Does smoking cause infertility?
It was reported today that some experts might refuse IVF treatment to smokers. Why? Are they saying that smoking causes infertility? If not, what are they saying?
If yes, how do they explain the baby boom just after WW2, when approx 80% of the male population were smokers?
I'm a non-smoker BTW.
10ClarionSt Fri 25/07/08 17:36
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I am by no means an expert but one of the warning messages on cigarette packages is 'Smoking can cause infertility' .
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Question Author
Well, if the sperm count was higher then, it couldn't have been the smoking could it?
The warning does indeed say that, but it only says "can", not "does".
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Smoking along with booze and drugs has never stopped our local Chav's producing....sadly.
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been watching ONLY FOOLS again Leggy?
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legend - don't you realise the water we have today is the water that's been on this planet since the beginning of time?
It has been through dinosaurs, cavemen, Henry VIII and your grandmother.
There is no such thing as new water.
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I think they are refusing smokers IVF because smokers make a choice to take up and continue a habit that is well known to cause a lot of serious illnesses.
to then bring up a child in a smoke filled environment is not only unfair on the child but it can be called abuse
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Question Author
In 1949, 81% of the male population were smokers.
I was born in 1948. My mother was a smoker, as was my dad. I was brought up in that environment, at a time when there was great austerity and poverty.
Everywhere we went, there were smokers; on the bus, at your relatives, in the cinema. Even the teachers used to smoke in the canteen at school. We couldn't get away from a smoking environment.
If all that was so bad, why does the govt now say that our generation are going to live longer than any previous generation? That we will be a burden on the pension and health systems because we will live so long?
Where is the legacy of all that? Were we different in some way? Immune from it?
Were we subjected to "child abuse" on a grand scale?
The truth is that people don't like smokers and anyone and everyone will invent fairy tales to make it appear to be something that it isn't. And all the gullible will be believe it.
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back then it was ignorance, people did not know that smoking was bad for you. just like the idea of widely using asbestos in buildings. personally I dont like people smoking in my presence, its smell and disgusting, it gets into your clothes and makes you cough.
I used to smoke and when I did smoke I did not realise how much I stank of cigarettes until I quit.
they are banning obese people from IVF as well for a similar reason, the selfish lifestyle choice they have made that may be passed on the the child they bring into the world. If they do want a child they would eat healthier or stop smoking.
deaths from lung cancer has halved since people stopped smoking
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You're very lucky - I am somewhat older than you, born in a smoking family.
I suffered whooping cough so badly as a child I was hospitalised; severe asthma; constant ear infections...
And yes, I still went on to smoke. After all - there was nothing wrong with, was there?
Many of my friends died relatively young from lung disease, stroke and heart attacks. I have friends with emphysema and other chronic lung diseases.
Three of my friends have lost limbs through smoking.
But no - the government health warnings are obviously hype just because people don't like smoking.
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it's been proven that smoking can decrease male fertility, i'm not too sure about female.
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Question Author
I wouldn't disagree with any of that, but I've put this argument many times and nobody has been able to answer it.
What you are refering to is smoking. I was brought up in a smoking environment and part of what I am talking about here is related to PASSIVE smoking.
I still can't see a reasonable response to the fact that a baby boom took place when 80% of males were smokers.
As for the water: Ethel, not all of the water has been here that long. A lot of it is reckoned to have come from comet impacts with Earth, one as recent as 1908 in Tunguskar, Siberia.
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Do you smoke after sex? ..I don't know I've never looked
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people blame smoking for everything ?
The radioactive debris of the Chernobyl reactor covered an area more than 5000 km2 with nearly 20 million curies of radionuclides
some farms in cheshire a couple of years back still had to sell their sheep to the government (alive or dead) funny nothing is ever printed about this in the papers.my friend worked on a farm ,thats how i found out. do they still have to do this ?
if it effected the sheep in cheshire why not humans ? and before you post about sheep eating grass there are other animals that were affected.
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The primary factors of the post-war baby boom were the ability for large numbers of the population to procreate (difficult when millions were away fighting a war) and a return of vast numbers of women to child-rearing roles instead of war work in factories etc. Marriage became again a cultural and career norm for most women, and the result was an increase in the birth rate.
Whether or not smoking reduced the baby boom by any appreciable amount is unknowable but it is a specious argument to link smoking and the post-war birth rate in the way you have.
It's like saying 100 smoker couples produce more babies than 10 non-smoker couples; the comparison is only valid if you compare equal numbers of both types.
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Question Author
All very well Kempie, but experts are trying to link smoking to fertility anyway.
It may be a specious argument, but I haven't said anything that isn't true. It is fact.
Are you saying i shouldn't compare that time period to this one? Are the experts saying that if there had been less smokers back then, there would have been a bigger baby boom?
I honestly feel that a lot of bad things are apparrently linked to smoking because lots of people simply don't like the smell of cigarettes.
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I did not suggest that experts are saying the baby-boom would have been bigger if people didn't smoke back then. I wrote that such a conclusion is unknowable - we can't go back and re-enact 1946 onwards with non-smokers.
Specious arguments always consist of facts, but facts not necessarily relevant to, or linked in the way portrayed by, the argument.
You appear to be asking "How was it possible for a post-war baby-boom to occur when cigarette smoking was so commonplace?"
The answer is that more people were having sex more frequently in an environment conducive to bringing children into the world and rearing them than before. The cigarettes are an irrelevance in this case because the comparison is to previous birth rates when rates of smoking would have been similar. The war (and it ending) is the greater factor of the argument.
If I have misunderstood your question I apologise, but that is what I take it to be.
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Question Author
The reason for my question was to try and understand why there appears to be no connection between fertility and smoking in post-war years, but a connection is trying to be made now.
Kempie, you say that more people were having more sex in an environment conducive to bringing up children. I would dispute the part about the environment conducive to bringing up children.
These were very austere times with rationing still very much in place. It wasn't lifted completely until1954.
It was the age of the coal fire and great smogs. It was a time where passive smoking was virtually everywhere; whre many people still lived in slums next to bombed out property.
All of that scenario applied to Manchester, where I lived, and it was hardly conducive to bringing up children.
Part of the answer could be that more people were having more sex, but surely, if smoking had any effect on fertility, the birth rate would not have been as high.
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No matter how austere, the child rearing environment was more conducive than when bombs were falling, men were fighting overseas and women were engaged in war work.
People were happy that the war was over (and had beaten the enemy!); men returned to the factories, women returned to the home. "The family" became a viable option once again and so more people had children than during the war years. Why would you think that all this would have no effect on the birth rate?
Baby Boom = More births than previous birth trend.
Are you suggesting that in those previous years (e.g. 1939-45) there were fewer smokers? Is it not reasonable to assume rates of smoking (approx 80% ???) were very similar immediately pre-war and post-war? If so, there is no reason to bring smoking into the Baby Boom equation - you are comparing like for like in regard of smoking and so it is irrelevant. Smoking may only become a relevant factor when comparing years where smoking rates are appreciably different but then you have to also allow for other lifestyle changes.
Birth rates are currently lower than 1946-1960; a time before the contraceptive pill, abortion was illegal, few women had careers - and smoking was more prevalent. Realistically, which of these changes is likely to have had the least effect on birth rates?
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To add a bit... if a person needed ivf wouldn't they want to MAXIMISE their chances and thus give up smoking? (even if fags were responsible for the minutest possibility of IVF failing?)
Incidentally my sister in law has been turned down for ivf because she is obese...(another "possible" reason her fertility may not be as great as others.
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A wonderful way of birth-control.
We can now sue these experts if we get pregnant while smoking.
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