    16

    nigh

    t. The only creatures growing fat were the hyenas, who feasted on

    the discarded corpses.19

    Male expendability starts in the womb.  The egg of the female

    inches in solitary splendor down the fallopian tube, inviting

    impregnation.  It has no competition.  On the other hand, the

    sperm--the male's contribution to procreation--vigorously swim the

    lengthy course up the vagina and uterus, beating their long, thin tails

    in an effort to outrace the millions of their brothers headed for that

    solitary egg.  Only a single spermatozoa--one literally "chosen" by the

    ova--manages to finally penetrate the egg's outer membrane and

    achieve the grand prize of impregnation.  The losers die.

    But that is merely a preview of the casual manner in which

    nature tosses male lives away.  Male foetuses are the primary victims

    of natural abortions, miscarriages and stillbirths.  When times are

    tough, nature shows her preference by hiking the rates of spontaneous

    abortion for males to higher than normal, but continuing her tendency

    to preserve her embryonic daughters.20    As  James  V.  Neel  of  the

    University of Washington says, for males "in utero it's a jungle."

    Things don't get any better after birth.  In their first few years of

    life, male babies have a higher death rate than their sisters.  Then the

    nasty habits built into the male genes begin to take their toll.  Even in a

    nice, civilized spot like Alameda, California, where researchers

    performed a longitudinal study of 5,000 adults, males were nearly four

    times more likely to lose their lives to homicide than females.  And

    they were twice as likely to be accident victims.  Their own aggression

    and bravado did them in.

    But cockiness is not the only thing that mows men down.  They

    are twice as likely to be victims of lung cancer, suicide, pulmonary

    disease, cirrhoses and heart disease.  The immune systems of females

    work far more efficiently than those of males.  How can you encourage

    the male immune apparatus to function at a higher level?  There is a

    way, but I wouldn't recommend it: castration.  The single trick that

    <<  <  GO  >  >>