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The Revolutionary Birth Control Method for Men
- armored 15y agoThe video is excruciating. Make sure you watch it.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rrrazdan 15y ago>“If it’s no longer a crazy Indian idea and it’s something that’s working in India and in rabbits in Ohio and in the first 20 men in the US,” Lissner says, “then there’s got to be a point where there’s just no excuse for a Gates or a Buffett not to get on board.” The words "crazy Indian idea" hit me as offensive at first. But I guess that's just the way the world perceives us and its up to us to change that.
- BasDirks 15y agoIt should warn me "DO NOT CLICK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE HAIRY BALLS"
- jonsantana 15y agoseeing any kind of operation done in that region I come to think a condom is actually a pretty good idea
- bakbak 15y agoThis is going to change the world ... this is by far going to have deepest sociological impact (good & bad) on the society ... because many men will use this secretly without telling their partner to avoid having kids ... which eventually will bring enormous decrease in population ... Now someone should come out with novel technique to avoid STD without using condoms ... combination of these 2 techniques will be VIOLA !!!!! :)
- ericmoritz 15y agoWe'd see the return of the sexual revolution.
- bakbak 15y agoExactly - this takes away the one of the biggest fear a man has while having sex ...
- hugh3 15y agobecause many men will use this secretly without telling their partner to avoid having kids ... which eventually will bring enormous decrease in population ... I doubt there are that many men who want to secretly make themselves infertile in order to not give their wives the children they want to have. combination of these 2 techniques will be VIOLA I'm really not sure what violas have to do with it.
- bakbak 15y agoVIOLA = one stone will kill multiple birds (no condoms, no pills, no snipping , NO FEAR of having unwanted Kids, No FEAR of STD, etc. etc. etc.)
- saool 15y agoViola is the american far-too-spread wrong spelling of the french expression voilà, which could be translated roughly to "behold" or "that's it". Et voilà :)
- hugh3 15y agoWhat I found amusing was that not only did he misspell voila (and I'm not gonna be pedantic about the accent mark because I'm too lazy to remember how to type it myself), he also managed to use it in a place that voila wouldn't have made sense either.
- thasmin 15y agoA 100% effective, low maintenance, reversible birth control method could have an incredible effect on the future of the species. I'm guessing the benefits of fewer unwanted children will be incredible. The possible downsides include a dangerously low birth rate and forced temporary sterilization, but I think the long term effects will be very positive.
- ComputerGuru 15y agoI don't get the part about "forced temporary sterilization." If people want to force you to be sterile, wouldn't they use a different method?
- thasmin 15y agoYes, you're right. This discovery won't change anything in that regard. I was thinking about 1984-like scenarios that are very unlikely.
- T-R 15y agoFor places with runaway population growth that might be interested, a temporary, effective, and low-maintenance method might be more politically palatable than the alternatives.
- forensic 15y ago"temporary" e.g. Offer people generous welfare if they elect to undergo this temporary birth control procedure.
- delinka 15y agoYou are correct. Except for that part of the population that believes contraception is immoral. Or that rather large part of the population that can't afford the procedure or choose to remain ignorant of even basic contraception. Something like this is certainly more convenient, but ultimately the best method is education.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
- bzupnick 15y agodid they really have to put that picture on the bottom....uch
- Aloisius 15y agoFor those who aren't interested in seeing a picture of a scrotum being operated on, the technique described is a polymer that is injected into the vas deferens. As sperm pass the polymer, their membranes and tails are damaged. The technique can be reversed using a solvent.
- w1ntermute 15y agoSo that means that once you have the procedure done on you, you don't have to do anything (no regular medicine) until you want it reversed?
- ComputerGuru 15y agoYes.
- Sukotto 15y agoSign me up! I have 3 kids and the existing methods available for ensuring we don't have a 4th are, at best, inconvenient. (Condoms are annoying; the pill messes with my wife's emotions; and either of us getting snipped seems scarily irreversible.) I'll be keeping an eye open for trials here in the US and on any more news about this procedure trickling out from India. hooray for science!
- colanderman 15y agoTo second yahelc's post... definitely look into IUDs. My SO has been on the non-hormonal (copper) one for 2 years. The only downside was her first cycle post-insertion being rather painful. They are covered by most health insurance plans -- heck, she was on the state's insurance and even they covered it.
- mattdeboard 15y agoPlus vasectomy sounds scary painful and potentially dangerous. I'm done having kids but I don't wanna get snipped. Granulomas? In MY testicles? It's more likely than I think.
