In the United States, a sperm race makes the buzz (and we are not talking about Miami GP)

On a scene from Los Angeles, surrounded by a few hundred curious people, two students in formula 1 outfit are launching killers around a microscope surmounted by giant screens, for a wacky challenge: a sperm race. This unusual idea germinated in the mind of Eric Zhu, a young Tech entrepreneur who raised more than a million dollars to organize the event in order to raise awareness of the decline of fertility in men, all in an atmosphere that approaches masculinism.

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This 17 -year -old high school student was inspired by“The same very popular which shows that over the past 50 years, the number of sperm has halved” Among men, he tells AFP. According to him, “There could be a dystopian future where no one could have children”. Hence his desire to organize an event where the “Health becomes competition” And which does not evoke the questions of the effects of pollution.

Doped at testosterone, this evening broadcast online was held last Friday, halfway between the kitsch of the wrestling and the exuberance of the mixed martial arts (MMA). The two headliners, Asher Proeger and Tristan Milker, are members of rival universities. They invocate copiously with weighing and jostling each other, while distilling their training tips to improve the quality of the sperm – sleeping eight hours a night, avoiding alcohol and cannabis. “I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t already know”loose Alberto Avila-Baca, a 22-year-old student a bit skeptical.

Finally, the fateful moment came, a young man in a white coat introduces the seed of the two competitors – collected a little before the event – in a microcanal. The course of barely 2 millimeters is grown 100 times by a microscope, then filmed by a camera whose images are supposedly processed by a computer which designs a 3D animation, so that the public can see which sperm crosses the line first.

Under this scientific varnish, the evening is above all an opportunity to make school jokes. The presenters speak of “spermule 1”, ask young women present if they are still virgins and question the competitors about the size of their penis. At the end, Asher, the loser, is sprayed with a viscous white liquid, as if he was ejaculating on it.

Simple adolescent humor, or subliminal male staging? Online, many influencers speak of male fertility to defend a pro-natalist ideology. Elon Musk, boss of Tesla and close ally of Donald Trump, is notoriously convinced that demographic decline threatens civilization.

“I have nothing to do with that, I am not the like Elon Musk,”assures Eric Zhu, the organizer, who swears just about health. “It’s your choice to go to bed earlier. It’s your choice to stop taking drugs. It is your choice to eat healthier, and all these things have a significant impact on your motility ”the ability of sperm to move, he insists.

A very focused speech on personal factors likely to influence fertility, which completely forgets the harmful influence of many chemicals. On stage, no one evokes the undesirable effects of pesticides or plasticizers such as bisphenols, present in many cans, or phthalates, contained in many shampoos.

“Their proliferation is a likely explanation of a good part of the decline in the quality of male sperm”reminds AFP Shanna Swan, reproductive epidemiologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York. The scientist is part of the team that has shown that the average concentration of sperm from Western men has dropped by more than 50% since the 1970s, in a resounding study published in 2017.

For her, governments must adopt more stringent environmental regulations. “If the growing load of chemicals active on the hormonal system remains uncontrolled, fertility and reproductive health will continue to decline to the point that an increasing number of couples will have to use procreation techniques assisted to design”she warned.