Allan Pacey is a Volunteer Writer at BioNews and a Trustee at the charity that publishes it, the Progress Educational Trust (PET). He is also Professor of Andrology at the University of Sheffield's Medical School and Head of Andrology at Jessop Fertility, where he oversees diagnostic semen analysis and the sperm banking facility. He received an MBE for services to reproductive medicine in the New Year Honours List 2016. He is a science writer and broadcaster, and has worked both behind and in front of the camera on TV programmes including Inside the Human Body on BBC1, The Truth About Food on BBC2, Make Me a Baby and Lab Rats on BBC3, and The Great Sperm Race on Channel 4. He is regularly interviewed on programmes including the Today programme and Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, and he was Scientific Adviser on the film Donor Unknown: Adventures in the Sperm Trade. He is a founding member of the Association of Biomedical Andrologists, and Editor in Chief of the journal Human Fertility. Previously, he was Chair of the British Fertility Society, Chair of the Steering Group for the UK National External Quality Assurance Scheme for Andrology, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Society for Reproduction and Fertility's journal Reproduction. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and he tweets as @AllanPacey
The eighth child of Charlie Chaplin was born when he was 73 and as far as we know has lived a healthy life. However, whilst most men remain fertile into their old age, it has long been recognised that to father children later in life increases the risk of their...
Twenty-five years ago, I recall sitting in a journal club in which the collective minds tore apart the then recently published (and still much quoted) meta-analysis by Elizabeth Carlsen, 'Evidence for decreasing quality of semen during past 50 years'. Thi
The finding that men who were conceived as a result of ICSI have lower sperm counts is not surprising, but the good news is that they are not as low as might have been expected...
When I was first telephoned by a journalist to ask what I thought about the proposal that the NHS should pay for the sperm banking of every 18-year-old male in order to guard against reproductive ageing, I said just one word: 'Crackers!'...
'Inside the Human Body' is the new science series playing out on BBC One at 9pm on Thursday evenings. It is a four-part series showing the workings of the human body and is presented by Michael Mosley. The first programme (broadcast on 5 May 2011) titled 'Creation' took the viewer on a spectacular journey to illustrate the science of conception, fetal development and birth...
Crystal ball gazing has never been my strong suit but I found myself rising to the challenge now that I have taken over the mantle of Chairman of the British Fertility Society. What is clear is that 2012 should turn out to be an interesting year...
Nearly 10 years ago, Professor Niels Skakkebæk from the Copenhagen University Hospital, published details of a new syndrome to account for the apparent increase in problems related to the male reproductive system that had been documented in many countries...
Thanks to the successful conviction of two men from Reading, we now know trading in fresh sperm on the internet is illegal. Sounds like a lesson in the obvious, but this is the first time the law has been clarified - after many years of watching several of these so-called businesses appear and disappear. Hopefully, we will now finally see an end to such operations...
Male infertility has been in the news again this week, with journalists pouncing on some data presented at the joint meeting of the Association of Clinical Embryologists and the British Fertility Society in Liverpool. What caught the media's attention was a report from researchers in Aberdeen who had presented preliminary...
