Semen samples placed next to a laptop results in baked, lazy sperm.
Mainstream news outlets always seem to cry wolf at various technologies posing health problems. Remember how cell phones were supposed to give you brain cancer and infect your soul with spirit of Mephistopheles? So it is with great skepticism that I present to you a study from Argentina that proves sperm cells – one half of the necessary ingredients to make tiny baby humans – were never meant to browse the internet.
The study conducted by Conrado Avendano from the Nascentis Medicina Reproductiva in Cordoba, Argentina, took – received? – semen samples from 29 able-bodied men. The researchers then placed the pilfered nut butter under a laptop computer wirelessly connected the internet. After four hours of heavy downloading, 25 percent of the sperm cells had ceased to swim around with any vigor or even verve. A full 9 percent showed significant DNA damage. Compared to the control group’s 14 and 3 percent respectively, those findings were pretty substantial.
“Our data suggest that the use of a laptop computer wirelessly connected to the internet and positioned near the male reproductive organs may decrease human sperm quality,” reds the abstract for the study. “At present we do not know whether this effect is induced by all laptop computers connected by Wi-Fi to the internet or what use conditions heighten this effect.”
Interestingly, sperm next to a laptop that was not downloading massive amounts of porn via a wi-fi connection were not much off from the control group. The researchers believe the cause of the cell damage is electromagnetic radiation from the wireless broadcast of billions of bits of data that will somehow form the backside of Ernest Borgnine on my screen. I mean …
Again, take all of this with a grain or ten of salt. Critics say this study is imperfect because the sperm was tested outside of the human body, where it is useless anyway. The test was enough of an indication that a correlation between infertility and heavy laptop use might exist.
The next step then is to experiment with laptops strapped to real live dudes. Oooh, sign me up!
Source: Reuters
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Published: Nov 29, 2011 08:47 pm