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Are Men an Endangered Species?
A new program opened in the United Kingdom in 2002
called Man Not Included.
Their logo shows a figure of a man surrounded by
a red circle with a line running through it. The
meaning is quite clear and, for me, the feeling was
chilling. Man Not Included helps women who want to
have children without the involvement of men. They
help them to get the necessary sperm and teach them
how to use it. And of course they have their own
website at www.ManNotIncluded.com
 .
Clearly there are those who feel that men are
useful only as sperm donors.
The idea that men are in decline and may face
extinction would have seemed ludicrous even a few
years ago. Now more and more people are taking it
seriously. In November, 2001, the prestigious
British Journal of Medicine published an
editorial written by Siegfried Meryn, M.D. titled
“The future of men and their health: Are men
in danger of extinction?”
The British Journal of Medicine is not a
publication to make wild claims. They are one of
the most scientifically grounded professional
journals in the world. Dr. Siegfried Meryn is not a
“pop-psychologist.” He is a medical
doctor with a world-wide reputation in the field of
men’s health. He is professor of medicine at
the University of Vienna and chairman and president
of the World Congress on Men's Health.
“Although there is still a long way to go
in most societies around the world, it is clear
that women can perform (and on most occasions
outperform) pretty much all the tasks traditionally
reserved for men,” says Dr. Meryn in his
editorial. “In most of the developed world
women are starting to outnumber men in medical
schools and making rapid gains in terms of equality
in compensation and opportunities in the
workforce.”
“Will we see the gap in life expectancy
between men and women widen as the gaps in social
determinants of health become narrower? The answer
is probably yes, unless women continue to adopt the
same negative behaviors that characterize men
today. With the advent of sperm banks, in vitro
fertilization, sex sorting techniques, sperm
independent fertilization of eggs with somatic
cells, human cloning, and same sex marriages, it is
also reasonable to wonder about the future role of
men in society.”[i]
Devra Davis is one of the top health researchers
in the world. Her specialty has been the
relationship between health and the environment.
She is now Visiting Professor of Public Policy at
Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School and
Senior Advisor to the World Health Organization. In
her recent book, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales
of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against
Pollution she devotes an entire chapter to the
serious decline in male reproductive viability that
seems to be caused by our destruction of the
environment.[ii]
In the chapter “Save the Males” she
notes that men are having increasing difficulty
fathering children and males are actually in
decline. “Now it looks like something is wrong
with baby boys,” she cautions. “Fewer
boys are being born today than three decades ago,
and more of them have undescended testes and
effects in their penis. More young men are getting
testicular cancer than as recently as the early
1990s, and they are developing it at younger ages.
Some trendy magazines have even suggested that male
health is an oxymoron.[iii]
So what do I mean when I say I think that men
are in danger of extinction? First, I think the
whole human race is in danger of destroying
ourselves either through wars or environmental
destruction. Obviously if we kill off humanity, the
men go as well. Second, I believe that sometime in
the not too distant future, society might decide
that there are too many males and limit the number
of males that are born. Some even suggest that we
could eliminate males completely. “Man himself
may in the end become redundant,” says Steve
Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College
London. “for his sperm can be grown in animal
testes, and in mice at least an egg can be
fertilized with a body cell from another female,
which cuts out the second sex
altogether.”[iv]
Third, we have seen in earlier chapters that men
are killing themselves through suicide, through
homicide and wars. This could lead to a severe
reduction in the male population. Finally, males
could continue losing significant roles in the
society and might become psychologically extinct,
if not physically so.
Whether these possible losses ever come to pass,
they still influence our psyches. If you ask the
average guy why he is so irritable he is unlikely
to say because I’m afraid we’re going to
blow ourselves up, or because environmental
pollution is destroying the quality of my sperm, or
because I’m losing my role in society and
might be eliminated from meaningful involvement in
work and relationships, or because I’m feeling
depressed and want to hurt myself or someone else.
Most men will blame their bad feelings, if they
allow themselves to feel at all, on such things as
the way their wives treat them, job stresses,
traffic jams, terrorists, the economy, the
government, or general worry about the future.
Certainly things like family conflict, job
stress, and the state of the economy can cause any
of us, including men, to become irritable, but
there is more going on than meets the eye. If we
are going to help ourselves and each other prevent
and treat IMS, we have to have a better
understanding of the causes of our male
insecurities. To do that we have to get at the core
of what it means to be male.
[i] Siegfried Meryn.
Editorials, The future of men and their health: Are
men in danger of extinction? BMJ 2001;323:1013-1014
( 3 November )
[ii] Devra Davis. When
Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental
Deception and the Battle Against Pollution. New
York: Basic Books, 2002.
[iii] Ibid., p. 193.
[iv] Steve Jones. Y: The
Descent of Men. London: Little, Brown, 2002, p.
7.
©2008 Jed
Diamond
See Books,
Issues
+ Suicide
* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau
Jed Diamond
is the internationally best-selling author of seven
books including Male
Menopause, now
translated into 17 foreign languages and his
latest book, The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing. The 4 Key Causes
of Depression and
Aggression. For over
38 years he has been a leader in the field of men's
health. He is a member of the International
Scientific Board of the World Congress on
Men’s Health and has been on the Board of
Advisors of the Men’s Health Network since its
founding in 1992. His work has been featured in
major newspapers throughout the United States
including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today. He has been featured on more than 1,000
radio and T.V. programs including The View with
Barbara Walters, Good Morning America, Inside
Edition, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth,
Extra, Leeza, Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did
a nationally televised special on Male Menopause
for PBS. He looks forward to your feedback.
E-Mail.
You can visit his website at www.menalive.com
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