mmmscience writes "While fertility studies lately seem to have been exclusively focused on in vitro fertilization [IVF], new data coming out of Australia may help with unaided successful conceptions. The study has found that men who have ejaculate daily produce sperm with less damaged DNA. While such actions decrease sperm concentration, it does increase motility, meaning healthier sperm have a better chance of making it all the way to the egg. Good news, as another report has found severe chromosome abnormalities in over 90% of IVF eggs, meaning artificial insemination is just now discovering a whole new field of problems."
Well, it's definitely an important requirement for being able to contribute to the gene pool, and one can't improve that to which one does not contribute. Unless everyone else counts "staying out of the way" as a contribution.
Speaking of. I always heard that sperm banks didn't want their donors masturbating between sessions. Seems like now it's a quality vs. quantity issue, as it were, These findings could significantly increase the bank of happy donors.
Actually, yes. Yes it does. As bad as this group is, it's far above the common troll. Consider idiocracy [imdb.com]. Now go read 4chan, MSNBC, CNN and Fark. Then come back and comment about how the people here need to surrender their reproductivity to support the Darwinian selection of those mental giants.
Although if 'twice a day' helps, all of slashdot should have near perfect DNA.
Now to just find someone to spread it to..
That's one way of looking at it.
Here's another, less obvious one, which I read in a Timothy Leary essay about fifteen years ago: The anatomy contains organs that serve to keep the individual alive, such as heart, lungs, liver, etc. The anatomy also contains organs that serve no purpose in keeping the individual alive, but are focused on the preservation of the species, such as ovaries, whose sole function is to produce the female egg, and the prostate, whose sole function is to secrete a lubricant which aids in ejaculation, a strange little organ. Statistically, it seems these organs are the ones that do us in first, by "virtue" of being the most vulnerable to cancer, the highest rates among females being of the ovarian and breast variety, while the highest among males of the prostate variety.
Could it be that as we gradually cease to use our procreative organs, as we are no longer useful to the natural order of things, nature itself has a mechanism to push us aside?
And so, in inimitable style, Mr Leary, who was dying of prostate cancer then, concluded his musings with the following empirical conclusion and advice for us all: "Use it or lose it!"
As an amusing afterthought, when I mentioned this article to friends, some of them said "So that means I should fuck every day?", while others said "So that means it's okay if I jack off every day?" Caught them with their guard down, spilled the beans all by themselves.
This is something I believe in as well. A well used prostate, either sex or wanking, keeps the sperm on the move. When they hang about, they degrade and degenerate potentially causing damage to the prostate and opening yourself up to cancer.
At 52 when lots of folk are complaining about slow stream and poor PSAs, I'm not having any of those problems.
While the news services have all been reporting that Daily Sex will improve fertility - surely a more accurate description would be that daily ejaculation (via whatever means) improves fertility.
Yes, but the headline "Daily Ejaculation Helps Improve Fertility" would not help convince my wife to have sex with me. It would instead encourage her to send me to the bathroom with the SI Swimsuit issue.
That is no good.
I would prefer the headline to stay as it is, or perhaps to be changed to "Daily Receipt of Fellatio Helps Improve Fertility".
When I sent my wife this article, she suggested we try "annual sex". Sounds pretty kinky to me. But first, I'm going to have to help her with her spelling.
Slashdotters would be lucky to get once a month, much less daily...
Comic Book Guy: Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you, this will be much less breeding. For me, much, much more.
IVF has been around a few years. In fact, it's been around since 1978, if you want to take it back to the first test tube baby.
I'm sure if there were "severe" chromosomal abnormalities we would have noticed by now.
Now, I'm not saying that there isn't any increased risk of chromosomal abnormalities associated with the procedure. But 90% chance of severe chromosomal abnormalities doesn't sound like it makes sense to me.
I'm sure if there were "severe" chromosomal abnormalities we would have noticed by now.
We have noticed. It is one of the reasons that multiple eggs are implanted, since so few of them are viable.
This is related to why we have so many multiple births from IVF -- sometimes 2 or more of the implanted eggs are viable.
Also note that IVF is done primarily when people have trouble conceiving normally, so incidence of abnormality should be high anyway... perhaps these abnormalities are part of the infertility issues that brought the patients to the fertility specialist in the first place.
