SPERMATOZOÏDS IN DANGER

An article published in 1992 by the British Medical Journal made a splash. The authors say that man, under the strain of his environment, produces less and less spermatozoïds. Received at the time with scepticism by the scientific community, the theory has since made its way and has raised the curiosity of researchers throughout the world. Like detectives, they explore all the possibilities that could lead to the causes of this decline. In this film, we follow step-by-step this hunt. Pushing open the doors of laboratories, we discover how a tescticle cell is destroyed by a chemical substance. Following an epidemiologist on the grounds of the company, the employees are confronted directly with the taboos, the reluctance, and the information problems, their involvement raises. In three different studies, we can measure the professional risk that are under the users of such a chemical product, or the practice of such a task at the level of the population. In meeting a Public Health specialist, we realize what is left to be done so that scientist, politicians, and industrial set up a preventive
policy, and create a management of sanitary risks that the public can accept. Finally, this documentary takes us on a journey from Argentina to Danemark, from Germany to France. A surprising trip at the heart of the daily lives of researchers, and the populations of these countries, a invitation to discover at their side their questions, their doubts, or their beliefs faced with the threat the environment puts on masculine fertility. In a nutshell, an immersion into pluridisciplinary research – that involves andrologists, epidemiologists, biologists – still at its beginnings but that has already offered its most incredible script, and that gives Public Health its most incredicle challenge for generations to come and for the survival of the species.