“COSO offers a user-friendly contraceptive approach that is easy to use without any kind of physical intervention, pain or previously known side effects,” says Weiss. While the efficacy was not included in research about it, the COSO is indeed temporary.Īs the genital jacuzzi’s effects only last a maximum of six months, it won’t permanently prevent men from becoming fathers.

The COSO must be used for the first time under the doctor’s supervision and takes two weeks to work, after which it needs to be employed every couple of months to work. Weiss was inspired to create the COSO due to the lack of viable male contraceptives on the market. This kickstarts COSO’s prophylactic process, which works by employing ultrasound deep heat for several minutes to temporarily halt sperm mobility in the testicles, effectively preventing swimmers from fertilizing the female egg. Or as IFL Science described it, “you teabag your way to (temporary) infertility.” To use this baby-blocking bidet, the bather simply “adds water up to the indicated mark which is set together with a doctor according to individual testicle size.” After heating the water up to the requisite temperature, the man then “spreads his legs and sits down to place the testicles in the device.” “I decided to explore the development of a new contraceptive approach for men,” Rebecca Weiss, an industrial design graduate from the University of Munich told the Dyson Awards of her male morning-after pill, which she reportedly unveiled for her master thesis.Įntitled COSO, the Apple-esque device is described on the site as an “ultrasound-based, reversible and hormone-free male contraceptive device for home use.” It’s a sperm-stopping sauna for the scrotum.Īn enterprising German scientist captured top prize at Germany’s coveted Dyson awards for an unconventional form of contraception that uses a “testicle bath” to prevent pregnancies. I’m exposing the top reasons sneaky weak men refuse to wear condoms The moral of the story: male birth control isn’t as easy as we’d like it to be.House passes bill guaranteeing contraception access in response to SCOTUS’ Thomasīiden signs abortion order under left-wing pressure, rages at SCOTUS But, crucially, the developers aren’t sure yet how long the sperm-blocking effects will last (a year? maybe longer?). A second injection with a baking-soda solution flushes out the gel and lets swimmers pass through again, so in this way, it’s like long-acting methods for women.

What about Vasalgel, that sketchy-sounding injection in the balls? It blocks the release of sperm, but not semen, through the vas deferens, the tube that’s cut during a vasectomy. Researchers are working on it, but it’s not an easy feat and getting to the human-trials stage takes time. Plus, men could still impregnate someone for three months after halting new sperm production as that’s how long it takes for existing sperm to get cleared out.Įxperts are hopeful about drugs being developed to target sperm’s ability to swim, but they still have to be reversible. Since women’s birth control already has side-effect problems and men are fertile for much longer than women are, this wouldn’t be an improvement on current offerings. Using hormones to prevent sperm creation requires really high doses that cause side effects. However, there’s no similar situation for male sperm production there’s no normal state where sperm production stops. Unfortunately, there’s a basic physiological difference, and that is that it’s easy to fool the ovaries with a very low dose of hormones to make the ovaries think a woman is pregnant, and so the ovaries will stop ovulation. The target is a lot bigger.Īs David Sokal, M.D., chair and director of the Male Contraception Initiative, told Vice last year: Women usually release one egg per month, but men can produce 1,000 sperm per second. In some women, hormonal IUDs may also stop the ovaries from releasing an egg, but generally, IUDs and implants thicken cervical mucus to keep sperm from even entering the uterus and possibly making contact with an egg. But there is another, much simpler explanation: It’s just a lot harder to make reversible birth control for sperm-wielders.Ī quick primer on how the existing options work: birth control pills, patches, rings, and shots use hormones to prevent ovulation in women. A new Atlantic story looks at the history of the effort including arguments that we don’t have a male pill because pharmaceutical companies don’t think it would make money and a concern that men wouldn’t be trusted to take it. Many people, including us, have lamented why the world still doesn’t have male birth control. Photo: Universal Images Group/Getty Images

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