Snip Snip
Snip Snip
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Male Contraceptives: Balls to the Snip!

New research from the Indian Institute of Technology may have struck upon a better solution to male contraception than 'The Snip'
Feature by Miriam Prosser.
Published 10 July 2012

I've been bitching about contraception for years, since in my experience it often ends up being the woman's problem. Some blokes are still trying to wiggle out of putting on a condom, and in the 50 years since the pill went public women have subjected themselves to the ‘side effects’ of fucking with your hormones: depression, weight gain, skin problems, breast pain, loss of sex drive, and migraines, to name but a few. But I never considered how disappointing contraception options are for men. A guy who wants control of his sexual destiny is basically limited to a choice between abstinence, latex or The Snip: not an edifying selection. I mean, we've been to the moon, but we couldn't come up with a male pill?

What if it didn't have to be like that? What if 15 minutes would guarantee you 10 foetus-free years? Imagine a world in which sex could be enjoyed without the winkie-shrivelling terror of unwanted babies; without the endless series of modification processes: injections, implants, objects wedged in your cervix.

This may be possible, thanks to Sujoy K. Guha at the Indian Institute of Technology. His male contraceptive procedure RISUG (Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance) has been tested in India for over 30 years with overwhelmingly positive results. Here's what happens:

A doctor makes a tiny hole in your ballsack. Through this he extracts the vans deferens, which is the tube sperm travels through to get from the testes to the penis. Instead of severing it as they would during a vasectomy, he injects it with polymer gel (named Vasalgel in the USA) made up of styrene maleic anhydride and dimethyl sulfoxide. The vans deferens is popped back inside your bollock, and the process repeated for the other tube. He sticks a plaster on your balls, and you go about your business! It's a 15 minute procedure that lasts for ten years, and is easily reversible with another injection and a short wait (around 1-2 months).

Does this seem insanely simple? It is. The polymer gel hardens over 72 hours, coating the walls of the vans deferens but allowing fluids to pass through, thus avoiding some of the complications associated with vasectomy. When you ejaculate the positively charged polymer reacts with the negatively charged sperm to tear them apart like Dr Manhattan in Watchmen (but your sperm don't come back as giant blue superheroes, you'll be sorry to hear). With no pregnancies reported after RISUG injections, no adverse effects over time, and early trial participants still using their RISUG twenty years later, it starts to sound like the best thing since that smart chap Mr Fromm started dipping glass molds into latex.

The RISUG method moved to the States in 2010 as more research into it was sponsored by the Parsemus Foundation. Studies are under way aiming to have RISUG on the market by 2015. Are you as excited by this as my boyfriend is? Check out the Parsemus Foundation website (www.parsemusfoundation.org) for information and to make donations. If this thing takes off, we could be looking at a revolutionised contraception experience: fewer teen pregnancies, fewer unplanned babies, fewer abortions. The shadowy figures of STDs are still looming over our beds but, while we're on the subject, the Parsemus Foundation is also exploring a male contraceptive called the ‘clean sheets’ pill, which has the possibility of reducing or maybe even eliminating all semen born STDs. Yeah, that's right. You heard me. Spread the word, and bring on the future.

Comments (3)

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  • Join our RISUG/Vasalgel Facebook group! http://facebook.com/groups/2258949611

    Posted by Vaalea | Tuesday 10 July 2012 @ 23:10

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  • Thanks for writing about this. This will really change the world if and when it becomes available. Men have almost no reproductive rights and this technology would go some way to redressing the balance. This is important because for the first time since the widespread availability of female contraception men will be able to make a positive choice as to whether they want to have a child or not. I think this kind of empowerment will enable men to really think positively about there own fertility and with whom and how they want to use it. This should lead to more wanted and less unwanted children.
    This situation is barely discussed normally because when a child is born most men will naturally want to make the best of the situation and make the child feel valued even if he wouldn't have chosen the mother as being a good match prior to the conception.

    Posted by Steve | Tuesday 10 July 2012 @ 23:21

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  • Every effort for advanced male contraceptives should receive superior priority. For too long, work on male contraception has been an occasional and poorly funded effort. Better male contraception will better both men's and women's lives.

    One problem with the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act (ACA or Obamacare) is that it does not provide for male contraception, which right now is only vasectomy, but in the future could include newly developed contraceptives. Do we want to leave male contraception out of the act now so that when advanced male contraception arrives it takes an act of Congress to make it avaiable equal to female contraceptives? I don't think so, so we should all be writing our representatives right now to make male contraception without cost share a part of the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act (ACA or Obamacare) at the soonest opportunity.

    Posted by Derek | Wednesday 11 July 2012 @ 02:57

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