Someone I know very well has tried IVF twice... out of all the eggs that it was tried with (I think 6 or 8 each time), only one egg was viable... and that one miscarried during week 5.
It's really not surprising to anyone who's been through it or has had frank discussions with someone who has.
I guessed, and confirmed upon reading, that the linked article is referring to the fact that human embryos naturally have a high rate of genetic abnormalities, and thus the fact that not every copulation during a woman's fertile period results in a pregnancy. The article explains that newer, more thorough screening mechanisms are flagging embryos that previously went undetected.
I have an autistic son and I think that "causes of autism" are something that is used far too often. My wife and I have thought about this and we see in our son's autism some of our own traits as its forbears. Rather than the litany of plastic bottles, vaccines, carbon monoxide, indoor air pollution and other bogus causes, we now wonder if autism is actually part of a natural evolutionary response to dealing with an increasingly complex human society.
Perhaps we've evolved to deal with the fact that we are increasingly specialized, as our society feeds back into our own natural selection, and, we've reached a sort of a tipping point where autism is the next step.
We've been very fortunate in that our son has responded extremely well to aggressive therapy, all, by the way, provided by the taxpayer... (makes this old Republican rethink some of his own values). And, we wonder if, perhaps, a different sort of society might emerge from autism, that, we see it as a disability because we value our own communication so much. Perhaps autism is something that will never be cured, but, people who are autistic can move onto lead intelligent and productive lives if only there is intervention and ever better education and socialization for them and in a way that makes sense, for them.
Regardless of all of that though, I can say this. I'm proud of my son for who he is. When I first heard of his diagnosis, I almost felt like he had died and I was very angry about it. Sometimes, I admit, I still am. But, overall, if I could do it all over again, and make a choice about having an autistic child, I would gladly keep the son that I have.
So, the next step in evolution is to be inept-by-default at communication?
One of the reasons we're so advanced?
I agree that some social customs are way too complex, and that people need to be more forthcoming in general, but those are more personal flaws than flaws with society.
Not to be all Jenny Mcarthy on you, because I don't agree with her opinions on vaccinations, but many autistic kids benefit greatly from a gluten free diet. FWIW, I have no medical background other than that I happen to be celiac (which I know makes me inherently biased towards GF) and am a huge nerd who reads lots of boring research. Not implying that gluten is a 'cause', as you say, but just that the diet seems to work very well for many with autism. You've very likely heard of/explored that option, but thought I'd throw that out there just in case.
I admire you very much for your honesty, particularly about your initial feelings about your situation. I'm very glad you are in a good place. I wish you and yours the best.
And I am proud of who I am (officially diagnosed, you insensitive clod!) - and, judging from the growth of forums such as Wrongplanet, the rise in Autism may be perfectly balanced with the rise in the prominence of the Internet. Over textual communication, nobody cares that you flap your hands, or that you can't keep eye contact without getting this weird fidgety feeling, or that you don't quite get anything until the second or third time.
Hence the comparison with non-identical twins. Not being genetically identical, the incidence of both being autistic drops greatly, despite the environment being the same.
As you can imagine, twins (both varieties, identical and fraternal) are absolutely invaluable to medical research!
This article's advice to ejaculate every day would be an interesting combination with this article's [laurenbernat.com] suggestion that human sperm can help diminish wrinkles.
Nothing to do with sex... (Score:5, Funny)
Although if 'twice a day' helps, all of slashdot should have near perfect DNA.
Now to just find someone to spread it to..
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:5, Informative)
You can count my DNA will be *great*, as I wank atleast 4 times a day.
Parent
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:4, Funny)
You can count my DNA will be *great*, as I wank atleast 4 times a day.
Hats off to those modding the above "informative"
Parent
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:4, Insightful)
If being able to 'get it' is considered an important quality for improving the gene pool then god help us all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Speaking of. I always heard that sperm banks didn't want their donors masturbating between sessions. Seems like now it's a quality vs. quantity issue, as it were, These findings could significantly increase the bank of happy donors.
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, yes. Yes it does. As bad as this group is, it's far above the common troll. Consider idiocracy [imdb.com]. Now go read 4chan, MSNBC, CNN and Fark. Then come back and comment about how the people here need to surrender their reproductivity to support the Darwinian selection of those mental giants.
