How long would civilization last if all males became sterile?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Whereas I think that civilization is more resilient than most people think - in fiction there’s some event and a few years later the whole planet’s a desert. In reality I think that people will carry on - perhaps despondently, but they’d carry on.

And actually as extinction-level disasters go this one is really gentle, at least for the first few decades. Existing society will be essentially unaffected (unless you’re Dr. BabyCatcher), with existing families with all their children and babies carrying on unaffected. Some people will freak out over the fact they can’t have babies, but a good percentage of the population already can’t or don’t want to have more children. Some people will freak out over the impending existential end of humanity, but that’s a pretty high level concern, and people still need to (and can) go to work and draw a paycheck. While some people will be troubled by the impending end, we’re talking about something that’s half a century away and most people can’t internalize problems happening a month out.

The religions would be wigging out because they’d be trying to fit this into their predictions about the end of days, but everyone else both has to, and has no reason not to carry on as normal. Except Dr. Babydoctor, and Kelly Kindergardenteacher, and one career after another as society slowly, slowly spends the next century gently fading out. (Until power and food distribution finally fail, but that will only be in the final stages, and everyone will see it coming a mile off and maybe do something about that too.)

And no, I don’t think that sperm preservation is a viable way to preserve humanity. Certainly not all of humanity, and while you might have pockets of such people, enclaves of baby-manufacturing civilization, I have doubts that any such enclaves would be large enough to form viable populations. Particularly once their sterile neighbors find out about them.

62

As far as trained fertility personnel go, I think there would be time to train up plenty of additional staff. Keep in mind that current fertility clinics serve people with infertility. So a couple might spend one or more years getting various tests and then moving through different levels of treatment. If the exact problem is already known, and priority is given to the most likely to be fertile patients, the number of pregnancies for each existing clinic would skyrocket.

I think this scenario would pretty quickly lead to alternative reproduction techniques. I suspect that, first, researchers would try to figure out how to get a line of male stem cells to develop into sperm. Part of that process has been done in mice already. (Science | AAAS). And stem-cell-like cells can be created from other mature cells from a person’s body.
Also, while egg-only reproduction would be a new procedure, I think it might not take too long to develop, if its existence were literally necessary for the continuation of the human race. Multiple vertebrate species already have female only reproductive capability.

A pretty quick effect I think might be commodification of babies and young children, particularly in poor countries or populations. Migration of the young and fertile to the most affluent countries. A change in world demographics based on where the new technologies are available, and to whom (probably the world gets whiter).

Also, would there be a few medically isolated (like boy in a bubble) males who were uninfected, and would be used (asked/required) to produce sperm in the short term, at least?

63

Too late to edit to add: The biggest bottleneck would probably be the egg harvesting. Handmaid’s Tale scenario, or poor women induced by money, or a national service type requirement are all possibilities I can see happening.

64

What’s everyone’s opinion on how important “survival of the human race” would be to the people? I’m sure governments and scientists would be motived to find techniques to enable pregnancy, but how motivated would normal people be to go through that procedure? People typically have babies because they want babies or get pregnant by accident, not that they care about ensuring that future society is well populated. And even those people who want babies, not all of them are super motivated to make it happen. I think just a small percentage of people would make the effort to go through an IVF-type procedure even in such an environment.

Isn’t Japan kind of having this problem today? They’ve been experiencing declining birth rates for some time. The government cares about increasing their population, but the population itself doesn’t seem to be motivated to do anything about it. And they wouldn’t need any fancy sci-fi to turn things around. Just having fun the old fashioned way would do it.

65

Japan still has plenty of babies born every year. Far more than zero.

If everyone fathers or mothers one child each, that is not enough to keep up the population, but there are still babies, people still know birth and what it is like to be a parent, to continue down our path.

The premise of the movie Idiocracy is mocking of the “smart people” endlessly kvetching and dithering about when and where to have children, I need me time, how can anyone bring a child into this world, etc. The dumb people don’t care, they just have kids. The dumb people win.

If a person living in a world with zero births year after year is still worried about using up our resources, has a big “meh” about it, is the youngest person in the world at age 47 and wakes up and thinks “time to make the donuts”, that person is not in touch with what it is to be alive.

We take the replacement of the population for granted. Yes, it would be a seismic change for that to go away. I cannot believe otherwise.

The OP is putting this forward as ideas for writing. If the inherent emotion was not addressed, I would not be interested in reading.

Part of the problem is the idea is profoundly depressing to me. The human parts of the world would wither and spiritually die long before the youngest of us reaches their three score and ten. I suppose animals would take over, as they are unaffected. That should be part of the story.

