My friend Dawn and her husband experienced secondary infertility. They had no trouble getting pregnant the first time. But when it came to having a second, they simply could not conceive.
Then there’s a relative I’ll call George. George had a baby in his mid twenties with his first wife. That relationship didn’t last long. By the time George finally found the love of his life—a woman who really wanted to start a family—the doctor told him he was shooting blanks.
Even though some people can just look in the direction of the bedroom and get pregnant, it’s likely you know someone who is childless not by choice.
Dramatic declines in human fertility
By any measurement, there have been dramatic declines in fertility rates, in the United States and most other countries in the world.
In fact, according to research published in The Lancet just last month, by 2100 nearly every country on the planet (more than 97%) will have fertility rates below the necessary threshold to sustain human population size over time.
What in the heckety heck is happening?
It’s true that many young people are choosing to be childless.
The economy in Italy is so weak that many Italian couples, despite their love of children, feel they can’t afford to bring children into this world.
At least a quarter of Japanese adults in their 20s and 30s have never engaged in sexual intercourse, according to a detailed analysis of national survey data. Although the Japanese government is pushing hard to incentivize young people to have babies, Japanese population rates are plummeting.
In other countries young people don’t want kids because they’re worried about the environment. In addition, diseases of despair are climbing steadily and a depressed or addicted person may not be someone who has the energy to find a mate and procreate.
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals affect fertility
But there’s another huge reason for the global decline in fertility among humans: exposure to environmental toxins that are so disruptive to human health that young people, theoretically at the height of their fertility, simply cannot conceive.
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals are chemicals that mimic, block, or interfere with the body’s natural hormone production. Although some, like plasticizers are ubiquitous and very difficult to avoid, these chemicals can cause a wide array of sometimes devastating health issues.
Now a new study, published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, finds that environmental exposure to glyphosate, the main ingredient in Round-up and other glyphosate-based herbicides, may be contributing to male infertility.
Infertile men in France
This study analyzed the semen content of 128 infertile men in France. The scientists found that the glyphosate content in male sperm was four times higher than the glyphosate content in the study participants’ blood.
The study authors, a team of seven French scientists who specialize in fertility, toxicology, and pharmacology, concluded that their results indicate that glyphosate has a negative impact on human reproductive health and could also potentially disrupt the reproductive health of glyphosate-exposed men’s progeny.
It is their contention that the global decline in the quality of male sperm that has been reported in at least five large epidemiological studies has been largely due to environmental exposure to pesticides, herbicides, and other endocrine disruptors.
While glyphosate manufacturers maintain that their product is safe, this new research adds to a growing body of scientific evidence that shows otherwise.
Glyphosate is neurotoxic
“Although there are important discrepancies between the analyzed findings, it is unequivocal that exposure to glyphosate produces important alterations in the structure and function of the nervous system of humans, rodents, fish, and invertebrates,” explains a team of Spanish scientists in a 2024 review of glyphosate’s toxic effects.
Glyphosate hurts pregnant women’s progeny
In another study, published in 2022, scientists tested the urine of pregnant women for glyphosate and its adjuvant, AMPA. Unfortunately, over 90 percent of pregnant participants tested positive. What’s more, the more glyphosate detected in the pregnant women, the more problems found in the babies’ genitals— problems that were also associated with later infertility.
“Very disturbing”
“Smokers had higher levels than nonsmokers,” my colleague and friend, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, wrote in an email about the study.
Seneff is the author of the award-winning book, Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment.
“Tobacco is a GMO Roundup Ready crop,” the email continues. “I have long suspected that the primary toxic ingredient in cigarettes is glyphosate … It’s very disturbing.”
Even if you’re not wanting to start a family or trying to conceive, chances are you are hoping to live a healthy vibrant life. It’s crucial for all of us to buy only organically grown food; ask our landlords or HOAs to stop spraying the lawns with any herbicides or pesticides, and make sure the glyphosate is in the garbage, which is the only place it belongs.
Related articles:
🍯 Canadian Study: Glyphosate Found in 197 of 200 Honey Samples Tested
👶🏽 How to Save the Original Organic Humans
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and one more …
👨🏿⚕️ This Microbiologist Blew the Whistle on his Bosses. So They Tried to Silence Him. They Failed
About the author:
Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science journalist and book author. Get access to exclusive content and support independent journalism, medical freedom, and organic living by becoming a paid subscriber to this Substack, Vibrant Life.
Jennifer, Your submasthead is wrong. You mean as male INfertility. The missing "in" completely changes the intended point.
I'm truly surprised to see no mention of all the research on, and potential use of, fertility-blocking vaccines in this article at all. Even by 1991, there were papers being published detailing 20 years of research already put by that time in on various types of vaccines to be used to control fertility in different ways. Anti-HCG vaccines were among them, for sure, but the strategies that were explored from a vaccinology standpoint were numerous and varied.
That being said, I do agree that the overall decreases in fertility and child-bearing itself stem from a number of factors - environmental, social, financial, some are media-inspired, etc. We definitely cannot think or talk about any of this as a single-dimension issue -
I'm just really surprised to see you, with your background in vaccine information, write an article on this and not bring in the known resources on the inclusion of anti-fertility vaccines as a major part of the problem worldwide. It may be that some types of anti-fertility vaccines are administered more often in third world or developing countries, of course we're not really going to have access to that information, but overall it is still a big concern.
For those interested, here is just a light sampling of a few of the papers on this. The ones listed here are all from the early 10990's or before - I didn't even list the contributions from the past 30 years.
The WHO task force on Vaccines for Fertility regulation: Its formation, objectives and research activities
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1874951/
Anti-fertility vaccines
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2665354/
Vaccines for control of fertility and hormone dependent cancers
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1618603/
Anti-hCG vaccines are in clinical trials
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1514026/
Birth control vaccines: the progress continues
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12286012/
Anti-sperm and anti-ovum vaccines: the selection of candidate antigens and the outcome of preclinical studies
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1514025/