Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fumed about the sperm count of teenage boys as he talked up his own ability to procreate.
Speaking alongside President Donald Trump as the administration announced plans to make IVF more affordable, the father of seven also lamented that girls were going through puberty earlier and that “our parents aren’t having children.”
“Today, the average teenager in this country has 50 per cent of the sperm count, 50 per cent of the testosterone as a 65-year-old man,” Kennedy said.
“Our girls are hitting puberty six years earlier, and that’s bad, but also our parents aren’t having children. Parents who want to have children do not have access. I have seven children. I feel that God has blessed me with that, and I can’t imagine how different my life would be if I did not have that blessing.”
The comments are not the first time Kennedy has sounded the alarm on sperm counts in America, but they immediately raised eyebrows, with some observers branding them as “creepy”.
In April, he sounded off on Fox over declining testosterone levels among teenagers in his bid to rid artificial food dyes.
“Seventy-four percent of our kids cannot qualify for military service,” he said. “We have fertility rates that are just spiraling. A teenager today—an American teenager—has less testosterone than a 68-year-old man. Sperm counts are down 50 percent.”
The facts regarding sperm counts are unclear. Although sperm count declines with age, data is scarce, according to NBC News.
“This is a very contentious issue in our field, and for every paper that you find that suggests a decline and raises an alarm for this issue, there’s another paper that says that the numbers aren’t changing, and that there’s no cause for concern,” Dr. Scott Lundy, a reproductive urologist at the Cleveland Clinic, told the outlet in July.
They were not the only notable remarks made at Thursday’s Oval Office event.
Celebrity doctor-turned-Medicare administrator Mehmet Oz predicted there would be “a lot of Trump babies” as a result of the administration’s fertility reforms, after years of America being “under-babied.”
“The fundamental creative force in society is about making babies,” he said.
Meanwhile, Trump–who last year told a women’s forum that he was the “Father of IVF”–declared that he was paving the way for “healthier babies and many more beautiful American children.”
Under the reforms announced on Thursday, the administration will issue guidance encouraging employers to offer fertility benefits directly to their employees, similar to dental or vision benefits.
The administration also struck a deal with fertility medication company EMD Serono to slash the price of some of the company’s fertility medicines in exchange for relief from planned tariffs on pharmaceuticals imported into the U.S.
The changes fall far short of the promise Trump made during his 2024 election campaign, when he vowed to make IVF free by requiring health insurers to provide coverage for it.
The new guidance, for instance, will allow employers to offer add-on coverage at a fixed cost for patients and employers, but it is unclear how much the effort will increase coverage, as it does not mandate that employers participate.
Nonetheless, Trump touted the reforms as “the boldest and most significant actions ever taken by any president to bring the miracle of life into more American homes.”
“For years American couple struggling with infertility have faced punishing costs in their quest to start a family and IVF is among the most expensive treatments of all,” he said.
“A single round of IVF in the United States can cost up to $25,000 – and can actually go a lot higher than that aS many couples require multiple rounds for a successful pregnancy. The major reason for these high prices is the excessive costs of the drugs involved.… The drugs are going to come down.”
The post RFK Jr.’s Bonkers Teen Sperm Rant appeared first on The Daily Beast.
