OUR reproductive future has dominated the news this week, thanks to the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embyrology (ESHRE) conference in Copenhagen.
It started well, with speculation on Monday about treatments that could banish infertility. But by Tuesday teatime, it was all downhill.
Women will be sterile thanks to their lifestyle, and those who aren’t will be refusing beans on toast for fear that it might scupper their baby hopes. And men will be infertile. However, there was some comfort in Thursday’s pronouncement that the only way to ensure tip-top sperm is to ejaculate it daily. Really? The conference attracts top fertility experts, publicity seekers and hordes of press in about equal measure. It is an explosive mixture. The resulting headlines have been enough to make anyone fear that babies are beyond them.
Take the interesting finding by Professor Lynn Fraser that genistein, a phyto-estrogen found in soy beans but also in other legumes such as peas and baked beans, ruined sperm in Petri dishes. Suddenly women were being advised not to eat beans when trying to conceive. Pardon? Professor Fraser is a fine scientist, but extrapolating lab data to real life is always dangerous. And if soy’s a contraceptive, why are there so many Chinese? Fertility has it all. Moral outrage, tragedy, science- fiction futures and boffins. There is a front page in every other conference paper.
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The worry is that the conference is science by press release. There is little peer review, and rarely published papers to back up what is said, only what is in the press release. It makes for extreme distortion. But we want to believe it.
Every other person you meet is going through IVF, it seems, so we think the nation’s fertility is in freefall. But probably a third of those having infertility treatment are not infertile. Because of their age, they don’t have the time to wait to conceive naturally, as many might. Even those without problems mentally file each reported threat to fertility.
If fertility is really falling, it is primarily because we are embarking on babies later, are more sedentary (which has a big impact on sperm quality) and are fatter. If we went for frequent sex and babies at 25, and ignored the headlines, nine out of 10 people would have no problems.
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Vivienne Parry is the author of The Truth about Hormones (Atlantic, £9.99)