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Reversible Male Contraception With Gold Nanorods

Posted by timothy on from the pickup-lines-suggest-themselves dept.

MTorrice writes "Men's options for birth control have significant downsides: Condoms are not as effective as hormonal methods for women, and vasectomies require surgery and are irreversible. Doctors and scientists have for decades searched for more effective and desirable male contraception techniques. Researchers in China now propose a nonsurgical, reversible, and low-cost method. They show that infrared laser light heats up gold nanorods injected into mice testes, leading to reduced fertility (abstract) in the animals."

7 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Non-surgical by OptimalCynic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It might be non-surgical but a needle in the nads followed up by laser heating isn't my idea of fun.

    1. Re:Non-surgical by Grisstle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to mention "decreased fertility" I don't want to decrease my fertility, I want to temporarily eliminate my fertility.

  2. Gold nanorods in my balls? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Gives a whole new meaning to the term "money shot"...

  3. Re:Balls of gold! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Finally! I don't have to trust that ding-bat I picked up to remember to take her pill!

    You'd also better hope that she doesn't have Aids or Herpes or anti biotic resistant Syphilis or ....

  4. The problem is statistics by dargaud · · Score: 4, Informative

    If a contraception method is 99.9% effective in its effect on procreative cells, for a female it means that out of the 500 eggs she may produce in her life, maybe one has a 50% chance to be fertilized (if taken at the right time, etc). Acceptable risk. For a male, it means that out of the 300 millions sperms contained in the average ejaculation, there will still be 300 thousand standing up in lines at Egg's door. That's one of the reasons why it's much more difficult to design a male contraceptive.

    --
    Non-Linux Penguins ?
    1. Re:The problem is statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Out of 300 million, 2/3 come out dead or swim in circles. Out of those, maybe a few thousand make it through the cervix. Then maybe 100 or so make it into the fallopian tubes. If the egg popped out more than a day ago, it's no good, and if it's not there yet, the half life of those few sperm is about a day.

      So eliminating 99.9% from the start is pretty effective, given that a normal healthy couple only has about a 1 in 5 chance of conception in any month.

      Perspective on this changes a lot between being a teenager terrified of getting the girlfriend pregnant to being a late-30's married man, hoping baby #2 will come after spending years and big money on fertility treatments to get baby #1.

    2. Re:The problem is statistics by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Male sperm travel faster, it sounds credible to me that based on cycle the male sperm could have an advantage (less effective at waiting for an egg to drop perhaps, but if the egg is right there, they get in it first). 120 M to 100 F at fertilization I think.

      The X/Y size difference is actively being exploited for IVF sex-selection; but apparently the accuracy is a bit tepid even with fancy flow cytometry techniques.I'd imagine that less carefully calibrated distance-based tests would show even weaker results(and not have the amusing side effect of making ethicists cry, which is a pity).