Fictional Movie Children of Men Becoming Reality
Writer-Director Alfonso Cuaron’s excellent 2006 film "Children of Men" tells the fictional story of a now very-near future (2027) in which global infertility dominates, and a former activist risks life and limb to protect the last miraculously pregnant woman on Earth. Though not a fortune-teller by trade, ongoing research suggests Cuaron may have accurately and terrifyingly predicted our future nonetheless thanks to hormone-disrupting, man-made chemicals that are rapidly decimating male and female fertility worldwide.
Environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Shanna Swan recently published her startling findings in a book called "Countdown" in which she details that sperm counts have dropped almost 60% since 1973. That trajectory has sperm counts, and new humans, reaching zero by 2045! Women are hardly immune either. Swan’s findings include the average twentysomething woman today being less fertile than her grandmother was at 35. Not only that, but Swan’s research concludes that penis size and testes volume are shrinking as well.
The reason for these humanity-ending phenomena? None other than per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”) –- the so called “forever chemicals” I’ve blogged about previously. Dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment, or the human body, PFAS can just as accurately be called “everywhere chemicals” for their ubiquity in our lives and planet. PFAS are currently found in everything from fast food wrapping to firefighting foams, plastic containers, cleaning products, fragrances, soaps, shampoos, furniture upholstery, carpeting, electronics and cleaning products, among many other sources. PFAS are found at every point on the globe, in the body of virtually every human being, in deep sea fish, high-flying birds and species in between. PFAS chemicals simply continue to accumulate and accumulate – doing more and more damage to our health over time. But it appears we now may be reaching an extinction-level crisis as a result of toxicity that these chemicals exert on our endocrine systems.
You would think a species-ending problem would be getting governmental attention and interventions on the scale of the Moon landing. After all, the corporate “growth at all costs” model has a tendency to break down when there are no people left to buy a company’s crap. So, what is being done, given all that we understand about the toxicity of PFAS? Relatively nothing. Sure, there is patchwork legislation floating around here and there, but these are laws and regulations from country to country, and state to state. We need a concerted, cooperative, aggressive effort to try and combat this global crisis. Or else one day, very soon, we are likely to find ourselves living the nightmare so eerily and, as it turns out, accurately depicted in "Children of Men". If you believe your health has been adversely impacted by exposure to PFAS you should contact an experienced law firm right away to explore your rights.
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