| 1341/
A survey in the UK in 1989 showed that if a man spent more
than 80 per cent of his time with his partner between sexual
acts, she was almost never unfaithful to him. Less time than
that though, and the chances of her infidelity increased significantly,
rising to over 10 per cent if he spent less than 10 per cent
of his time with her.
1342/ Studies of families
in Canada and Britain show that a man in a blended family
(households in which some of the children are the man's genetic
offspring and some are his stepchildren) is seven times more
likely to abuse his stepchildren than his genetic children
- and a massive 100 times more likely to kill them.
1343/ Studies of the
forest-dwelling Ache people in Paraguay showed that 9 per
cent of children raised by a mother and stepfather were killed
before their fifteenth birthday compared with less than 1
per cent of those raised by two genetic parents.
1344/ In Australia, Canada
and the United States, over 50 per cent of children in lone-mother
families are living below the poverty line. Countries such
as Denmark, Finland and Sweden have a high percentage of children
in lone-mother families, yet fewer than 10 per cent live below
the poverty line, thanks to the mitigating effect of government
support.
1345/ By early 1998,
the US national database contained DNA samples from 260,000
people, all with criminal records, with 1000 or more being
added each month. Police try to match DNA patterns of blood,
hair or semen stains found at the scene of a crime to past
offenders. The database achieves between 300 to 500 matches
a week, and 80 per cent of these matches result in guilty
pleas.
1346/ A woman becomes
pregnant most easily at the age of eighteen or nineteen, with
little real change until the mid twenties. There is then a
slow decline to age thirty-five, a sharper decline to age
forty-five and a very rapid decline as the women nears menopause.
1347/ Only one in three
fertile couples manage conception in the very first month
of a campaign and, on average, a healthy, fertile couple will
take four or five months to conceive.
1348/ A worldwide study
of human infertility carried out by the World Health Organization
and published in 1990 concluded that about 15 per cent of
humans are infertile. In industrial countries the figure is
nearer 10 per cent and is roughly equal for men and women.
The result is that about one in six couples find it impossible,
or at least extremely difficult, to conceive. Out of every
100 cases of infertility, about 40 can be traced to problems
in the female, forty to problems in the male, and the remainder
to conditions in each partner that interact to cause sterility.
1349/ In non-industrial
cultures all women breast-feed their children for an average
of 2.8 years (but up to five years in some cultures). In contrast,
the majority of women in industrial societies nowadays avoid
breast feeding. In Britain in 1990, for example, although
60 per cent or so of new mothers made some attempt to breast-feed,
within a fortnight the figure was down to 50 per cent and
after six weeks was down to 40 per cent. Only one in ten women
breast-fed past nine months.
1350/ Roughly 10 per
cent of men - which in the US translates into a total of over
10 million men - are suffering from impotence at any one time.
1351/ The rate of manufacture
of sperm in a man's testes is about 300 million a day during
the years of peak production between the ages of twenty and
thirty. That means that well over 1000 sperm are matured with
every beat of the man's heart. This does not mean though,
that each sperm is quickly made. In fact it takes about seventy-two
days - over two months - from first cell division to a sperm
being ejaculated.
1352/ According to a
survey of American men by Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey in the 1940's,
nearly one in five of those raised on farms claimed that at
least once in their lives they had copulated with livestock.
1353/ The risk of Down's
Syndrome (an extra chromosome 21) rises with age. Studies
suggest that over the age of thirty-five, about one-third
of a woman's eggs are chromosomally abnormal. At age twenty-five,
the risk of Down's is 1 in 1500; by forty it is 1 in a 100,
and at forty-five, one in thirty.
1354/ The humble condom
gets its name from the personal physician to King Charles
II, the Earl of Condom, who recommended its use to the king
as an aid to prevent the contraction of syphilis.
1355/ When sperm were
first seen down a microscope about 300 years ago, scientists
really thought they could see tiny whole humans in human sperm,
donkeys in donkey sperm, and so on. The entities were hence
named spermatozoa, which means 'seed animals'.
1356/ In Europe and the
US less then 1 per cent of men are exclusively homosexual;
with another 5 per cent being bisexual. In women the figures
are far less than 1 per cent exclusively lesbians, and another
2 percent bisexual.
1357/ In the UK in the
1990s, 10 per cent of men had paid for sex at least once in
their lives by the time they were fifty.
1358/ Currently, about
40 per cent of women in their fifties and early sixties in
the US and about 33 per cent of such women in Britain now
take hormones every day (ie HRT - Hormone Replacement Therapy)
1359/ The probability
of a viable pregnancy is approximately 20 per cent with one
IVF (in vitro fertilization) cycle.
1360/ Pregnancy in humans
lasts on average about 270 days (from conception to birth).
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