Men are experiencing a ‘spermpocalypse.’ Solving it has become a big business
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- Spermpocalypse now. We're in the midst of a "spermpocalypse." That's what fertility experts jokingly call the multi-decade decline in men's sperm counts globally—a trend that's only accelerating and could lead to a future in which assisted reproductive technologies are used for most pregnancies, some argue.
A shift towards more assisted pregnancies concerns women. That's because in couples experiencing infertility today, pressure usually falls on the woman to solve the issue.
"Women have to carry the treatment burden," Neel Shah, chief medical officer for the unicorn women's health startup Maven Clinic, said at Fortune's Brainstorm Health conference in a panel moderated by Lux Capital's Deena Shakir earlier this week. "There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that women are suffering disproportionately and made vulnerable by a system that's not designed for their needs."
The global male infertility market reached $4 billion in 2022 and is expected to climb to $6 billion by 2030. In the U.S., male fertility receives $1 for every $3 that female fertility gets. Indeed, Maven, the company founded by Kate Ryder that Shah works for, became a unicorn by serving the women's and family health market.
But that money allocation is only part of the story. "We talk about fertility as a women's issue, which is a point of view that is outdated," Khaled Kteily, founder and CEO of the male fertility clinic Legacy said onstage.
There are a variety of reasons that male infertility has gone unaddressed for so long. A lack of education leads many people experiencing infertility to not even think of the male partner as a possible contributor. "People don't understand that one-third of the time it's a female problem, one-third of the time it's a male problem, and one-third of the time it's combined together," said Brian Levine, founding partner of CCRM Fertility of New York. Men, too, often avoid doctors' visits, missing opportunities to proactively identify issues. Treatments for male infertility include semen analysis, lifestyle changes, and sperm-freezing.
Encouraging men to carry more of the burden of infertility can help improve men's health, while lessening pressure on women who endure the arduous processes of egg-freezing, IVF, and other treatments. "We want the male to feel like they're part of the reproductive journey, and that it is a couple's journey," Posterity Health CEO Pamela Pure said.
"Men are the silent partner, but they're half of the diagnostic equation," Shah says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
