The Guardian

Making babies is beginning to look as difficult for men as it always has been for women

The sperm count of men in the west has halved in 40 years. Changing lifestyles won’t help. The problem is an environmental one
Woody Allen and Robert Walden in Allen’s 1972 film Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex … Photograph: Rollins-Joffe/Rex/Shutterstock

Men. You had one job. And now look what’s happened! The sperm count of western men has . It is likely to decline further. This is a wake-up call. Human extinction beckons. Twitter, in its full nihilistic embrace, has welcomed this news as good. It is kind of funny. Sperm always is somehow, especially if your job description is harridan, as mine is. For although there are millions of the damn squirmers in every ejaculation, you only ever need the one, the tenacious one that

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