It's Official: Human Males Are an Endangered Species

If you're of the female persuasion, your first thought upon reading the title was "Yeah, right."  Just one more weapon in the arsenal of the age-old guys-versus-girls war.  But it really isn't.  Scientists are voicing their concerns about a disturbing trend in human population growth.

We've always been told that the sex of your child is pretty much a crap shoot, with the odds being 50-50.  Turns out that's not exactly the case.  Evidently human biology recognizes that, for whatever reason, baby boys are weaker than baby girls (sorry, gents, but it's true), and as a result more infant boys die than girls.  To offset this situation, slightly more baby boys than girls are conceived in the human species, with the actual ratio being more like six males being conceived for every five females.  After you factor out the higher male infant mortality rate, you end up with something closer to 51 males for every 49 females being born.
 
However, that last ratio is changing.  Around the world, more girls are being born than boys in recent years.  In some locations, only half as many boys as girls are being born.  For instance, in small communities such as the Chippewas living outside Sarnia, Ontario, and numerous villages scattered around the Arctic Circle, statistics show that birth rates for girls have increased to nearly double the birth rate for boys.

Scientists may have discovered two possible reasons for this change.  One is pollution.  The Chippewa live near "Chemical Valley", a cluster of chemical plants.  While there were concerns about other health-related issues in the tribe, the possibility that toxins could change their birth rates was a totally unexpected side effect.  Tests run on the inhabitants in the Arctic villages, and on the local environmental factors, indicate an increase in man-made chemicals in the food chain as well as in their bodies.  There's actually a precedent for this possibility.  Back in 1976, thousands of people were contaminated by dioxin in a 1976 industrial accident at a chemical factory in Seveso, Italy.  Afterwards, researchers followed the children of the people affected to discover that half the number of boys as girls were born in the next generation.

The second, not surprisingly, is the aging of people who become parents.  Couples are getting married (or remarried) later in life, and waiting longer to have children.  Because age affects things like sperm count and activity, and the ability of a womb to successfully house a fetus, the mortality rate of those fragile male infants increases.  These factors could also contribute to increases in male neurological development, increasing the chances that problems will exist in the living male population.  Already these factors are being tied into a sixfold increase in male autism.

The problem is this:  While scientists may have possible causes for what's causing the change in birth ratios, they can't explain the processes that cause the change.  In fact, it's possible that their assumptions are incorrect, and that neither pollution nor older parents are causing the change.  It's even possible that this is a normal cycle in human birth rates.  Nobody has proof positive.

The only thing we can be sure of is at this point in history, males are declining in number.   And I won't complain.  In fact, I'm going to my local environmental office today to find out what perks I get as an endangered species so I can start taking full advantage of them!