The children of men

Speaking of synergy:

There are X amount of chemicals the government regulates and has set standards for, Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) or parts per volume, out of the X+bazillion chemicals created today. The MCLs are numbers derived from experimentation and environmental /health studies where the chemical is isolated as a variable. So chemical A will have a MCL of X1 and chemical B will have a MCL of X2. Individually, each chemical should pose little health risk over a lifetime of exposure at its particular MCL. However, there is little/no regulation concerning the presence of both A and B, but at concentrations less than X1 and X2 respectively.

This is why the recent* study finding multiple chemicals/drugs/hormones in municipal water supplies is very should have you worried.

*recent because there was significant media coverage, many people from various professions dealing with water quality, regulation, conservation have known this for years

CCD in honeybees appears to be, for now, a combination of stressors and chemical inputs. Too much is going on in that little creature for her system to handle and so she is dying off. The few colonies I've kept never had those problems, mostly mismanagement on my part--or is it negligent husbanding?

"There is evidence that some chemicals work on some people synergistically." - Rod

Sounds a bit kin, wot, to the discussion arising from the ongoing discovery of polyphenols, flavonoids, &c., in food, and given megaphone amplification by Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food: the idea that whole foods contain within themselves complex and dynamic chemical ecologies among compounds we still understand but dimly, and which are obscured by the dissecting ideology of "nutritionism", which throughout the futurist C20 sought the relentless isolation and synthesis in the lab of individual compounds divorced from their interactive habitat - an analog, within nature's apothecary, of factory farming.

It can't be all that bad, at least not for everyone. I'm 44 years old. My stress levels are generally (according to my doctor) murderous, and I'm not one of the radical-back-to-the-land-in-Idaho sorts one reads about. About the only concession I make to the situation is an avoidance of processed foods. I drink Diet Coke like a fish, and I'm something of a coffee expert from drinking so much of it.

My fifth child just celebrated his 2nd birthday last month. Go figure.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Last time I looked in to this, some time in the 90s, the only males on the planet not showing a decline in sperm count were the Finns. Anyone know if that is still the case?

In my business, we've worried about the cumulative impact of ag chemicals and endocrine disruptors for decades. When activists started objecting to recombinant growth hormone being injected in cows to increase milk production, we learned that dairy cows are routinely treated with up to 60 different meds, most of which have never been approved for such use.

Ag chemicals are routinely found in Midwesten municipal water supplies during the growing season. Even if you have an RO system for drinking water, you still bathe in the stuff. The chemicals can be absorbed through the skin.

All that said, Our Stolen Future has been known to play a bit (loose and hysterical) with the facts.

Well, I've had three babies in four and a half years. My husband is an avid cyclist; supposedly the constant wearing of spandex shorts and pressure from the bike seat cause low sperm count but that didn't seem to be a problem. We never had to "try" to conceive our babies; pretty much as soon as I weaned one, another one came along!

Then again, I come from good breeding stock. My grandmother had nine children; one of my great-great-great grandmothers bore an astonishing twenty-one children during a life spent moving about the frontier, hacking through the wilderness in covered wagons, fending off Indians and living in log cabins.

An added dimension for contention:
For every Y chromosome there are 3 Xs; the woman is the prototype human, there will always be more Xs than Ys. The egg cell is the largest in the body. Over 'geologic time' the sperm cell has degenerated to a 'shell' of its former self. It is still on that course.
Parthenogenesis happens in many vertebrates and in many lower orders. It has also has been recordered in late human studies. In the 1956 "Lancent" the British Medical Association in a 6 months study veried 19 such cases.
We all start with the same 'flesh material' but it is the Y that determens the sex. At one point in time we could be thought of as androgynous or hermaphroditic just as the ancients once thought.
Two adnormalities: Dermoid Cyst, malformed embryonic growths,i.e. fully formed extra human parts found in the male or female child or adult. These would be teeth, backbones, hair and other organs. The second adnormal effect would be Epoöphon or Parovarium. These are seccret or left over sperm producing cells in the female body that somehow become activated, i.e. "Gray's Anatomy".
Sincerely, J R Dittbrenner

That makes the social Darwinism mistake (with at least Mennonites) that a belief system is genetic.

They don't select for high fertility, that's one of the things you can't select for, since the only way to know if someone is fertile, or not fertile, is to actually try to breed.

In other words.. Jane would breed a lot, Joan would only breed a little... Nobody can tell by LOOKING at them. The 'selection' for mating can only be based on fertility indicators like health and youth, and those don't indicate level of fertility (nor are they especially accurate.. very healthy, pretty, young people can be infertile, and somehow people in famine and plague ridden lands still somehow manage to breed).

So, by the time you KNOW one breeds like a rabbit and another doesn't, the mating selection has been made.