- saool 15y agoBonus points for reading the whole article without flinching!
- jjclarkson 15y agoIf you just lost your appetite for the entire day when you saw the single shot on that video, you are not alone.
- Vivtek 15y agoI am greatly enjoying my chicken with mac and cheese and mashed potatoes, thank you. (I did flinch, though.)
- ComputerGuru 15y agoWow. The entire premise of the article aside, for me the idea that medical treatments can be made with physics and not medicine was an incredible, incredible revelation. This man (not a doctor!) has invented a method to neutralize sperm in a way that would never have occurred to me. He uses the most basic principles of physics (magnetic charge) to neutralize sperm! Realizing that sperm is negatively charging, he simply coats a short section of the inside of the vas (tiny tube going from testes to the penis, located in the scrotum) with a positively-charged polymer. As sperm travels in this coated tube, the ionic attraction causes damage on a cellular level in the sperm, the pull effect effectively destroying the sperm "tail" and preventing it from fertilizing a female but without hormonal/medical methods! For me, as an engineer, this was a true revelation.
- growt 15y agoAm I missing something, or does the article in no way explain what is charged and how? magnetic charge? really? I don't think so.
- hugh3 15y agoAs a physicist, I have been, on odd occasions of boredom and quarter-life-crisis, tempted to go into medicine. But the only type of medicine I'd be interested in is radiology. Walk in, cure a patient with physics, walk out, earn $600K a year. Sounds pretty sweet! What's that? You have cancer? No worries, I have radioactive beams! Zap! You're cured! Unfortunately you gotta go through many years of the more usual, squishy form of medicine before they'll let you become a radiologist, so I stuck with my existing career path.
- randallsquared 15y agoI knew a radiation oncologist in the late 90s, and his reason for becoming a webapp startup founder instead was that radiology was destroying him: in that field, most of your patients die, rather than being cured. You're mostly just prolonging things.
- dmm 15y ago
- hippich 15y agoNow if only they could invent something revolutionary for treating infertility...
- grantbachman 15y agoI would sign up for this procedure in a heartbeat, but it still doesn't get around the (albeit not perfect) STD protection condoms can provide. If this takes off, people probably won't wear condoms most of the time, and the number of people being diagnosed with STD's will skyrocket.
- hoprocker 15y agoCould be. The question you suggest is then: do we keep this off the market to protect humanity from itself? Should we retract oral contraception on the same grounds? There are many inferences that could be hand-waved here, but, fundamentally, RISUG increases the range of options related to reproductive choice, no more.
- grantbachman 15y agoNo, I'm not suggesting that at all, merely stating an observation. As long as people know the operation doesn't protect you from contracting STD's, that's good enough for me. It's their choice whether to still use a condom or not. In my opinion it can't get to market fast enough! Even if it doesn't end up being 100% effective, it's another layer of protection.
- hoprocker 15y agoEducation is always important, agreed.
- matwood 15y agoIf this takes off, people probably won't wear condoms most of the time, and the number of people being diagnosed with STD's will skyrocket. I don't understand this thinking. To me condoms have always been about STD protection and not pregnancy prevention. I'd like to think for most people this idea will not change. I mean if you barely know a girl and she tells you that she's on the pill so you don't need a condom that should be a giant, screaming in your ear red flag to put your clothes back on and run home. I don't see how this will be any different if a guy tells a girl the same thing.
- haberman 15y agoIn its report, the WHO team agreed that the concept of RISUG was intriguing. But they found fault with the homegrown production methods: Guha and his staff made the concoction themselves in his lab, and the WHO delegation found his facilities wanting by modern pharmaceutical manufacturing standards. Furthermore, they found that Guha’s studies did not meet “international regulatory requirements” for new drug approval—certain data was missing. The final recommendation: WHO should pass on RISUG. Is this an example of why health care is so incredibly expensive in this country? Do these "modern pharmaceutical manufacturing standards" actually buy us extra safety?
- zemaj 15y agoThis process may be a preferable alternative to condoms, but it does not stop the spread of STDs. From the WHOs perspective there's no obvious benefit. I suspect this may be the real cause of their lack of interest.
- pyre 15y ago> Do these "modern pharmaceutical manufacturing standards" actually buy us > extra safety? They certainly buy us jobs for bureaucrats. Recently the FDA confiscated all of the birthing pools (related to the surge in popularity of water births). Apparently inflatable pools should be classified as 'medical devices.' To quote the FDA, "pregnacy is an illness and birth is a medical procedure."
