Shanna Helen Swan (born May 1936) is an American environmental and reproductive epidemiologist who is Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS or Mount Sinai), formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City, New York, United States. The school is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sina ...

, where she has taught since April 2011. She is known for her research on environmental contributions to

sperm count A semen analysis (plural: semen analyses), also called seminogram or spermiogram, evaluates certain characteristics of a male's semen and the sperm contained therein. It is done to help evaluate male fertility, whether for those seeking pregnancy ...

and the male infertility crisis.

Early life

Swan was born in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States. Her father, Rudolph Wittenberg, was

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321 CE, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish commu ...

, and her mother, Goldie Ray Polturak, was American. She studied mathematics with a minor in logic at the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a Public university, public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York ...

. She studied for her master's degree at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, working with Polish biostatistician

Agnes Berger Agnes P. Berger (1916-2002) was a Hungarian-American mathematician who served as an associate professor of biostatistics at Columbia University's School of Public Health, as well as a statistical consultant at Mount Sinai. Early years Her first ...

. She completed her doctorate in statistics, directed by

Jerzy Neyman Jerzy Spława-Neyman (April 16, 1894 – August 5, 1981; ) was a Polish mathematician and statistician who first introduced the modern concept of a confidence interval into statistical hypothesis testing and, with Egon Pearson, revised Ronald Fis ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Career

After completing her doctorate, Swan worked for insurance company

Kaiser Permanente Kaiser Permanente (; KP) is an American integrated delivery system, integrated managed care consortium headquartered in Oakland, California. Founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield, Sidney R. Garfield, the ...

investigating links between the

oral contraceptive pill Oral contraceptives, abbreviated OCPs, also known as birth control pills, are medications taken by mouth for the purpose of birth control. The introduction of the birth control pill ("the Pill") in 1960 revolutionized the options for contraception, ...

and conditions such as

cervical cancer Cervical cancer is a cancer arising from the cervix or in any layer of the wall of the cervix. It is due to the abnormal growth of cells that can invade or spread to other parts of the body. Early on, typically no symptoms are seen. Later sympt ...

. She later worked for the

California Department of Public Health The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is the state department responsible for public health in California. It is a subdivision of the California Health and Human Services Agency. It enforces some of the laws in the California Health ...

, studying unexplained miscarriages in

Santa Clara County Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259 as of the 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring San Benito County form the ...

. Swan joined a

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

committee in 1995 to research the impact of "hormonally active agents in the environment" sperm counts between 1938 and 1991. She later worked at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

and the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

. She is Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the

, where she has worked since April 2011. In 2017, a paper on which Swan was senior author on environmental contributions to sperm count and the male infertility crisis received significant attention in both the popular media and scholarly literature, becoming the world's 26th most referenced scientific paper published that year. She has also researched the effects of environmental chemicals and

pharmaceutical drugs Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the ...

on the development of the human

reproductive system The reproductive system of an organism, also known as the genital system, is the biological system made up of all the anatomical organs involved in sexual reproduction. Many non-living substances such as fluids, hormones, and pheromones are al ...

. In 2021, with journalist Stacey Colino, Swan co-authored the book ''Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, Threatening Sperm Counts, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race'', which discusses declining sperm counts in men and attributes this decline to endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Personal life

Swan was the first wife of David A. Freedman, with whom she had two children: Joshua Freedman and Deborah Freedman Lustig. She had a third child, Christo Swan, after marrying Henry Swan III. She later married Steven R. Brown.

References

External links

* Living people 1936 births American epidemiologists American women epidemiologists 21st-century American women scientists 20th-century American women scientists University of Rochester faculty Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai faculty City College of New York alumni Columbia University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni {{US-scientist-stub