HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT

Baby driver. For many, news that sperm counts in Western countries have dropped 50 percent since 1981 is cause to prepare for human extinction. For Dr. Sarah Martins da Silva, it’s just another challenge: The Scottish research program she leads has developed a drug-screening method that’s allowed her team to test 3,400 compounds on human sperm — and they’ve already identified two promising drugs that could help sperm swim better and avert a potential male fertility crisis.

Womb for change. Endometriosis, suffered by an estimated 176 million women worldwide, is an agonizing condition that can lead to infertility. Some patients wait as long as a decade for a clear diagnosis, as doctors painstakingly eliminate all other options before undertaking invasive tests to determine if they have endometriosis. In what doctors are calling a game changer, DotLab founder Heather Bowerman says the company will release a simple blood or saliva test later this year that offers the promise of early detection of the poorly understood condition, saving women years of discomfort and the risk of infertility.

Gone, baby, gone. As conservative ideologies about abortion gain more political traction, personhood bills have become the new normal in the U.S. But those bills may spell disaster for infertile couples, as doctors conducting research on embryos to enhance human fertility are deterred from their work by the threat of prosecution. To mitigate the impact, some doctors are going straight to the legislators, hoping to educate them about the scientific implications of their bills.

Fetus first. Dr. Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz’s groundbreaking research into how embryos develop was sparked by complications with her own pregnancy at the age of 42. But 12 years later — with a healthy kid in tow — she’s still questing to unlock the mysteries of human embryos. The Cambridge professor successfully cultured a human embryo in the lab for longer than anyone had before — a feat Science hailed as the Breakthrough of the Year, and that may help explain why pregnancies sometimes fail in the early stages.

WHAT TO READ

Sperm Count Zero, by Daniel Noah Halpern in GQ
"Assuming that we’re unable to wean ourselves off plastics and other marvels of modern science, we may be stuck innovating our way out of this mess. How long we’re able to outrun the drop in sperm count may depend, finally, on how good we get at IVF and other fertility treatments."

My IVF Life, by Jean Hannah Edelstein in The Guardian
"Someone puts a photo of the embryo on a screen that I can see while I’m lying back on the procedure table: a grey blob of cells. I remember not to get attached."

WHAT TO WATCH