Researchers Found Perfect Contraceptives In Traditional Chinese Medicine (inverse.com)

hackingbear writes: Researchers at U.C. Berkeley found a birth control that was hormone-free, 100 percent natural, resulted in no side effects, didn't harm either eggs nor sperm, could be used in the long-term or short-term, and -- perhaps the best part of all -- could be used either before or after conception, from ancient Chinese folk medicine... "Because these two plant compounds block fertilization at very, very low concentrations -- about 10 times lower than levels of levonorgestrel in Plan B -- they could be a new generation of emergency contraceptive we nicknamed 'molecular condoms,'" team leader Polina Lishko.

Comments

Re:PNAS

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a huge difference between the scientific paper and whatever it was that Slashdot linked to. The Slashdot link made all kinds of vague claims where it wasn't clear what they even meant.

Take, for example, the claim that the new contraceptive could be used before or after conception. Did they mean before or after sex? Or did they mean before or after the sperm enters the egg cell and the egg cell ditches it extra set of chromosomes to become diploid? Or did they mean after the fertilized egg implants in the uterus. Because it can be a couple days between having sex and actual implantation.