66

So what would he do if he was in touch with what it is to be alive? Wail in despair and kill himself?

67

I don’t expect babies to stop being born in this scenario. There are various ways to make them from frozen sperm (artifical insemination or IVF), frozen embryos, and various other suggestions made in this thread. I fully expect most or all of them to be put into practice. The question was how long these could keep civilization afloat.

68

I think you’re really underestimating the strength of the impulse in most people to have descendents.

Yes, there are some people who really don’t want any children, and somewhat more who aren’t seriously upset by not having any. But there are a whole lot more for whom it’s very important. Many such people are happy with one or two instead of eight or twelve, at least if they expect those children to live, and grow up, and produce grandchildren; but that’s a whole long way from being comfortable not only with having none at all, but also having no nephews, nieces, friends’ children, students, etc.

And most people don’t worry about the survival of the human race because they assume it’ll survive. I’m not spending time worrying whether the sun will come up tomorrow; or even whether there won’t be any rain for the next three hundred years. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be seriously upset if I found out the sun or the rain were going to disappear.

I think existing society would be really drastically affected. I’d be interested to read a story, or a batch of different stories, about possible ways in which it would be affected. But I’d have a whole lot of trouble believing a story in which there wouldn’t be any more children, and everybody just shrugged their shoulders and said oh well, I guess the kindergarten teachers will have to find other jobs.

And I’m a person who’s childless, and not seriously upset over it. But for one thing I see the strength of the impulse in other people, not only for their children but for their grandchildren and great grandchildren. And for another – it’s one thing for me, as an individual, to have no children in a world with well over six billion people (among them my sisters’ and cousins’ children and grandchildren.) It would be another thing entirely to have human children, in general, just disappear from the world.

– Another thing to consider, which would also very much not be minor: if whatever children are to be born will be created from frozen sperm or parthogenesis: that’s going to take most men, except for the relative handful who happened to have sperm frozen, out of the genetic parental role entirely. For some of them, if they can help raise a child, however created, that’ll do. For others – that’'s going to be a massive psychological wrench, both for them individually and for society as a whole. I don’t think some of the results would be pretty at all.

69

And Catholic countries who don’t believe in IVF for religious reasons, would either have to change their belief system or their populations will die out.

On the upside, there would be zero unplanned pregnancies.

70

A lot of people will be very unhappy, but think only an insignificant minority would be “burn everything/kill everyone/riot/suicide” unhappy. Because while these people may want kids very much, even for them it’s not a ‘need one now’ sort of want. There could be a general malaise, but it won’t be enough to get people to, for example, completely stop working and despondently starve to death. The vast, vast majority will still go to work and feed themselves and turn the wheels of society. They may be a little unhappier, but people aren’t going to freak out.

It will almost certainly help that people will know that the Best Minds of Their (Final) Generation will be working very hard on fixing or reversing the problem.

On the other hand, all this business y’all are talking about with sperm banks and IVF and parthenogenesis and such? That stuff better be made available to everybody fast, and for free. Because if people find out that only the rich people get to have babies, there will be rioting in the streets, and the places that do such things will literally be torn apart.

71

This is a good point. I’m a parent of two kids who are not genetically related to me, and it can be a big deal to some people. (It was never too much of one for me, but I saw it was for others in our same position, and I did have some minor issues to deal with around it.)

Also, I would think that almost all pregnancies from IVF type procedures would begin with 2-3 blastocysts being implanted, to make the procedures more efficient – more births per round of IVF. So probably the majority of kids would be multiples – twins or triplets. Singletons might be the odd ones out, and might be assumed to have lost a potential sibling in the womb. Maybe some people who only want one kid would have end up with two, and place the second one with other parents.

I can also imagine an initial period before new reproductive techniques are developed, where there would be some panicky decisions made. Like outlawing abortions in all circumstances, outlawing people trying to buy up frozen sperm, lots of hucksters selling “cures,” kidnapping of babies and small children either going up drastically, or maybe just panics about it. A small calming effect from government stepping in and nationalizing fertility clinics and all sperm banks, but lots of controversy and battles over who will get procedures/get to be parents. I suspect in the US, people who had privately stored sperm, eggs, or embryos might have successfully fought to keep possession and some control of them, but maybe they could only be used in procedures with women who meet certain criteria to increase the chances of successful procedures. So many would have to use a surrogate or would be selling or doing directed donations. Maybe using a surrogate with the hope/plan of the surrogate getting a child and the sperm/embryo owners getting one from a successful multiple pregnancy?

72

Unless and until the new reproductive techniques, and fertility clinics able to apply them, become commonplace, I suspect it will be handled like organ donation. The demand will greatly outpace the supply, and there will be waiting lists.

