We’ve long known laptops can cause male infertility when used right where the name suggests – i.e. right on your lap. That’s long before they started exploding left and right – simply by heating up the family jewels they can drastically reduce a man’s ability to reproduce. (Hm…is that why manufacturers switched to calling them notebooks?)

Now we find out extensive cellphone usage results in the same:

“Those who made calls on a mobile phone for more than four hours a day had the worst sperm counts and the poorest quality sperm, according to results released yest at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in New Orleans.”

The mechanism of the damage is not yet known:

“Doctors believe the damage could be caused by the electromagnetic radiation emitted by handsets or the heat they generate.”

Heat? Give me a break! I don’t know about you, but I either hold it to my ears or use a headset, but it’s never … you know .. down there.

Anyway, true geeks have their laptops and cellphones permanently glued to them – if they become infertile, are geeks becoming an endangered species?

Update (10/30): Read the ZDNet story by David Berlind.

Update (1/4/08):  Wow, I can’t believe this: Yossi  Vardi uses my post in his TED presentation. 🙂 (It’s a 2 minutes 13 seconds)

Tags: endangered species, geeks, laptops, mobile phones, fertility, infertility, male fertility, scrotal temperature, sperm count