Hum. Reprod. Advance Access originally published online on July 17, 2007
Human Reproduction 2007 22(9):2572-2573; doi:10.1093/humrep/dem228
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Letters to the Editor |
Testis development, beef consumption and study methods
Animal Reproduction and Biotechnology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Ft Collins, CO 80523, USA
1 Correspondence address. Tel: +1-970-226-0682; Fax: +1-970-226-2340; E-mail: rpalra63@msn.com
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Sir,
We read with interest the paper by Swan et al. (2007)
. For reasons outlined below, we have concluded that the study might receive more credence than justified. Typically, pre-study reviews include: (i) is the question or goal important; and (ii) can the best answer to the question(s) posed be obtained via the planned methods. The unstated but described goal of this study was to non-invasively examine spermatogenesis in fertile adult men, to determine if beef consumption by their mother during pregnancy might have affected fetal development of their testes, as evidenced by seminal characteristics many years later. The underlying question, if meat might be an important vector to inadvertently deliver xenotoxins to pregnant mothers, and hence their fetuses, is important. Quantitative and qualitative aspects of spermatogenesis were probed via analysis of semen in a single masturbation sample from each male. Swan et al. (2007)
did not mention why