Ménage à trois
In 2008, after two years of failing to make a child organically, we learned the doom Kathy had already been feeling for more than a year was justified: I was diagnosed with male-factor infertility. Our only real chance to move forward would be in vitro fertilization. We couldn’t afford it; we couldn’t afford not to do it. One way we tried to work through that diagnosis, our anger, and our options was to start a secret infertility blog, “Less Than a Million.” This post and what comments from 2008 that are attached to it come from that blog.—gb
Olivia Judson surveys the effects of sperm competition. Apparently, the males of many species are capable of adjusting sperm amount and quality on the fly based upon the perception of competition. Different-sized testicles in primates indicates competition, too:
A standard indicator of the risk of sperm competition is the ratio between a male’s body size and his testes: the larger the relative size of the testes, the greater the historical risk of sperm competition. (Larger testes mean larger numbers of sperm.) Chimpanzees—a species in which females are fantastically promiscuous—have enormous testes. Gorillas—a species where they’re not—have tiny testes. Humans are in between, albeit closer to gorillas than to chimps—which is consistent with a moderate, but not huge, risk of sperm competition in the past.
Therefore, she asks, “Do [human] men tailor their ejaculates depending on how they perceive the risk of sperm competition from one situation to the next?” She then goes on to postulate that it is likely given the fact that most male organisms do it, and she further suggests that adjusting the stimuli in a fertility clinic’s masturbatorium prior to IVF might improve the quality of sperm in any the ejaculate. Presumably, this would mean more Barnyard Adventures (conveniently loaded in the DVD player in my local masturbatorium) than titty mags.
It also raises the question why more doctors don’t prescribe MMF threesomes for male-factor infertility. On the one hand, it would bring into the open what genealogists have known for years, that paternity has never been as simple as monogamy would have it. On the other hand, not only is there the increased volatility that Judson suggests, but also “prior buffering” might help things along even further.
And I am only mostly jesting. Because on some level, the only difference between, say, becoming pregnant with anonymous (or in many cases, chosen-by-characteristic) donor sperm or through egg donation and surrogacy and some form of polygyny or polyandry (call it what you will: adultery, promiscuity, swinging) is mediation by doctors. But what if the maintenance of the illusion that, in infertility treatment, sex is sterile were to be proven (How could you ever prove it?) less effective than inviting your driver out for “Friday Night Specials”?
And then, of course, is the follow-up question: assuming that you are not already a swinger, if it were the case that a threesome would improve your partner’s chances of fathering your child, would you do it?
(Via, as is often the case in things like this, Unfogged.)
