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DNA Vaccine Sterilizes Mice, Could Lead To One-Shot Birth Control For Cats, Dogs

Posted by samzenpus on from the one-shot-will-do-you dept.

sciencehabit writes: Animal birth control could soon be just a shot away. A new injection makes male and female mice infertile by tricking their muscles into producing hormone-blocking antibodies. If the approach works in dogs and cats, researchers say, it could be used to neuter and spay pets and to control reproduction in feral animal populations. A similar approach could one day spur the development of long-term birth control options for humans.

19 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Umm... WHAT? by orlanz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...new injection ... long-term birth control options for humans.

    What could possible go wrong? Did some government police state / apocalyptic scenarios run through anyone else's minds when they read that?

    1. Re:Umm... WHAT? by Fwipp · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah... it's not like our government has a history of sterilizing undesirables or anything, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    2. Re:Umm... WHAT? by TheCarp · · Score: 2

      Not much really, your DNA is in every single cell, reproduction will still be possible, albeit through lab technique, which is preferable since it wont ever happen accidentally.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    3. Re:Umm... WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Or Harvard is just giving away degrees if your daddy has enough money.

      Bush was a middling student, and in real life demonstrated himself to be a bit of an idiot.

      So much for the quality of a degree from Harvard.

  2. No by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Because what good is being rich if there aren't plenty of poor for you to enjoy. Hell, look at the Scandinavian countries, they're doing public service announcements begging their population to breed. They've tried everything except paying people enough to raise a family on comfort...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  3. SG-1 Episode Foreshadowing... by Shoten · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Aschen Vaccine Causes...causes...what does this word mean?"

    "Sterility."

    "Oh, shit...not again..."

    --

    For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
    1. Re:SG-1 Episode Foreshadowing... by Solandri · · Score: 2

      This is the flip side of the vaccine debate. I absolutely believe vaccines are effective and on the balance beneficial to society, and everyone should be vaccinated. But stuff like this is why I reluctantly agree the government should never have the power to force people to get vaccinated. You can't just give government powers based on what good things they could do with it. You have to limit government's powers based on the worst thing they could do with it.

    2. Re:SG-1 Episode Foreshadowing... by moeinvt · · Score: 2

      "... the only people the government can force to get vaccinated are soldiers."

      Nonsense. Coercion by threat of consequences is exactly the same as force. Requiring injections for kids as a precondition of their enrollment in taxpayer funded public schools is coercing people to make decisions which they might not otherwise make. That "do what we say or there will be consequences" approach is a perfect example of the way government uses force against The People. The threat of having their kids banned from taxpayer funded schools is "forcing" people to get their kids vaccinated because home schooling or private schooling requires resources many people don't have.

    3. Re:SG-1 Episode Foreshadowing... by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 2

      Seriously. We don't need government coercion, what we need are walls around our cities to keep the disease ridden, herd immunity breaking unvaccinated in the slums where they belong.

  4. Frank Herbert covered what could go terribly wrong by msk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The White Plague.

  5. Planned Parenthood by p51d007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "A similar approach could one day spur the development of long-term birth control options for humans." Oh, wouldn't Margaret Sanger have loved this when she started that abortion milling organization. She could have single handed wiped out the black population, as she wanted, in a couple generations. On blacks, immigrants and indigents: "...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people On sterilization & racial purification: Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial "purification," couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech. On the right of married couples to bear children: Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her "Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932 On the purpose of birth control: The purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2) On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities: "More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

    1. Re:Planned Parenthood by swb · · Score: 2

      I'm also inclined to give Sanger's eugenics a sort-of-pass.

      I think you don't have to swing a dead cat very far to find contemporary medical ethicists exploring some of the same issues Sanger was pretty gung-ho about. Like should a couple discover they both carry a gene which will result in a high probability of a child with birth defects have children? Such a child would likely impose a significant dollar costs, and since most people can't afford to self-fund such care, they will just be shifting those costs onto everyone else.

      The racialism and forced sterilization stuff seems distasteful (especially now), but there's a certain dark charitibility to her outlook when you consider the poverty, slums and misery of the poor of her historical era. All of the war on poverty money spent still hasn't cured poverty and the social costs of basically unchecked poverty seem to only perpetuate it.

      If you did implement some kind of eugenics, would we have "solved" the problem of poverty, or at least reduced the scale of poverty to the point where it was manageable as a social and economic cost and allowed social welfare spending to actually produce the results its supposed to? Or would it have been a serious problem in terms of shrinking populations and reduced economic growth?

      Could you implement a eugenic program in a way that wasn't coercively Orwellian? Could you model social welfare costs of poverty and offer some kind of net-positive cash benefit to people willing to be sterilized?

  6. Dont need long term.... by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's effortless to get the snip, then you don't have to worry if the doc does it right where it's non reversible. I.E. he snaps the vas, seals the ends then folds them back 1/2 an inch back on themselves and uses basically a surgical ziptie to hold them there. there is ZERO chance of the Vas reconnecting.

    Real men get their Vas snipped. You do not "need" to have any more kids.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  7. Re:Suuuure.... by WolphFang · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why do I have flashbacks to forced sterilizations which occurred in the US to those considered "genetically inferior" aka Native Americans and Negroids.

    --
    leather-dog muksihs
    Blog: @muksihs
  8. Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That is not how evolution work. If one can breed lots of babies and make them someone else problem that is the trait that will be selected.

    The only solution is to not care about someone else children. And if they can't feed them, then they should die from starvation. Feeding the poor is just bad as 'determine eligibility'. Let nature determine eligibility.

    If you are too soft to let stranger's children die then accept welfare recipient sterilisation. It is, after all, the humane thing to do. Personally I think that, like everything that is 'the humane thing to do', are more bad than good. But I am not the one moved by hungry children.

  9. Re:Suuuure.... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or in Israel in the 21st century, where poor Ethiopian refugees were sterilized without their knowledge, believing they were being vaccinated.

                    http://www.theguardian.com/com...

    It's a recurring practice in human history.

  10. Re:Suuuure.... by Chrontius · · Score: 2

    DoE bought grenade launchers. DHS bought hollowpoints.

    The grenade launchers were deemed useless and returned to the army for a refund, but the hollowpoints are about what it takes to certify every law enforcement officer on their service weapon and do a little training. Not even enough training to be really safe with their sidearms, but a little training is still a definite improvement.

    Remember - violence doesn't need much ammo, but proficiency will eat as much as you can shoot.

  11. Re:Will this help? by goose-incarnated · · Score: 2

    To mods: That's a big bang theory reference that's in another story on today's front page.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  12. Sounds frightful by cfalcon · · Score: 2

    Invoking autoimmune disorders sounds like a poor idea in pets, and a nightmare in humans. That's what this is. And that's before you get to the possibility that you could absolutely have a future organization that has the desire to eliminate human births, but doesn't have the will to kill humans (and also, that would get them stopped faster), so they use a tech like this. The fact that it's being developed doesn't mean that will happen, but the fact that it's possible should be at least a bit scary.