Sperm and Dr Ronald Ericcson

For the most part wintertime Big Bend resident Ronald Ericsson looks like your everyday joe. He wears blue jeans and cowboy boots and can spin tales ‘til the cows come home. But this family man who holds a PHD in genetics from the University of Kentucky is not your average rancher. He is a scientist, entrepreneur, author of over seventy publications and books in the field of male reproduction. He sat down for an interview with R. M. Glover last month in the mountains of Brewster County near the Big Bend National Park inTexas.

Glover: Dr Ericsson, you hold ten patents in the field of semen analysis, sex selection, male contraception and rodent sterilization and have been studying sperm for forty-seven years? Why sperm?

Ericsson: Population.

Glover: You were the first person to separate the X and Y chromosome in human sperm. How do you do that?

Ericsson: There is a differential ability of X and Y sperm to swim downward in a test tube. The head of X bearing sperm is larger and the tail longer. This allows the Y sperm to swim faster in a viscous albumin medium and reach the bottom of the tube quicker. This fraction of sperm is then isolated and used for artificial insemination. The chances for the selected sex improve from around 50% to 78-85%. In our labs the entire process is completed in three to four hours.

Glover: Today, your Gametrics Ltd Sperm Centers are on five continents. In three of the five, parents prefer males. In America the preference is female.

Ericsson; Yes, women are generally the ones that decide to have artificial insemination and in America today, mothers see daughters having a bright future.

Glover: You’ve had 13 Sperm Centers closed worldwide including China, Turkey, Hong Kong and India. Why?

Ericsson; In the case of India, solicitors fitted with portable ultra-sound instruments provided door to door sex-scanning services for the pregnant. The also provided quick abortions. My process fell victim to the laws designed to stop these questionable practices. In fact our technology would have increased the preferred sex wanted by parents reducing the number of abortions.

Glover: Your son Dr. Scott Ericsson teaches statistics and genetics at Sul Ross State University, and is a co-inventor on some of the patents with you. What’s the probability of both father and son being scientists with PhDs in the same field and both being left-handed?

Ericsson: Scott calculated the odds to be 13 in ten million.

Glover; You live here in the border country of west Texas in the winter time, but your main residence is your ranch in Wyoming, where the Marlboro commercials are shot. What’s the main difference between ranching in west Texas and ranching in Wyoming?

Ericsson: We spend all summer putting up hay.

Glover: Your grandson and my step-daughter are both juniors at Alpine High. What makes a good school?

Ericsson; I can tell you what makes a bad school: when no competition exists. They say ‘No kid left behind.’ Well, what about those who are ahead? They’re ignored in a system that doesn’t teach for knowledge or how to reason but teaches primarily to pass tests. When I look at resumes for my companies and see the 4.0 grad from Harvard, I think ‘test taker’ and throw it away. I want those who are willing to take risks, the ones that sit in the back of the class and ask why. Encourage creativity – that’s what makes a good school. And failure? Schools don’t recognize the power of failure – schools are programmed to prevent failure – if one does not try then one can not fail. Growing up on a ranch in South Dakota, my Swedish father expected hard work from my five siblings and I. And when we failed he would say ‘Try again.’ He never put us down for failure. And fail we did. But we never quit because in the real world there’s no back-up.

Glover: The real world provides a sex ratio of slightly over 50% males at birth. With the higher mortality rate for males, there seems to be a mechanism to produce more males at conception. How does nature get so smart?

Ericsson: Evolution. Species evolve to survive to sexual maturity and then reproduce to perpetuate their genes.

Glover: All that from the carbon atom?

Ericsson: Don’t forget hydrogen and oxygen.

Glover: What about global warming?

Ericsson: The question is whether it’s a variation in the Earth’s long-term processes or the effect of humans. There is no control group to compare it with and therefore no valid answer. There’s a positive side to global warning that nobody talks about, like increased crop production.

Glover: It took you seven and a half years to re-register your rodenticide product EPIBLOC ® with the Environmental Protection Agency. Why so long?

Ericsson: Have you ever attempted to deal with a federal regulatory agency in Washington D.C.?

Glover: The product works like a chemical vasectomy. Is there any secondary poisoning?

Ericsson: No, EPIBLOC is a sterilant only for rats and there is no secondary poisoning.

Glover; Your home use medical device to test male fertility sells for about thirty dollars in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Why isn’t available here?

Ericsson: We need a US company willing to market it before going through the regulatory process. The arduous task of going through a regulatory process to register a pesticide, a new pharmaceutical product or a medical device is time consuming and costly. Small companies have the creativity but large companies have the organization and financial wherewithal to obtain registration.

Glover; Today in this country, more than twenty per cent of our manufactured goods are made overseas. Most of your manufacturing is done in Europe. What do you think of import penetration?

Ericsson: The USA is going through an economic adjustment. Isolation never works.

Glover: You mentioned your granddaughter was told that she had your personality and wasn’t sure if that was a compliment.

Ericsson; Take no prisoners! I developed and marketed three products, a lot for one lifetime; sex selection, male fertility tests and a rat sterilization product. You can’t be Mr. Milquetoast and do that! I’m pleased she has this ‘get out of the way I can do it,’ personality.

Glover; One more question Dr Ericsson. What was it like being interviewed by Oprah?

Ericsson: I liked her, as I did most of the other celebrities that interviewed me over the years. My fifteen minutes of fame is going on 35 years.