The Control Goup

1 in 6 couples in Canada have fertility issues, which is to say trouble making babies, and that is just those couples trying to have babies not a reflection of us selfish folk who just choose not to have children.

Fertility rates in Canada hit their peak in the 1970's and have been on the decline ever since. Interestingly recent immigrants have a higher fertility rate but over time fertility rates of immigrants decline to resemble the fertility rates of the general population.
 
This seems to imply that the infertility in Canada is a result of environmental factors strong enough to overcome our supposed food surplus. Many of these factors will be listed on any website talking about women's fertility issues but one I find conspicuously absent is genetically modified food. A typical dismissal of this environmental factor is: “scientists are still studying the relationship between GM foods and the increase in low birth weight human babies, fertility problems, and other health problems affecting the human population." They have figured out that GM feed does seem to cause these problems for rats but they are rats not humans.
 
Whats my point? My point is that there is a really big experiment going on, not just with GM food but also new chemicals (herbicides, pesticides, drugs, etc.) and micro-radiation. (Well really a bunch of massive, population wide experiments going on at the same time - which, conveniently enough, make it impossible to assign blame to things like low birth weights and infertility on one specific culprit.) So those modern “back to the landers” are not the freaky hippies you like to think of them as. Well, OK, a lot of them are but a lot of others are just people who have decided that if we are going to be part of a huge environmental experiment, like it or not, they are at least going to try to be part of the control group of guinea pigs. And lets face it, there are signs that it might not turn out well for the test group.