The Enemy Within Hormones move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform. As the body’s chemical messengers bring about adaptive physiological responses to environmental change. How elegantly appropriate it would be if, in chaotic and fractal fashion, they served precisely the same purpose on a global scale. Even manufactured substances that mimic hormones, a rogue element as far as we are concerned, may effect adaptive physiological changes. These substances, often called “endocrine disrupters,” disturb normal sexual development in a wide variety of vertebrates, including humans, causing lower sperm counts, undeveloped or malformed genitalia, repeated failure of embryo implantation, and a rising incidence of ectopic pregnancies. They occur in a vast range of commercial products—pesticides, plastics, paints, inks, industrial detergents—and are released as breakdown products. The onslaught of such substances was first brought to public attention in 1962 by Rachel Carson in her momentous book Silent Spring. However, she considered only the toxicity of such chemicals and was unaware of their even more serious long-term hormonal consequences. Most of the known offenders imitate estrogen, and the impact is therefore most noticeable in males. Under the feminizing influence of these estrogen mimics, genes that are responsible for the production of testosterone in males often fail to switch on. Extensive surveys of male fertility carried out in several developed countries (notably Denmark, Scotland, and France) suggest that the average number of sperm in the ejaculate of a normal man appears to have fallen by up to 50% during the past fifty years. Although the method of analysis used in the surveys was widely criticized, similar sperm count reductions and increasing signs of sexual dysfunction have been detected in several other vertebrates, especially rats, alligators, and birds, and these too seem to have been caused by exposure to artificially produced hormone mimics. The matter was finally put beyond reasonable doubt in January 1997 when a Finnish team compared testicular tissue (taken during postmortem examinations) from men who died suddenly either in 1981 or 1991. In that ten-year period the numbers of men who had normal testicular tissue and healthy sperm production had fallen by more than 50%. As increasing numbers of artificial endocrine become interwoven with whatever endogenous fertility inhibitors constitute the human version of the general adaptive syndrome, it seems likely that the current fertility decline will gradually accelerate.
Driven by such subtle and complex chemistry, our ultimate population decline is likely to remain both inexplicable and beyond remedy. We will see a gradual increase in the incident of biological social dysfunction, as well as rising levels of unproductive sexual behavior, such as homosexuality, lesbianism, and pedophilia, and an increasing heterosexual tendency to postpone or avoid parenthood. The natural fertility brakes are likely to become even more pervasive and pronounced as population pressure increases, social cohesion decays, and environmental degradation mounts.
Although the global fertility rate is now showing signs of significant decline, judging by the current rate of industrialization, our energy consumption will multiply by a factor of 2.5 by the year 2050. The technological factor of the I=PAT equation (Impact = Population x Activity x Technology) thereby promises to compensate for most of the decline in population growth. In other words, as far as the biosphere is concerned, it is almost as though human fertility were not declining at all, suggesting that something other than simple math is manipulating the equation to achieve this convenient end. To lay the blame on human culture is circular reasoning and provides no answer, so we are left facing the intriguing alternative that our predicament betrays the presence of some form of evolutionary genetic management system, mechanism that has automatically locked us into a cultural development that guarantees disaster; perhaps even a Gaian mechanism like the one proposed by Vernadsky, Lovelock, and Margulis.
Reg Morrison, “The Spirit in the Gene” pages 130-134.
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- So let us recognize human mysticism for what it really is: the rusting Excalibur of our species, an old and vital streak of genetic madness that once rescued our kind from the brink of extinction, took us to the stars, and will run us through with due dispatch when our little play is done. Ultimately, I have no real argument with mysticism, nor even with the fear and ignorance on which it feeds. The frail, the fearful, and the foolish—these are my kind of animals.
Reg Morrison, last paragraph in “The Spirit in the Gene”.