- towelrod 15y agoDo you have a source for that quote?
- pyre 15y ago* http://blog.cuntastic.org/2011/05/26/birth-pools-seized-by-fda-in-portland-or/ http://blog.cuntastic.org/2011/05/26/birth-pools-seized-by-f... * http://blog.cuntastic.org/2011/05/27/interview-with-barbara-harper/ http://blog.cuntastic.org/2011/05/27/interview-with-barbara-...
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- rmc 15y agoWill this cause an increase in sexually transmitted diseases? If straight men don't have to wear condoms for pregnancy-avoidance, and straight men & women don't like to pretend/boast that they've had lots of sex (unlike gay couples), then the pressure to go bareback (without a condom) increases and there might be more HIV/AIDS/STIs
- Wickk 15y ago>straight men & women don't like to pretend/boast that they've had lots of sex (unlike gay couples), then the pressure to go bareback (without a condom) increases and there might be more HIV/AIDS/STIs If I'm reading this right, you're under the impression that a condom protects you against the vast majority of STIs, correct? Yeah no. Condoms are primarily preventative towards towards diseases that are spread via Semen, vaginal fluids, and skin to skin contact only on the area it covers. Syphilis, Herpes( which can also be spread via oral sex ), Genital Warts, and crabs as a loose example ( There's more ) are not prevented by a condom. Aside from HIV/Aids ( in which case African American women are the highest rate of infected ) that quip was pointless as was this post.
- rmc 15y agoYes, you're right that STDs can still be spread with condom use, but with condoms the odds are better.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoProbably not. Insurance already covers vasectomy since it's much cheaper than paying for a pregnancy/childbirth/child medical expenses/etc and it doesn't seem to have resulted in increase in STD. Odds are, if you have medical insurance, you can get a vasectomy for a co-pay of $20 and the procedure only takes about 15 minutes. I'm fairly sure that Planned Parenthood in the US also does it cheaply. My gut tells me that the guys who are responsible enough to get vasectomies if they really don't want kids are also responsible enough to wear condoms. The converse is likely also true!
- lucasjung 15y ago
- spidaman 15y agoYet another illustration about how broken the health care system is in the US. Pharmaceutical and medical device companies are disincented to produce cost effective treatments, it's really an outrage. Medicine in the US is geared towards costly treatments that are needed on a recurring basis; we're inundated with marketing and profit driven medicine. IMO, the NIH and FDA should be promoting a research-rewarded system that promotes cost effective and potentially society-shifting treatments such as RISUG.
- bakbak 15y agoi always wonder why dont we have atleast one country on this planet that has some kind of fast-track approval process for this kind of research and solutions ??? also it shouldn't be costing millions - something like this should be self funded by the govt. ... tax payers are made to pay for many stupid things but research like this should be treated as "Too Big To Fail" !!!!
- ph0rque 15y agoYeah, I was thinking this would be a great kickstarter project. "Pledge $100 or more: get this procedure done for no additional cost, once available."
- bakbak 15y agoFantastic Idea - crowd financing at its BEST !!
- jcromartie 15y agoI have nothing to add except that reading the description of the process made me feel physically uncomfortable.
- sudont 15y agoThat's because you've got a physical identifier of this concept in your mind. Does the idea of a pacemaker feel bad? Probably not, because your "heart" is an abstract idea--you'll probably never see it with your own eyes. A lot of professors teaching dissection have noted your feelings, girls in general don't have a squeamishness to overcome in testicular dissection since they don't have that externality of organs.
- netcan 15y agoJust reading your comment made me squeamish. Very squeamish.
- fastfinner 15y agoWow I never associated squeamishness with physicality/abstractness of the idea. It does seem to hold up!
- deskamess 15y agoMe too. I have had to lie down in the past from dizziness just from reading articles that described 'body cuts/surgeries' in that level of detail. sudonts response below is also noted, and agreed with.
- solarmist 15y agoThe world has been promising male birth control for decades now and the techniques (There are several that all work at almost 100% and are fully reversible) are proven (numerous long term trials, I can think of two from a decade ago off the top of my head, one in Washington state and one in Australia, in their final stages, with fewer side-effects, complications and failures than female birth control) and much more effective than female birth control (100% in most cases). I've been reading about it actively since I was 15 and now I'm 30 and I'm still reading about how it's 5 years away. I want this so bad it hurts, but no one is bringing it to market. The problem is there isn't (enough of?) an incentive to actually put out these treatments. I guess the money just doesn't compare to female birth control.
