Dispatches from the Science Wars

Let us begin with a fact or, at any rate, a finding. Other matters could be adduced to support the line of reasoning I have in mind, but it is better to keep focused for now on the following: it has been found, by "science," that for about thirty to fifty years, sperm counts have been declining, in both numbers and motility, among men in industrialized countries. Recent studies from Paris indicate that the decrease amounts to about 2 percent per year during the last two decades. A 175-page report from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency presents the evidence, along with certain interpretations, to be discussed below. Other reports from Scotland and Belgium point in the same direction. These in turn support a 1992 finding by Elizabeth Carlsen, based on a historical analysis of sixty-two separate sperm count studies. The findings are correlated with others: a marked rise in testicular cancer among young men as well as congenital anomalies of the male reproductive organs; a rise in associated problems among women, especially breast cancer; and similar deterioration among wildlife, including panthers, alligators, birds, bats, turtles, and fish.1 There are a number of possible responses to this information. The most obvious would be to inquire as to the causes of these phenomena, their implications, and potential remedies. This would be shadowed by an elementary extrapolation: at the rate of a 2-percent decline a year-and there are reasons to believe that the rate will accelerate-the reproductive capacities of higher animals, at least in certain areas and perhaps across the globe, will at some point sink below a threshold of sustainability. In the meanwhile, an increasing number of beings are going to suffer in one way or another, and an increasing number of genetically damaged organisms are going to be launched into the ecosphere. Thus, if the processes to which these studies are calling attention continue, drastic conclusions for the future of complex organisms on earth are to be drawn. For it would appear that a kind of systematic poisoning is inexorably destroying the genetic legacy of a billion years of evolution. But let us not be too hasty. The preceding paragraph used conditional and subjunctive modes for more than conventional reasons. That the aforementioned extrapolation takes place is itself based on a number of assumptions, namely: