Don’t know if it’s the water, could be pesticides, but one thing’s for certain, men in mid-Missouri have much lower sperm counts. The problem has been going on for years with no definitive answers. And there’s plenty of evidence to show the problem is much broader and more widespread.
The story:
Two years ago when fertility specialist Gil Wilshire came to Columbia from his practice in New Jersey, one detail jumped out at him. His male patients in Mid-Missouri were much less fertile than those he treated on the East Coast.
“Nobody I saw had a normal sperm count,” said Wilshire, a reproductive endocrinologist at Mid-Missouri Reproductive Medicine and Surgery Inc. “It took about two or three weeks until a normal semen analysis came through the door. I kept asking myself, ‘Am I in a hellhole of toxins?’ “
Danny Schust, another endocrinologist who arrived here from Harvard University in 2006, had an almost identical experience. He was accustomed to treating men with low sperm counts, but those he saw in Missouri all had low counts.
“I went to” an andrologist at the Missouri Center for Reproductive Medicine and Fertility. “And I said, ‘Are you guys doing something different here because I never see normal sperm counts?’ ” Schust recalled. “And she was like, ‘No, this is Missouri sperm.’ ” Read the rest of this entry »