Parent
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, I browse the world at +4
Parent
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:4, Funny)
Catholicism could learn a lot from this study!
Parent
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:5, Funny)
All those sperm, dying for your sins. That's ironic on so many levels.
Parent
Re:Nothing to do with sex... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although if 'twice a day' helps, all of slashdot should have near perfect DNA.
Now to just find someone to spread it to..
That's one way of looking at it.
Here's another, less obvious one, which I read in a Timothy Leary essay about fifteen years ago:
The anatomy contains organs that serve to keep the individual alive, such as heart, lungs, liver, etc.
The anatomy also contains organs that serve no purpose in keeping the individual alive, but are focused on the preservation of the species, such as ovaries, whose sole function is to produce the female egg, and the prostate, whose sole function is to secrete a lubricant which aids in ejaculation, a strange little organ.
Statistically, it seems these organs are the ones that do us in first, by "virtue" of being the most vulnerable to cancer, the highest rates among females being of the ovarian and breast variety, while the highest among males of the prostate variety.
Could it be that as we gradually cease to use our procreative organs, as we are no longer useful to the natural order of things, nature itself has a mechanism to push us aside?
And so, in inimitable style, Mr Leary, who was dying of prostate cancer then, concluded his musings with the following empirical conclusion and advice for us all: "Use it or lose it!"
As an amusing afterthought, when I mentioned this article to friends, some of them said "So that means I should fuck every day?", while others said "So that means it's okay if I jack off every day?" Caught them with their guard down, spilled the beans all by themselves.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is something I believe in as well. A well used prostate, either sex or wanking, keeps the sperm on the move. When they hang about, they degrade and degenerate potentially causing damage to the prostate and opening yourself up to cancer.
At 52 when lots of folk are complaining about slow stream and poor PSAs, I'm not having any of those problems.
[John]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Meanwhile, this article pretty well describes the reason that most slashdotters have (or will soon have) pattern baldness:
http://www.steadyhealth.com/articles/Consequences_of_over_masturbation_a589_f0.html [steadyhealth.com]
Did you happen to catch the part of the article that says that's a myth?
Good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Summary misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
While the news services have all been reporting that Daily Sex will improve fertility - surely a more accurate description would be that daily ejaculation (via whatever means) improves fertility.
Re:Summary misleading (Score:5, Funny)
That is no good.
I would prefer the headline to stay as it is, or perhaps to be changed to "Daily Receipt of Fellatio Helps Improve Fertility".
But I think that might be too much to ask for.
Parent
Re:Summary misleading (Score:5, Funny)
News: BILL CLINTON POSTS ON SLASHDOT!
Speaking of receipts - wouldt paying for getting a "Monica" now be tax-deductible as preventative medicine or something?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"I would prefer the headline to stay as it is, or perhaps to be changed to 'Daily Receipt of Fellatio Helps Improve Fertility'"
Well, if the mechanism they propose is right then it's literally true. You could set up an experiment to prove it.
Re:Summary misleading (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Summary misleading (Score:5, Funny)
sounds better than aural sex
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Summary misleading (Score:4, Funny)
Prick up your ears !
Parent
Re:Summary misleading (Score:5, Funny)
I would prefer the headline to stay as it is, or perhaps to be changed to "Daily Receipt of Fellatio Helps Improve Fertility".
Shush - you're getting my husband all excited with the concept.
Parent
Re:Summary misleading (Score:5, Funny)
don't you mean "Screen Shot or it didn't happen"?
Parent
slashdotters... (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdotters would be lucky to get once a month, much less daily...
-l
Re:slashdotters... (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdotters would be lucky to get once a month, much less daily...
Comic Book Guy: Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you, this will be much less breeding. For me, much, much more.
Parent
Internet Filter (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm... does that mean that if Senator Stephen Conroy's internet filter gets built, I can get a medical prescription to download porn?
I got ten bucks (Score:2)
for the first person who applies a "fap" tag!
Re: (Score:2)
I take Paypal.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No worries, Slashdotters (Score:2)
Masturbation works too.
90% ??? I call Bull. (Score:5, Interesting)
IVF has been around a few years. In fact, it's been around since 1978, if you want to take it back to the first test tube baby.
I'm sure if there were "severe" chromosomal abnormalities we would have noticed by now.
