Monday, March 24, 2008

The importance of being specific with scientific study.

For one of my freelance gigs, I do a lot of summarizing of newly released medical studies. A very recent one has suggested that folate is just as important to viable sperm as it is to healthy fetuses.

But what keeps cracking me up is that in so many of the articles about this finding, the writer finds it necessary to refer to sperm as "male sperm." Ummm, yeah, we know. Who else might the sperm belong to?

1 comment:

prophet said...

cracked me up, too!

But on a serious note, it might be evidence of our slide away from gender-specific sexuality. . . .

In a world where a mommy and a daddy are being challenged as the normative "parents" (so that two mommies - or two daddies - or just one of whatever kind - can be accepted as "just as good") it follows perhaps that sperm would be tagged as "male", especially if it's the male lacking in folates. . . . (in a twisted logic sort of way, anyway, since we've known for a while about the importance of folate in women? Maybe?)

Anyway - it cracked me up, too. Even as it also scares me a bit. "Who else might the sperm belong to?" you ask?

We seem to think it can belong to someone other than a man. To a woman who wants nothing to do with a man, for instance, or to a laboratory.