European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 21, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 16 the stars and stripes april focus on male infertility by Jane Brody new York times though people have known probably since they evolved that it takes two to produce a until the 1960s Little if any attention was paid to the Man when a couple failed to a combination of ignorance and male conceit led most to think of infertility As a woman faced with the ego threatening possibility that they might be unable to father Many men even refused to submit to in the last decade or much has been Learned about the contribution of male infertility to the fact that one couple in seven is involuntarily it is now known that a problem with the Man is the primary cause of infertility in about 30 percent of these couples and is a contributing cause in 20 percent in other just As men Are 5050 partners in they Are also 5050 partners in the failure to achieve new causes of male infertility Are being discovered almost every year As More couples seek explanations for their difficulty in becoming there is now even a sub specially in urology called the study of male but while some experts have warned recently that the incidence of male infertility is increasing because of Environ mental and occupational drugs and medical treatments venereal diseases and other factors that damage others dispute they say that apparent increases in male infertility just reflect past ignorance and neglect and poor methods of analysing there is no question that men today face Many both environmentally and personally to their for sperm damage and infertility have afflicted workers exposed to cadmium and the pesticides a Bop and in the regular use of marijuana Sev eral times a heavy cigarette smoking and alcohol abuse can interfere with Normal sperm radiation exposure and certain such As used in treating and some used to treat cancer Are damaging to male even the common antibiotics penicillin and tetracycline May sup press sperm even if the sperm themselves Are there is growing evidence that toxic substances carried in a mans seminal fluid can be transferred to the increasing the risk of birth miscarriage and another Factor affecting the seeming increase in in Fertility is the growing number of couples who wait until their 30s or later to Start a while a mans Fertility is much less affected by age than a a couples Fertility is the combined result of the Fertility of the two a Man with a Low Normal sperm count who might have had no trouble impregnating a woman when she was 25 and highly Fertile May be far less Likely to cause pregnancy when she 35 and less As a woman Fertility declines with she May need a Man with Normal or above Normal Fertility in order to there Are an increasing number of men who voluntarily ended their Fertility through Vasectomy and who subsequently become divorced or widowed and then remarried women who want to have through special surgical More than half of such and perhaps As Many As can have their Fertility As the causes of male infertility become new treatments have developed in Many can reverse the problem and enable a Man to become a Richard Amelar and Lawrence specialists in male infertility on the staff of new York University medical say that follow ing proper at least half the men with Fertility problems Are Able to impregnate their but even when a correctable cause is the diag Nosis of infertility can have Devastino effects on a mans self image and sexual As Well As on a couples and even if a mans Fertility is the Effort to achieve pregnancy when his wife is sub Fertile can Lead to impairments in sexual functioning that Only make matters when a Man is asked to perform sexually according to a Fertility Calendar kept by his he May find that his body refuses to sexual pleasure often gives Way to mechanical sex and leads to impotence or failure to along with considerable anger and frustration on the part of one or both in search of genders onoff switch by Daniel Haney associated press genetically one of every men is mostly they look like and they act like certainly they think of themselves As under a Microscope their cells carry two x the most Basic Hall Mark of these people Are called xxx and to a Small group of they Are far More interesting than simply another example of natures Talent for tricks and they May be the key to discovering the sex trigger just one Gene out of the or so of humanity a Gene that makes a Man a it is if it exists at All genders onoff compared with Many notions in this one is beguiling by in the goes this every embryo growing within its mothers womb has All the biological machinery it needs to be a male or a be everything depends on one critical the sex if it has the it becomes if it it becomes a so deep within the biochemical Library of human heredity lies an inequality of the there is a Gene for masculinity but not for the origin of Femi nity is the absence of a the very existence of the sex trigger is still a Theo no one has Ever seen in have no Clear idea of what this powerful Gene looks like or How it does what it there is even a they that it is actually a group of clumped but they do believe Treyve narrowed Down the genetic terrain where it or they and with Luck and maybe they will find scientists in states and Europe Are searching for the among them is David a physician at the Whitehead Institute for biomedical an Independent lab affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of this Gene is obviously a master Regula Page it has dramatic its capable of completely switching the pattern of development of an it can shut Down the formation of ovaries of All female and it at the same turn on differentiation of testes of All male male or has 23 pairs of Chromo these Are strings of and one of each pair is inherited from the Mother and one from the two of these Are called sex and they Are known As x and everybody gets an x Chromo some from his or her the fathers contribution to this pair of chromosomes can be either an x or a if their child has two x its female an x and a and its in Albert de la Chapelle of the univer sity of Helsinki in Finland discovered a strange exception to this Rule men who had two x Chromo they Are Normal men but for one shortcoming they Are in the years doctors discovered More men with this often when they sought Fertility experts now calculate that one of every boys has two x the genes of scientists dreamed up Many theories to explain How xxx males could some thought that they might get both of their x chromosomes from their another idea was called the by it suggests that during the formation of a Small piece of a y chromosome jumps Over to an x Chromo if a sperm containing this Mongrel x Chromo some wins the race to a female egg and fertilizes the result would be an embryo with two xxx Chromo but one of its is holds a few genes from a male y chromosome including the very Gene that triggers male recent work by Page and his collaborators de la Chapelle and Jean Weissenbach of the Pasteur Institute in Paris supports the by interchange they have shown that xxx males get an x Chromo some from each and in most of they Are Able to find genetic material that ordinarily is unique to the y the next goal is to figure out which of these hitch hiking y genes is the sex if they knew which Gene makes an xxx male a then they would know what Gene makes All men this knowledge might allow geneticists to select the sex of scientists Are working out techniques for inserting genes into but Page says its doubtful that anyone would want to try this in because inserting the sex trigger into a human embryo would result in an a sterile once the human sex Gene is it should relatively easy to find the sex trigger for other and this might open the Way for con trolling sex ratios in farm for beef producers want male but Dairy Farmers and egg producers want