Priority on the list should, IMO, be handled the same way that organ transplant lists are handled - no priority given to the rich (at least in the West). Just who is most likely to be able to bring the pregnancies to term. This is going to be controversial, just like alcohol abuse status affects whether or not you get a liver transplant. If some unmarried, unemployed sixteen year old decides she wants a baby, where does she go in the queue? How about if you already have a child?

The Amish will disappear, too.

And what about places in Africa where they already have limited access to health care now? ANd you gotta know that dictators in the Third World and elsewhere are going to use access to reproduction to reward their own cliques - “get in line or no children for you”.

Regards,
Shodan

73

I’ve seen this proposed in other population crisis threads and it ignores basic human biology. Yes, women CAN have more than one child per pregnancy but it’s not healthy It’s not good for the woman OR the kids.

All multiple pregnancies are considered high risk. No exception. The odds of something going wrong or one of the people involved being left disabled or dead go up significantly.

Now, in the crisis proposed in the OP it may be that society (or some parts of it) will consider increased risk to the mother in exchange for increasing the number of babies born to be worth the risk. I would even argue that adult women who freely desire to take on that risk in order to do something for the greater good should be allowed to do so…

…BUT, these pregnancies also increase risk to the children born. Twins as individuals are born at a lower birth weight than singletons all other things being equal. The more kids at once during a pregnancy the greater this problem.

This is a different tactic that would result in more people but at less risk to both mother and children. If you’re already using IVF then allow the fertilized egg to divided several times then separate the result cells into individual cells again. Each will develop into a full human being. Yes, we’re talking about cloning here, the same sort of cloning that results in natural identical twins (and identical triplets, and theoretically natural larger multiples). This has to be done very, very early in development, before any cells start to specialize, and there are limits to how much/often it can be done, but you could certainly get identical quads out of the technique. Not sure how many more than that - 8? 12? In any case, turning each conception into potentially four people would be a boost in the proposed scenario.
Implant these embryos into multiple different women (most of whom would be surrogates and not genetically related to the embryos). An individual miscarriage, although still a tragedy, would at least not result in the loss of that individual genome, which will be a good thing as it will help maintain genetic diversity. The human race will be going through not so much a bottleneck as the eye of a needle, it would not be a good thing to lose any genes we don’t have to lose.

74

Yes, I remember that well. The film has some big differences but is also well worth seeing - a harrowing, moving depiction of a society’s despair, knowing that it has no future.

75

There is increased risk, but medically they are not all considered high risk. My SO had a couple of things that increased her risk, including carrying twins, and was still only classed as moderate.risk. And yes, it turned out to be a life threatening experience for her, but it is still not automatically considered high risk (and she had other risk factors).

And yes, I think society would risk women’s lives over it, and women would do it. (Women do it now due to infertility. Clearly that willingness would not go down.).

The cloning technique you mentioned is cool though. I did not know that could be done. I still think most procedures would put in at least 2. But maybe you’re right. Maybe with a surfeit of volunteers, going through hormone injections etc. and winding up without a viable pregnancy would just be part of the risk.

76

From the article

If the rich nations start throwing money at the problem, there is no doubt that research will progress faster, but it’s possible that this could take longer than what people here are assuming.

Unlike other doomsday scenarios, this one gives a lot more time to restructure things, but there still will be questions concerning manufacturing and resources. Because manufacturing is globalized, then suppliers are all over the world. Many of the rare earth minerals required for advanced technologies are found in China.

Given enough time, it may be possible to solve, but there will still be issues.

Japan is discovering the problem with decreasing populations and trying to fund and supply medical care for the retirees.

77

I’ve actually done similar scenarios as a conversation + grammar exercise when teaching English.

Yes. I tried to look it up a while ago when my ex was going through donor insemination, and couldn’t find anything, but the number of lesbians who don’t actually have any fertility problems other than that their partner is not producing sperm must make a difference to their chances of conception.

Also, most countries with sperm banks these days have limits on how many children one man can father. Those laws would definitely be rescinded. So there might be some increase in genetically inherited diseases, even in the countries that could afford self-insemination. And the sperm banks only really have a lifetime of ten years. So the male babies born in the first generation after this spermpocalypse would be in a position where they were both prized and expected to father the next generation when they were still barely more than children.

And yep, the countries that have sperm banks would definitely be at an advantage. But there would be war, where people were taking babies that could then eventually have other babies.

The collapse of society might happen quickly, when men realised they couldn’t pass their genes down, and just gave up on the future, or gradually, because even with sperm banks we wouldn’t be able to keep up.

78

^this says it all.