Women are unfairly paying the price for men's
falling fertility, scientists have warned.
Mens sperm counts have reduced by more than 50 per
cent worldwide since the 1970s with chemicals in the environment, pollution, steroids,
protein shakes, and even tight underwear all blamed for the downturn.
But a widely used form of IVF which involves
injecting a sperm directly into an egg, before implanting it into the mother,
is now being used regularly to ‘bypass’ male infertility.
Scientists warned that the treatment infringes ‘the
basic human rights and dignity of women’ because they are forced to undergo
invasive procedures to harvest their eggs and then implant an embryo, even
though they themselves are not infertile.
Since its introduction in 1992, use of the ICSI
(intracytoplasmic sperm injection)has soared and in 2014 it accounted for more
than half of all assisted fertility treatments in the UK.
Speaking at a news briefing in London he said:
"The treatments, and they're quite invasive, are to the female partner.
"So the female is having to bear the burden of
the male's sub-fertility."
Women suffer in
'silent dignity' claim the authors
In a new article in the journal Human Reproduction,
Prof Sharpe added: “In a world in which we claim to be addressing the
inequalities between men and women, this is a stand-out example of the
infringement of basic human rights and dignity.
"Maybe women undergoing treatment during ICSI
can begin to apply pressure at the point of delivery of (their) treatment,
asking 'why can't you treat him rather than me?"'
Prof Sharpe also warned that there was still no
good term data on the long-term health impact of ICSI on the children it
produced. Reports have shown that sperm counts of young men conceived through
the treatment are half of those conceived naturally.
Prof Sharpe added: "We still don't know what
causes most cases of male infertility and so of course we don't have the tools
to correct it, because we don't understand it.
"The flip side of that coin is that we can't
induce infertility for contraceptive purposes. We haven't developed a new
effective acceptable (male) contraceptive since the condom."
Apart from its dependency on high levels of
testosterone, the mechanism of sperm production remained a "big black
box", said Prof Sharpe.
"We should know how that works," he said.
"We still don't."
Similarly, the reason for falling sperm counts,
which had dropped by 50 per cent in the UK between 1973 and 2011, largely
remained a mystery.
The scientists called for a "detailed road
map" for male infertility research aimed at highlighting key unanswered
questions and delivering necessary funding.
