others in the
manosphere concerned about male fertility want to let the government off the
hook, turning men’s fertility into an individual problem. Some offer wacky remedies, like putting your testicles in
ice water or refraining from ejaculating (as men did
in Victorian times and seem to be trying again. That won’t work. There is no
advantage in storing it up for later). Other solutions to masculinity concerns
peddled in the manosphere are manifestly ill advised for those concerned about
fertility, like taking testosterone, which has
been shown to harm sperm.
RFK and others also emphasize that
leading a healthy lifestyle helps your fertility: good nutrition, exercising,
reducing alcohol and nicotine use, and maintaining a healthy weight. That’s
true! But such advice doesn’t address the significant environmental harms men
are suffering at the population level—only cracking down on polluters can do
that.
Democrats wring their hands about young
male voters, who swung toward Trump in the last presidential election. But Democratic
politicians rarely talk about fertility concerns, which is odd because their
record on regulating the pollution that most affects male fertility is much
better than Trump’s, to the point that they could directly point to Biden’s
policies as a contrast. Perhaps they don’t want to come off as cringe, as
Democrats so often do when trying to communicate with either young people or
men. But by not talking about it, Democrats risk ceding the anxieties
associated with the issue to far-right Republicans, the very group guaranteed
to make it worse.
