| Researcher Lani Burkman, Ph.D., of the University of Buffalo School of Medicine said that the data show that male long-term smokers are likely to have reproductive problems. "In a direct fertility testing situation, we can show that two-thirds of smokers have lost some or a lot of their fertilizing capacity," said Burkman.
Burkman and colleagues measured the binding capability of sperm taken from 18 chronic smokers and compared their data to sperm from nonsmokers. Only 6 of the 18 smokers had even 65 percent of the reproductive capacity of the control group; nine had 35 percent or less of the capacity of nonsmokers. "Not only did they fail, they failed miserably," said Burkman. |
