Nation & world briefing
Study suspects fertility,
farm chemicals linked
Lynn Franey
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
Men living in agricultural mid-Mis
souri are markedly less fertile than
men living in New York, Minneapolis
and Los Angeles, researchers at the
University of Missouri-Columbia
have found.
The researchers suspect that
runoff from farm chemicals may be
to blame.
The results “are important to cou
ples that are trying to conceive. If we
can find out what specific exposures
were related to this reduced semen
quality, we might be able to prevent
delays in conception in the future,”
said Shanna Swan, the MU professor
who led the study.
Swan said she hopes the study
prompts further inquiry into how
agricultural chemicals negatively af
fect people’s bodies.
The study, conducted between
1999 and 2001, found that, on aver
age, fertile men in Columbia produced
58.7 million sperm per milliliter of se
men, compared with 80.8 million for
men in Los Angeles, 98.6 million for
men in Minneapolis and 102.9 million
for men in New York City.
On another important measure,
sperm mobility, fertile men in Co
lumbia also lagged behind their ur
ban counterparts.
On average, fertile men in Colum
bia produced just 113 million mobile
sperm per sample, compared with
162 million in New York, 196 million
in Los Angeles and 201 million in
Minneapolis. Swan measured mobile
sperm by the sample, not by the mil
liliter, as was used to measure the
number of all sperm.
The mobility measure is impor
tant because so few sperm make it to
the woman’s fallopian tubes. After
sperm have been deposited in the
vagina, only a small percentage find
their way into the cervix and then
begin their journey though the
uterus and into the fallopian tubes.
That journey must occur to fertilize
the woman’s egg. Only 1,000 or
2,000 sperm usually make it.
“While it’s true that it only takes
one sperm to conceive a pregnan
cy, the length of time that it takes a
couple to conceive is related to the
sperm quality — how fast and
directly the sperm swim, and how
they are shaped,” Swan said. “If
you follow couples trying to be
come pregnant, those that have
better semen quality do conceive
more quickly.”
The study recruited 512 men
whose pregnant partners were visit
ing hospitals for prenatal care in
Columbia and the three other cities.
Researchers noted where the
men had lived before moving to
Boone County, if they were not
Boone County natives. Swan said
even very recent exposure to farm
chemicals, not just long-term expo
sure, could affect one’s health.
© 2002, The Kansas City Star.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tri
bune Information Services.
Iraq briefs
U.S. says Iraq ordered
nerve gas antidote
Iraq has ordered large quantities of
a drug that can be used to counter the
effects of nerve gas, mainly from sup
pliers in Turkey, which is being
pressed to stop the sales, according to
senior Bush administration officials.
The officials said the orders far
outstripped the amount Iraq could
conceivably need for normal hospi
tal use, and they said Turkey had in
dicated in talks with the State De
partment that it was willing to
review the matter.
“If the Iraqis were going to use
nerve agents,” an official said, “they
would want to take steps to protect
their own soldiers, if not their popu
lation. This is something that U.S.
intelligence is mindful of and very
concerned about.”
Iraq has ordered, mainly from a
Turkish company, a million doses of
the drug, atropine, and the 7-inch
autoinjectors that inject it into a per
son’s leg, the officials said.
—Judith Miller,
New York Times
Gorbachev tells U.S.
to find peaceful answer
The United States should find a way
short of war to defuse the threat posed
by Iraq, former Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev said Monday, and he urged
U.S. leadership to drop the U.N. em
bargo against Saddam Hussein and in
corporate Iraq into the global econo
my if inspections find no weapons of
mass destruction.
In fact, Gorbachev warned,
America risks alienating crucial al
lies if it tries to establish unrivaled
military power instead of consult
ing with other nations in critical ar
eas like the Middle East and the
war against terrorism.
“I don’t think we can build a better
world through military domination,”
Gorbachev, speaking through an in
terpreter, told a group of editors at The
Boston Globe on the first day of a two
week tour of the United States.
The 1990 Nobel peace laureate
criticized what he saw as America’s
failure to convince much of the
world that it is more concerned
about Hussein’s weapons than about
lucrative oil contracts.
— Thanassis Cambanis,
The Boston Globe
015320
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Tuesday-Friday 10:30-5:30 Saturday 11-4
Presentation on
Church and State and
Just War Theory
I Dante and Augustine
on Church and State
Friday, November 15th
4:00-5:30 PM
Ben Linder Room, EMU, U of O
Dr. Brenda Deen Schildgen of UC Davis will
offer a presentation on the dialogue between
Dante and Augustine on Church and State.
Dr.Schildgen is the author of Pagan-Tartars.
Jews.and Moslems in Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales and Power and Prejudice: Reception of
the Gospel of Mark among other books.
She holds degrees in English, French,
Comparative Literature, and Religious
studies.
Discussion on
Just War Theory
Friday, November 15th
6:30 - 9:00 PM
Newman Center
1850 Emerald St.
Dr.Schildgen will also facilitate a discussion
on the “Just War Theory” dinner and
discussion. All are welcome to the
discussion, RSVPs are requested for the
dinner. (Discussion will begin at 7:30 pm.)
RSVPs to 343-7021 by noon, November 14th,
or stefani@newmanctr-uoregon.org
015304
All students, faculty, and staff are invited
to attend this presentation sponsored by the
Christian Scholars Program of
Notre Dame University and Catholic Campus
Ministry. Co-sponsored by LCC Social Sciences,
Episcopal Campus Ministry, and Koinonia.
www.newmanctr-uoregon.org
Bush
continued from page 1
terrorist network, enabling Osama
bin Laden to escalate his terrorist
campaign against the United States
“a thousand times over.”
“The time to confront this threat is
before it arrives — not the day after,”
Bush declared.
Neither Bush nor other administra
tion officials have produced evidence
of any such link between Hussein and
bin Laden.
Bush spoke a day after senior U.S.
officials leaked word that the president
had approved tentative Pentagon plans
to invade Iraq with up to 250,000
troops if Baghdad failed to comply with
U.N. terms for disarmament.
It was not clear whether Bush’s
threats and leaked blueprints of war
plans operations were designed to
sharpen the pressure on Baghdad to
comply with U.N. Security Council de
mands or to alert the American peo
ple to the possibility of war.
The U.N. Security Council resolu
tion —adopted Friday—offered Iraq
“a final opportunity to comply with its
disarmament obligations” by accept
ing return of U.N. weapons inspectors
to conduct “immediate, unimpeded,
unconditional and unrestricted” in
spections anywhere at any time ac
companied by “sufficient U.N. securi
ty guards.”
Officials in Iraq angrily con
demned the U.N. demand as the
Iraqi parliament prepared for a pos
sible vote as early as Tuesday on
whether to comply.
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