No Pill, No Condom, The Perfect Birth Control for Men
When it comes to birth control for men, aside from condoms and pulling out (neither of which are very reliable in practice), vasectomy has been the only other option for preventing unwanted pregnancies. Though there's about a coin-flip chance of it being reversible, those odds aren't enough to make it something guys under 40 typically consider. A few other male contraceptives are being explored, but there are no approved male contraceptive drugs in China.
But what if there was a simple way a man to fire blanks until he and his partner were ready to have a kid—without the snip snap?
Medically, there is a way. It's been studied in animals and humans for more than 30 years with almost no documented complications. Known as "the male birth control injection," an application called RISUG (Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance) was invented in India in the 1970s by Sujoy Guha, a professor of biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology. It's affordable, minimally invasive, and fully reversible—and it's the most effective, non-permanent way of preventing pregnancy (from the sperm side) the world has ever seen, according to studies so far.
They announced that they had completed clinical trials of the injectable male birth control known as RISUG, which stands for reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance, according to the Hindustan Times. The product is injected near the testicles and lasts up to 13 years, the researchers said. It has now been submitted to the Drug Controller General of India, the government department responsible for approving drugs in the country.
"The product is ready, with only regulatory approvals pending," Dr. R.S. Sharma, senior scientist at the Indian Council of Medical Research, which conducted the studies, told Hindustan Times. The lengthy trials involved more than 300 men and showed that the product had more than a 97% success rate at preventing pregnancy.
RISUG works by an injection into the vas deferens, the vessel through which the sperm moves before ejaculation. RISUG is similar to vasectomy in that a local anesthetic is administered, an incision is made in the scrotum, and the vasa deferentia are injected with a polymer gel (rather than being cut and cauterized). In a matter of minutes, the injection coats the walls of the vasa with a clear gel made of 60 mg of the copolymer styrene/maleic anhydride (SMA) with 120 µl of the solvent dimethyl sulfoxide. The copolymer is made by irradiation of the two monomers with a dose of 0.2 to 0.24 megarad for every 40g of copolymer and a dose rate of 30 to 40 rad/s. Dr P.Jha a Senior scientist worked on the effect of gamma dose rate and total dose interrelation on molecular designing and biological function of polymer. The source of irradiation is cobalt-60 gamma radiation.
The effect the chemical has on sperm is not completely understood. Originally it was thought that it lowered the pH of the environment enough to kill the sperm. More recent research claims that this is not enough to explain the effect.
Professor S. K. Guha theorizes that the polymer surface has a negative and positive electric charge mosaic. Within an hour after placement the differential charge from the gel will rupture the sperm's cell membrane as it passes through the vas, deactivating it before it can exit from the body.