SOME 30 years ago, as a parliamentary private secretary, I attended a meeting that health secretary Dick Crossman held with the chief medical officer George Godber and experts on declining sperm count – then a new phenomenon. Allan Pacey, a hormone expert at the University of Sheffield, said recently that to find out whether there is a genuine decline in sperm counts and to pinpoint the causes, a large group of men needs to be monitored over many years (¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, 10 January, p 6). Pollutants and other chemicals are likely to be relevant and must be taken into account. I asked health ministers whether they considered the monitoring to be something that the Department of Health (DoH) should orchestrate.
Melanie Johnson, the public health minister, replied that the DoH, along with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Health and Safety Executive, have funded a programme of research into trends in male reproductive health and the possible effects of various chemicals. The research is nearly complete, and the results should be published soon. Two of the four projects in the programme consider sperm count, added the minister. One is a UK study of male fertility and occupational and environmental exposure to chemicals, co-funded by the European Chemical Industry Council. The other is a study of male reproductive health in Scotland.
Sperm counts are a matter of much general interest, not least because many families are said to be finding it difficult to have children.
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A GOVERNMENT advisory committee recently reported that there were no environmental grounds for not approving Bayer’s genetically modified Chardon LL maize for commercial planting (¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, 14 February, p 4). The maize is resistant to the weedkiller glufosinate-ammonium. But the advisory committee had reckoned without devolution and the need for the agreement of the administrations of Scotland and Wales. The National Assembly for Wales, strongly against genetic modification at the best of times, said no. I asked Elliot Morley, the minister for environment and agri-environment, what consultation was taking place with Scotland and Wales.
Morley replied that the UK’s list of approved varieties of crops is indivisible. There is a single list for the whole of the UK, and the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Margaret Beckett, together with the ministers in the devolved administrations, all have a say on whether new varieties are added to the list. A final decision on Chardon LL could take months, so there is no question of planting before early 2005.
In the meantime, the status of the maize and the development of interim measures remain matters of some argument.
