Men's infertility needs research too

Male infertility will be ignored as long as conception is seen as a woman’s issue, writes Barbara Ellen.

Are men ignoring their ``biological clocks''? Or is it rather that they are not adequately served by science, which, in turn is being stymied by lack of funding?

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's 2014-16 report reveals, among other findings, that male infertility is the most common reason (37%) for British couples seeking IVF.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, it's revealed that male infertility is considered such an ``unsexy'' research area it's nigh-on impossible to get funding. While pooled 2017 research found sperm counts in the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand had halved in 40 years, and one in 20 young men had a low sperm count, the science of male infertility remains stuck at the 1950s level of counting sperm on laboratory slides.

While this seems bizarre, it fits all too neatly with ingrained perceptions about the essential ``femaleness'' of infertility. The way infertility - the problems; the painful, invasive, often unsuccessful treatments; and the ultimate blame - remains locked in the collective consciousness is not only as a female issue, but also a female failure.

On the male side, there's the expression ``shooting blanks''. In contrast, the complex bio-cultural tropes of female infertility range from defunct and imperfect to scheming, even criminal. Women are cast as everything from haunted barren inadequates to selfish career bitches to crazed sperm thieves - all with the common theme of ``women messing up''. While modern men can fail in myriad ways in the eyes of society, even today a woman is deemed by many to fail most conclusively, tragically and grotesquely when she hasn't been able to bear children.

Likewise, the ``ticking biological clock'' is regarded as almost exclusively female, despite research such as that last year from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, saying sperm quality markedly declines with age, making it harder to sire children, and also potentially affecting the health of the child.

How long can this disconnect continue? One can't even accuse the male masses of feeling ``unmanned'', unable to handle the truth of their infertility, because they've barely had the chance to contemplate it.

Dwindling sperm counts have not been major news. The age-old sexist stigma attached to female-driven infertility is so potent that even significant alarming reports on men seem to sail by without much scrutiny and without sufficient scientific research.

While persistent, denigrating, judgemental focus on women is by no means the whole story, it seems likely that it's played a part, if only by dragging the focus from other contributory issues. For too long, infertility has been framed as an arena dedicated largely to women, with men relegated to a mere sidebar. It's increasingly apparent that, not only the heartbreak, but also the causes of infertility, are very much shared between the sexes. If society can start handling that thought, then perhaps male infertility might at long last become ``sexy'' enough to attract serious scientific funding.

Barbara Ellen is a columnist for The Observer.