- puredemo 15y agoIf enough people want it, and they will, there is incentive.
- solarmist 15y agoBut apparently not enough to bring it to market. This is just another example of a male birth control that won't even make it to clinical trials in the G8 nations for another two decades at a minimum. Are people just that much more skittish about messing with male birth control that it needs 10x the evidence of female birth control before it comes to market, or have government agencies just gotten that much more strict/paranoid?
- hugh3 15y agoThe problem is there isn't (enough of?) an incentive to actually put out these treatments. I guess the money just doesn't compare to female birth control One issue is that public health authorities are (probably quite legitimately) concerned that improved male birth control methods will lead to a decrease in the use of condoms and an increase in STDs.
- frossie 15y agoAside from the STD issue, a condom is a contraception method that is instantly verifiable. "It's okay baby, I have had the invisible sperm destroying procedure" is a bit harder to check.
- noonespecial 15y agoLooks like the future of space, medicine, and technology belongs to the countries that have not yet hobbled themselves with lawyers and bureaucrats to the point that something must be perfect if it is to exist at all.
- jgervin 15y agoTotally agree. If they continue without all the lawyers they will be far more advanced in 20 years. If this or some offshoot ever makes it to the US, we should see a dramatic decrease in family law, Federal subsides for child support, and could lead to dramatic decrease in crime. That is, if it becomes as available as womens birth control.
- camiller 15y agoYou are making a huge leap from "this is an effective method of birth control" to "people will use this". See the movie Idiocracy. (actually just see the opening bit.)
- thaumaturgy 15y agoIdiocracy isn't exactly based on fact. (It's an OK movie though.) For one thing, there's no evidence, that I know of, that supports the claim that only "smart" parents have smart children, or that smart parents don't have dumb children, or that dumb parents don't have smart children, and so on. Although genetics likely plays some role in "natural" intelligence, it's far from a simple hereditary relationship, and there's increasing evidence that the bulk of natural intelligence is actually the result of environmental factors during early child development.
- pohl 15y agoDid the movie really contain genetic claims? I took the sequence at the beginning to be more a criticism of Cleavon's cultural traits. (example: "I thought you was on the pill or some shit!") In fact, most of the movie's humor centered around a downward cultural slide. Kids do pick up their parents memes more readily, after all.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- shawndumas 15y agoAll On One Page: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/all/1
- newobj 15y agohello NSFW.
- KeyBoardG 15y agoThere should be a NSFW in the link title.
- mkempe 15y agoI have a two-year old daughter. I want more kids, not fewer. If I had known how amazing raising a kid was, I would have started sooner. Smart people need to bring more smart people to the world.
- michaeldhopkins 15y agoNot to mention that your daughter is a creative person who will solve all kinds of problems and improve the lives of the people she encounters. Sadly, theoretical "other people's children" are assumed to be dead weight who consume food and oil and do nothing else. Some people are actively misled into living harmful lives and a rare few generate their own evil motivations, but the majority simply live up to low expectations set by the people who prefer widespread contraception over births. A startup that changed the way intelligent people view children would change the world in a much more dramatic and useful way than this contraceptive medicine.
- anonymous246 15y agoYou comment puzzles me. Hopefully you will reply below. Are you discounting the value of reversible birth control based upon your feelings at a certain point in time? Also remember that evolution has probably programmed children be "amazing" until they can fend for themselves. Presumably you're comfortably middle-class in a first-world country with a good social contract (yes, kid-friendly services like subsidized/free public schools and universities are a safety net). You need to step back and think about societies which don't have such luxuries. And sorry to get all personal on you, but do you use ANY scientific form of birth control? Are you ok with you/your SO getting pregnant every year (unsure about your gender, hence hedging)? That's usually what happens w/o birth control. If you do use scientific birth control (so-called "rhythm" method etc don't count) then your comment is pretty hypocritical.
- mkempe 15y agoI started two write a response, twice, but your arbitrary assumptions don't deserve answers. Your general tone does not indicate a desire for dialogue.
- nahlyee 15y ago“I’d gladly put my balls on the chopping block for the benefit of mankind.” Great quote! That should be the mantra for entrepreneurs.