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FANCY a virile man? Try a Finn. Niels Jørgensen from the Juliane Marie Centre
in Copenhagen and his colleagues measured semen quality in four cities across
Europe and found that Finnish men had the highest sperm counts. Next came the
French and the Scots, while the Danes had the lowest counts (Human Reproduction,
vol 16, p 1012). None of the average counts were low enough to cause
infertility, but the men with the lowest sperm counts also had the highest rates
of testicular cancer. The researchers think that the variation could be caused
by environmental factors, such as oestrogen-mimicking chemicals, affecting the
men’s reproductive systems during development in the womb.