Threatened Fertility

Nicolas Ruszkowski and his wife Amy dreamt of having a family. They never imagined it might not come true.

“It was completely taken for granted that within a year of being married we would have started our family,” says Nicolas.

But a year came and went and still, there was no baby.

“It's so easy to rationalize, oh we're stressed, we're putting too much pressure on ourselves,” says Nicolas.

But it wasn’t the pressure. After a trip to a fertility clinic, Nicolas and Amy found out just why they were having trouble conceiving.

“It was a huge shock,” says Nicolas. “Not only was my fertility low but it was pretty dramatic. I am 99% less likely – than the average guy to get pregnant.”

Nicolas’s sperm counts are extremely low, at around two million, when the average count, according to the World Health Organization, is between 40 and 60 million per millilitre.

Dr. Shanna Swan is a Reproductive Epidemiologist. She believes sperm counts are declining among men.

“I think it is a problem. I think it’s a very serious problem,” she says.

Last year Dr. Swan did some research of her own, looking at university and college-aged males in Rochester, New York.

“We found that their sperm quality was not great,” she says. “In fact, I think it was 23% of men had counts….which would be grounds for going to see a fertility doctor.”

But other scientists believe instead of worrying about the quantity of sperm, we should be worrying about the quality of sperm.

“I have guys coming in with 2 or 3 million sperm. They have kids,” says Dr. Keith Jarvi, a Urologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. “Someone who looks very similar, sitting opposite me, **with 20 or 25 million sperm is having difficulty having children so there’s something about the sperm we can’t necessarily measure.”

In many cases, the cause of male infertility is unknown. But many say the real question is why is sperm going bad?

“I think we have to ask the bigger question, if sperm count is declining or if male fertility or female fertility are declining, what else is going on because nothing happens in a vacuum if you will, it doesn’t usually just affect one system,” says Dr. Swan.

Dr. Swan has a theory of her own. She suggests it might be related to the chemicals in the environment.

“There has been a huge hit of chemicals. There are 80,000 chemicals around, few have ever been tested,” she says. “There is no question that pesticides reduce sperm count. The question is how much do you need to do the damage?”

Scientists may not be able to repair the damage, but they have found ways to get around infertility with fertility technology. Researchers around the world are trying to reach the holy grail in male infertility research – creating human sperm outside the body.

Japanese researchers have succeeded with mice, creating the first mice pups from stem cells matured into sperm cells outside the mouse body, which could then go on to reproduce as well.

Many couples, including Nicolas and Amy will go to any length, undergo any procedure to have a child. They were lucky on their first IVF attempt and now expecting their first child conceived through infertility technologies.

In a special 16x9 investigation, Beatrice Politi speaks to men dealing with infertility – the struggles, the science and the risks to both father and child.