Now, I'm not saying that there isn't any increased risk of chromosomal abnormalities associated with the procedure. But 90% chance of severe chromosomal abnormalities doesn't sound like it makes sense to me.
Are there are molecular geneticists in the house?
Re:90% ??? I call Bull. (Score:5, Informative)
We have noticed. It is one of the reasons that multiple eggs are implanted, since so few of them are viable.
This is related to why we have so many multiple births from IVF -- sometimes 2 or more of the implanted eggs are viable.
Also note that IVF is done primarily when people have trouble conceiving normally, so incidence of abnormality should be high anyway... perhaps these abnormalities are part of the infertility issues that brought the patients to the fertility specialist in the first place.
Someone I know very well has tried IVF twice... out of all the eggs that it was tried with (I think 6 or 8 each time), only one egg was viable... and that one miscarried during week 5.
It's really not surprising to anyone who's been through it or has had frank discussions with someone who has.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Whoo-hoo! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if frequent masturbation prevents cancer [google.com], then baby, lemme tell ya? I could CURE cancer. And now this?
I just might start selling it, now?
Fresher Sperm (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems pretty simple to me: fresh sperm are better.
On autism! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have an autistic son and I think that "causes of autism" are something that is used far too often. My wife and I have thought about this and we see in our son's autism some of our own traits as its forbears. Rather than the litany of plastic bottles, vaccines, carbon monoxide, indoor air pollution and other bogus causes, we now wonder if autism is actually part of a natural evolutionary response to dealing with an increasingly complex human society.
Perhaps we've evolved to deal with the fact that we are increasingly specialized, as our society feeds back into our own natural selection, and, we've reached a sort of a tipping point where autism is the next step.
We've been very fortunate in that our son has responded extremely well to aggressive therapy, all, by the way, provided by the taxpayer... (makes this old Republican rethink some of his own values). And, we wonder if, perhaps, a different sort of society might emerge from autism, that, we see it as a disability because we value our own communication so much. Perhaps autism is something that will never be cured, but, people who are autistic can move onto lead intelligent and productive lives if only there is intervention and ever better education and socialization for them and in a way that makes sense, for them.
Regardless of all of that though, I can say this. I'm proud of my son for who he is. When I first heard of his diagnosis, I almost felt like he had died and I was very angry about it. Sometimes, I admit, I still am. But, overall, if I could do it all over again, and make a choice about having an autistic child, I would gladly keep the son that I have.
I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On autism! (Score:5, Informative)
Not to be all Jenny Mcarthy on you, because I don't agree with her opinions on vaccinations, but many autistic kids benefit greatly from a gluten free diet. FWIW, I have no medical background other than that I happen to be celiac (which I know makes me inherently biased towards GF) and am a huge nerd who reads lots of boring research. Not implying that gluten is a 'cause', as you say, but just that the diet seems to work very well for many with autism. You've very likely heard of/explored that option, but thought I'd throw that out there just in case.
I admire you very much for your honesty, particularly about your initial feelings about your situation. I'm very glad you are in a good place. I wish you and yours the best.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And I am proud of who I am (officially diagnosed, you insensitive clod!) - and, judging from the growth of forums such as Wrongplanet, the rise in Autism may be perfectly balanced with the rise in the prominence of the Internet. Over textual communication, nobody cares that you flap your hands, or that you can't keep eye contact without getting this weird fidgety feeling, or that you don't quite get anything until the second or third time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hence the comparison with non-identical twins. Not being genetically identical, the incidence of both being autistic drops greatly, despite the environment being the same.
As you can imagine, twins (both varieties, identical and fraternal) are absolutely invaluable to medical research!
Cruel (Score:5, Funny)
Posting this on Slashdot is like sending Pizza Hut circulars to Ethiopia
Sperm Helps Diminish Wrinkles (Score:3, Funny)
This article's advice to ejaculate every day would be an interesting combination with this article's [laurenbernat.com] suggestion that human sperm can help diminish wrinkles.
Daily Sex Helps Improve (Score:4, Funny)
Daily Sex Helps Improve
...everything.
Error in summary (Score:4, Informative)
TFA says it's 90% of embryos, not eggs. That makes a difference!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Does masturbation count?
Yes
Re:Hold on... (Score:5, Funny)
Does masturbation count?
Yes
Oh thank god.
Parent
Re:sight (Score:4, Funny)
Parent