Study Sees Decline in Male Fertility; Harvard Predicts Full Speed Ahead

Men: they ain't what they used to be.

That's the word from a Florida chemist, who has found what he calls a sharp decline in male fertility.

Ralph Dougherty, professor of chemistry at Florida State University, told the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. that his experiments showed 23 per cent of 132 college student volunteers were functionally sterile.

The Florida men had a median sperm density of 60 million per milliliter, compared to a median 100 million for men in a 1929 study.

Harvard students surveyed today greeted the findings with skepticism, and men and women alike maintained an almost chauvinistic respect for the parental potential of the American man.

Good News for UHS

Common explanations offered by arm chair geneticists included "watching too much television," "studying too hard," and "smoking too much dope." But Dougherty said the presence of toxic chemicals in the environment--not in rolling paper--was part of the reason for the decline.

Cynthia Ankeney '80 expressed a common sentiment. "If anyone wants to, they can still take care of business," she said.

Some, like Ronald Chervin '83, worried that the problem might be worse in the Northeast. "I would worry if it was more here than somewhere else--then I would have gone to Princeton," he said. Dougherty, however, said his study did not compare regions of the country.

Several women and men said the decline was just fine with them, that lower fertility would lower the possibility of unwanted pregnancies. One Wigglesworth freshman woman said, "The lower the better. It doesn't mean that men's libido is down. It's just less chance of trouble."

One freshman relied on school spirit to interpret the findings, saying, "Maybe it's down at Yale but not among Harvard men." Suddenly uncertain, however, he said, "Tell some Radcliffe women that, will you."

But Frank Kim '83 questioned the survey. "How did that guy get all the samples," he asked, adding, "Somebody ought to investigate him."