Exporting sperm to other countries is a strange concept to begin with. IVF is strange in itself, at least with anyone other than your spouse. These sperms are apparently for single mothers having kids, because even if a man has bum sperm, he can almost always do IVF with his own sperms.

What is much weirder than this is the UK making laws about it and trying to enforce international sperm rules.

The Guardian:

Sperm donated in the UK is being exported and can be used to create large numbers of children across multiple countries, contradicting a strict 10-family limit that applies in the UK, experts warn.

A legal loophole means that, while a single donor can be used to create no more than 10 families in UK fertility clinics, there are no restrictions on companies making sperm or eggs available for additional fertility treatments abroad.

With the lifting of donor anonymity and the ability to track down genetic relatives on DNA testing sites, this raises the prospect of some donor-conceived children navigating relationships with dozens of biological half-siblings across Europe.

Prof Jackson Kirkman-Brown, chair of the Association for Reproductive and Clinical Scientists (ARCS), is among those calling on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to tighten restrictions.

“If you believe that it’s necessary to enforce the 10-family limit in the modern world then logically that should apply wherever the sperm are from,” said Kirkman-Brown, who is also director of the Centre for Human Reproductive Science at the University of Birmingham. “There is data showing that some of the children who find the really big families struggle with that.”

…

The rationale for enforcing the 10-family limit across licensed clinics, according to the HFEA, is that consultation with donors and donor-conceived people suggests this is the number people feel comfortable with in terms of the numbers of potential donor-conceived children, half-siblings and families that might be created.

Who knows what that means. I don’t know what it means.

At what point do humans become more plastic than man?

The Guardian:

Microplastics have been found in human testicles, with researchers saying the discovery might be linked to declining sperm counts in men.

The scientists tested 23 human testes, as well as 47 testes from pet dogs. They found microplastic pollution in every sample.

The human testicles had been preserved and so their sperm count could not be measured. However, the sperm count in the dogs’ testes could be assessed and was lower in samples with higher contamination with PVC. The study demonstrates a correlation but further research is needed to prove microplastics cause sperm counts to fall.

Sperm counts in men have been falling for decades, with chemical pollution such as pesticides implicated by many studies. Microplastics have also recently been discovered in human blood, placentas and breast milk, indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The impact on health is as yet unknown but microplastics have been shown to cause damage to human cells in the laboratory.

Vast amounts of plastic waste are dumped in the environment and microplastics have polluted the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. People are known to consume the tiny particles via food and water as well as breathing them in.

The particles could lodge in tissue and cause inflammation, as air pollution particles do, or chemicals in the plastics could cause harm. In March, doctors warned of potentially life-threatening effects after finding a substantially raised risk of stroke, heart attack and earlier death in people whose blood vessels were contaminated with microscopic plastics.

“At the beginning, I doubted whether microplastics could penetrate the reproductive system,” said Prof Xiaozhong Yu, at the University of New Mexico in the US. “When I first received the results for dogs I was surprised. I was even more surprised when I received the results for humans.”

It’s so amazing that the media is still talking about global warming, and the only place you can read about plastic and PFAS and the rest of these chemicals that are actually destroying nature and our bodies is in The Guardian.

These stories are literally not reported in the New York Times.

The Times just keeps saying eating meat is changing the weather. They have no evidence for this claim.

In a recent study, microplastics were found in 100% of placentas tested:

– In 62 placenta samples, the levels of microplastics ranged from 6.5-790mcg per gram of tissue.

– It’s currently unclear what the health impact of these levels may be, but the half-life of these plastics… pic.twitter.com/Ympv4wXux1

— Zib Atkins (@AyusWellness) March 26, 2024