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Comment by HideousKojima | Hacker News Reader

Non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/AfzEs

I've heard a lot of theories about what is causing this, the most common being plastics, increased sugar consumption, more people worldwide being overweight/obese, more people worldwide being sedentary/less physically active, exposure to various harmful chemicals, and more. I'd assume it's probably a combination of several factors, but similar to plummeting male testosterone (which likely has similar and potentially related causes) I don't see this as likely to get anywhere near the amount of attention and funding from various governments and organizations around the world as it would if it were affecting female health.

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> I don't see this as likely to get anywhere near the amount of attention and funding from various governments and organizations around the world as it would if it were affecting female health.

Which is understandable in the end, male expendability is a thing. As long as it doesn't affect literally all males, it's a health issue and a social problem, but it's not a "humanity will cease to exist" problem; the men who are less affected can father more children.

If reproduction was limited because women's infertility exploded, it would be a different issue. The ones who are fertile can't simply bear 50 babies in a year to make up for it.

BPF is a common used in packaging, water bottles, etc. "BPF exhibits similar estrogenic and anti-androgenic effects on the mammalian endocrine system to those of bisphenol A (BPA)"[0].

I'm very curious how large a factor this is. Personally, once I realized how much plastic I used - from water bottles to food containers - I became very concerned and stopped using it.

More intuitive explanations make sense to me, like unhealthy, non-active and stress filled lifestyles.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28741210/

This is objectively false. It's a well documented fact that women's health is severely underfunded compared to men's health.

[1] https://fortune.com/2021/03/09/womens-health-research-fda-tr...

[2] https://www.everydayhealth.com/womens-health/womens-health-w...

[3] https://theconversation.com/gender-bias-in-medicine-and-medi...

[4] https://www.northwell.edu/katz-institute-for-womens-health/a...

[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/08/24/the-surprising...

I think it's frankly weird to see what is clearly a male health issue and make a jab at women's health funding when its not like the article was talking about comparing to women's issues. This is very whataboutism.

When you've seen women's issues get tons of attention and funding for decades and any attempts to do the same for similar men's issues get ignored at best, you can get kind of bitter. This image kind of encapsulates the entire dynamic for me:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeE3J_jXoAABWXi.jpg

But like, why are we griping about women getting more attention, literally on a comment chain about male issues? We're just giving the attention back to women, which is what you had an issue with in the first place??? If your problem is that men aren't focused on enough, let's talk about men in this study that studied men.

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