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posted by janrinok on Monday April 06 2015, @06:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the tadpole-blocker dept.

In present day 2015, the available options for contraception aren’t great, and the burden still rests largely on women to mitigate the damages of our wanton impulses. Aside from the copper IUD, all the birth control devices and pharmaceuticals available to women alter our hormones with various weird side effects. When it comes to birth control for men, aside from condoms and pulling out (neither of which are very​ reliable in practice), a vasectomy has been the only other option for preventing unwanted pregnancies. Though there’s about a coin-flip chance of it being reversible, those odds aren’t enough to make it something guys under 40 typically consider. A few other male contraceptives are being explored, but there are no approved male contraceptive drugs in the United States.

But what if there was a simple way a man to fire blanks until he and his partner were ready to have a kid—without the snip s​nap?

The pro​cess takes about 15 minutes. A doctor injects a tiny dot of a synthetic gel into the sperm-carrying tube just outside of each testicle. Once injected, the gel sets in the tube and acts like a filter, allowing fluid to pass through but not sperm. “Like water might percolate through Jello,” said Elaine Lissner, director of the Parsemus Foundation.

This isn’t like a Depo-Provera shot you have to get once every few months either—once injected, the sperm-filtering gel would remain in place for 10 years. If the recipient decides he wants to take a shot at having kids at any point in between, all it takes is another injection of sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) to dissolve the liquid, and the sperm factory becomes operational again.

It may sound too good to be true, but clinical and animal trials in India have shown that the method works with near-pe​rfect results and no serious s​ide effects. And unlike the birth control pill and condoms, which have a real-life efficacy rate far lower than the ‘perfect use’ scenarios advertised on the packages, the birth control injection, like an IUD, comes with virtually no room for human error.

So why isn't this in widespread use? Well, one reason might be that commercially, there is more money to be made selling contraceptive pills than a 10-yearly injection, and secondly, I guess "needles in close proximity to testicles" is not something that many men like the sound of...

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @03:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @03:13PM (#167470)

    Um, the man is not at risk of being fired from his job for missing work to give birth, nor at risk of complications during pregnancy and birth.

    Ending up having to pay for 18 years of child support and possibly ending up in debtor's prison is nothing to sneeze at, though. All while the courts are firmly against you because you're male.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:10PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:10PM (#168542)

    Yes, exactly. How much is dying during childbirth worth, spread out over 18 years?

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:32AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @07:32AM (#172325)

      I'm not seeing your point. Both are bad.