Sperm count lowered

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33671, 22 October 1974, Page 25

Sperm count lowered

Drs William Masters andi Virginia Johnson said that frequent sex reduces the males sperm count and the chance of impregnating the female drops accordingly. Speaking at ,the annual

i convention of the Planned Parenthood Federation, Dr Masters cited the case of a young couple who engaged in intercourse three times a day and went to the Masters and Johnson laboratory in St Louis to ask why the wife did not get pregnant. A test showed the husband had a very low sperm count. Dr Masters said that the couple was advised to wait at least 36 hours between each time they had intercourse. In two months she had conceived. “That was a case of natural contraception,” Dr Masters said. ' “As you can imagine they immediately went back to their three-times-a-day routine, except when they wanted the wife to conceive. They had three children — all of them according to plan.” Masters said that he favours total sexual equality in which the couple considers sex as a natural function. He said that changes in feminine attitudes toward sex have wrongly created great pressures on men. “In the past the prevailing attitude was that sex was something that a man did to a woman,” Dr Masters said. “The woman usually accepted the fact that she was

[being done to and engaged [in sex as a duty. ' “Changing attitudes gave; ; women the proper idea that They, too, should enjoy sex' ; but the mistaken notion that! [sex is something the man: has to do for her,” he said.. [“We’ve changed from the (man doing it to a woman to| ,idoing it for her.” .! He said that this placed 11 “tremendous pressure on thei man, knowing he has to i please his wife.” I “Sex is a natural funcition,” Dr Masters said. “We • 1 can’t do it for each other but with each other it can happen.”