Male Shrinkage: The Gene Pool is Getting Colder

We're still trying to run down the original source for this story, but since it hit the wires last week, we'll reprint what's already out there.

A "study from Italy," no details, concludes that the average size of male genitalia has decreased by 10% over the last 50 years. Weight gain, smoking, drinking, and yes, environmental pollutants are all listed as possible factors.

It isn't exactly headline news that chemicals can mess with your male parts in pretty dreadful ways. Endocrine Disruptors like lead, dioxins, and other poisons provide a whole horror movie worth of case studies where males of all species end up with female characteristics or no characteristics at all. Likewise there are now plenty of studies suggesting that modern sperm counts are not, er, up to past standards.

The latest study, depending on its credibility, would only further confirm that we don't have to blow ourselves up to extinguish the human race. We can just slowly but surely make it impossible to reproduce ourselves through chemical exposures.