by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

Humanity is steamrolling toward a date with extinction, and yet most people have absolutely no idea that this is happening. Most of us like to think that we are part of the smartest, tallest and fastest generation in human history, but science has actually shown that the exact opposite is true. Compared to our ancient ancestors, we are shorter, slower and we have been losing mental capacity for thousands of years. And just this week, a groundbreaking study that discovered that large numbers of human males in the western world may soon be incapable of reproducing made headlines all over the planet…

Humans could become extinct if sperm counts in men from North America, Europe and Australia continue to fall at current rates, a doctor has warned.

Researchers assessing the results of nearly 200 separate studies say sperm counts among men from these areas seem to have halved in less than 40 years.

The 185 studies that the researchers took their data from were all conducted between 1973 and 2011. Dr. Hagai Levine was one of the lead scientists involved in the study, and he found that for men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, sperm concentrations declined by 52.4 percent during the study period, and total sperm count declined by a whopping 59.3 percent.

If these trends continue, we will soon have tens of millions of young men that are incapable of producing children. The following comes from the Washington Post…

The most important data points in the new study involved sperm concentrations for what are known as “unselected” men who haven’t yet proven they are fertile. These are men in the studies who are on the younger side and are not yet fathers or do not have partners who are pregnant. Researchers estimated that these men had an average sperm concentration of 99 million per milliliter in 1973 but that that had dropped to an average 47 million per milliliter in 2011.

That is a disturbing number given that, according to World Health Organization criteria, men with a sperm concentration of less than 40 million are considered to have an impaired chance of conceiving and those with a sperm concentration of less than 15 million per milliliter are unlikely to be able to have children.

If that sounds extremely serious to you, that is because it is extremely serious.

According to Dr. Levine, we could potentially be looking at “the extinction of the human species” in the not too distant future…

“If we will not change the ways that we are living and the environment and the chemicals that we are exposed to, I am very worried about what will happen in the future,” he said.

“Eventually we may have a problem, and with reproduction in general, and it may be the extinction of the human species.”

So what is causing this alarming drop in sperm levels?

There are certainly lots of factors involved, but one study from a few years ago pointed much of the blame at our heavy use of cellphones…

The new study shows that having a mobile phone close to the testicles – or within a foot or two of the body – can lower sperm levels so much that conceiving could be difficult.

The findings have led to a leading British fertility expert to advise men to stop being addicted to mobile phones.

Professor Martha Dirnfeld, of the Technion University in Haifa, said: “We analysed the amount of active swimming sperm and the quality and found that it had been reduced.

“We think this is being caused by a heating of the sperm from the phone and by electromagnetic activity.”

And of course where do most men carry their phones?

Most of us carry them in our pockets, and that is about the worst possible place that we could carry them.

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