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Comment by chris_wot | Hacker News Reader

So it did not affect sperm?

It did. It significantly increased individuals with testes' sperm concentration, volume, and motility. While it's important to wait for follow-up studies to confirm this, it's good news that yet another barrier to taking the vaccine has been broken.

EDIT: It appeared to have no effect, and the increase was likely not caused by the vaccine.

You cannot make that conclusion. You have a correlation the causation is not proven:

"While these results showed statistically significant increases in all sperm parameters, the magnitude of change is within normal individual variation and may be influenced by regression to the mean.Additionally, the increase may be due to the increased abstinence time before the second sample. Men with oligospermia did not experience further decline."

It is most likely the vaccine did not affect sperm parameters. The parameters happened to go up, but as the authors note, this was unlikely to have been caused by the vaccine. Several more plausible causes are noted in the study.

The main thing the study does is basically rule out a catastrophic negative effect on sperm parameters from the vaccine.

Although the results look good, I don't think you could draw this conclusion. It is just an indication, but only a proper study with control groups etc could lead to such a conclusion.

Edit: I see that the comment has been changed, but I will leave mine here anyway.

For men

Increasing women’s sperm count would have been a much more surprising finding, for sure.

but nowadays everyone can be a man, right?

For those scratching their heads and thinking this is just some kind of light humor thing, please bear in mind that the words "a woman's penis" and "people who have tested" and "people who chestfeed" are now parts of actual phrases used by government agencies in various parts of the world.

With respect to your unedited comment, how would scientific evidence that the vaccine interferes with reproductive function be good news for advocates?

"Conspiracy theorists" have been derided for months for being weary of its reproductive side effects but suddenly it's a positive if Science™ confirms it?

"Individuals with testes"?

How emasculating to have a key aspect of my genetics made optional.

I knew a guy who happened to have "testes" and was XXY, found out with fertility tests in the early 2000s. I think he Od'ed (on alcohol i guess?).

I also happen to just have met a girl (like two years ago? Friends' daughter) with "testes", XXY too except it was detected soon enough that she can have testosterone suppressant during her puberty that seems to help a lot for her impulse control (it was her demand). I think genetics are hard, biology is hard, and self-determination as a human being is even harder.

Don't think of this as emasculating and just a way some people want to talk. Honestly, no one gonna call you out if you say "guy" except maybe on twitter (look at the other posts on this thread), so please you don't have to act offended.

* emasculating

Thanks autocorrect.

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