Since non-breeders don't, well, BREED, they don't engage in what the new gene pool will be like, except by their absence.

Finally, of course, none of this has a thing to do with MALE fertility levels anyway. They were traditionally 'chosen' (to the extent women could choose) for health and ability and willingness to provide for offspring.

On the other hand, if a low breeder (as opposed to NON-breeding) leads to offspring that are more desirable mating prospects than high breeder offspring, then LOW (though not NON) might become more the norm.

However, it is unlikely the current issues have anything to do with natural selection, and more to do with environmental factors like contamination of the watershed, exposure to chemicals, and the high use of, as noted, plastics which mimic estrogen.

Which actually would explain three whole different trends. High levels of certain cancers, female puberty starting at a younger age, and male infertility.

I read a article once(can't remember where) that main point was that all the artificial hormones humans ingest, i.e. birth control pills, menopause meds etc. go into our bodies, we urinate them out and they in turn go into our treatments plants and back into the lakes. With the large number of women on birth control, I have heard that fish populations are falling, and we eventually drink the water again.

The 'social darwinism' is the idea that 'if Mennonites' (a social group, not a genetic one) breed more, then Mennonite'ism will be transmitted to the next generation.

And no, the 'low sperm count men' have no need to 'keep up'. And will not 'vanish' unless they don't reach replacement rate.

Unless the 'high sperm count' men are, say, killing them off.

There's regular sized deer, there's 'Key Deer'. The key deer population is smaller. However, somehow, there's still BOTH in the world.

This is, of course, assuming even that the low sperm count is genetic at all. If it is environmental, than it is no more to be inherited than if one were to start cutting off a particular group's little finger.

Karen Brown, The 'social darwinism' is the idea that 'if Mennonites' (a social group, not a genetic one) breed more

Huh? It is simply an objective fact that Mennonites in America breed more than average, just like it's an objective fact that Mormons breed more than average. You can look it up. When you do, welcome to reality.

Next you are going to claim that the sun rising in the east is "social Darwinism."

And that is what distinguishes between Darwin's actual theory, and what you are proposing.

If the Mennonites breed more, there may be more Mennonites the next generation. Who cares? There's more HUMANS the next generation. Assuming that 'more' is the only gauge of species success and survival.

If that is the case, as noted before, cockroaches are more successful than humans, and virii are more successful than ANYONE.

All prey are more successful than predators, and scavengers and parasites are the most successful. We can just turn that food chain upside down.

Assuming that 'more' is always 'better'.

It seems to me that low fertility rates are highest in highly developed nations. East Indians certainly don't seem to have a problem, except for the weathly few who live a more Western lifestyle. I know plenty of healthy couples who cannot get pregnant.

MDavid, only if the reason for 'low sperm count' is genetic. Otherwise, that guy just bred at a lower rate than normal, and that is all it means.

Unless it is a trait that can be PASSED ON, it has as much bearing on the next generation as, again, cutting off someone's pinky finger.

AND only if they don't breed at replacement rate, which is just two kids.

Neither of which is the slightest bit proven. Last I checked, the low sperm count issue seems to be more environmental than genetic.

Therefore, again, it has no bearing on future generations.

Not breeding alot, being Mennonite, having a low sperm count, none of them are inherited traits. Therefore, they are not going to either overwhelm, or die out.

Again, assuming that breeding a lot is assurance that a particular group within a species won't die out.

If the 'green deer' breed to the point they outrun their food supply,they can very well end up dying out faster than a much lower breeding group.

Where does this idea that having bunches of offspring is always a positive for species survival?

Roaches have offspring in the millions. An elephant might have three in their entire long life.

There's still roaches.. and there's still elephants.

Chris Vaughan,
I've also read about hormones in the water. Some male fish (trout, I think) are 'girly-men'. And then men drink the water.
What I've seen, anecdotally, is people contracepting during their fertile years, and then failing to conceive when they're older and have been taking the pill for 15 years. Duh. Those subcultures everyone's arguing about (Nigerians, Mormons, Mennonites) aren't contracepting. I bet Catholics who conform to Church teaching on contraceptive, also are more fertile.

I'm not entirely clear on these arguments you're making, folks, but I'm pretty sure fertility, and infertility, have a tendency to be passed along, or not passed along, to offspring, or a lack of offspring. However, medical advances have enabled infertile couples to have more children than Darwinism would allow. Therefore, infertility is now able to be an inherited trait for more of the population. Yes, limit your intake FD&C Yellow #5 or whatever, but don't wig out over it. Women today survive multiple c-sections so we don't die in childbirth, and bear more children who have problems with childbirth, ya know? Or, y'all do. I had all eight no problem, so don't fear for the future. My superior genes will win out in the end! (They're all good-looking and smart, as well as healthy and pro-life, so as long as civilization retains the ability to make glasses, it's a rosy outlook for us.)