Good evening. Yes, I put "nads" in the title, because that's what this diary is about: gonads, and how to make them stop working.
Specifically, it's a hundred-thousand-dollar grant-funded project to develop a long-lasting, reliable and reversible contraceptive technology for men. Not that contraceptives for men don't already exist - they're called condoms - but this would be something more like hormone implants that some women may opt for, as well as easily transplanted to less economically-developed countries, where a steady supply of condoms might be harder to come by than a visit to the clinic every few months. (Emphasis on "long-lasting", meaning you get it done once and you've got contraception for a few months at least.)
Currently, the team led by James K. Tsuruta and Paul Dayton, of UNC-Chapel Hill, is working on ultrasound. Apply directly to balls. This is called "Ultrasound for Men".
How would it work? Very simply, like this: you take a guy's scrotum, rub ultrasound gel all over it, and then you take an ultrasound imaging tool and you image his balls. Image the hell out of his balls. Make that picture clear as day, or clearer.
That's all.
But, you might say, how does this work?
It's a secret to everyone, you might say. Nobody really knows, but preliminary results suggest that it actually works. Consider the following image:
This is a comparison shot of two seminiferous tubules, one from a normal testicle (left) and one from an ultrasound-treated testicle (right). The tubule on the left is chock full of cells of all sorts, both the spermatogonia (stem cells which generate sperm cells) and the various interstitial cells that hold things together or generate hormones or whatever, right? And on the left, you see the tubule is mostly empty, and somewhat shrunken. So it looks like an ultrasonic imaging signal can blast the crap out of this tissue and makes it wither away, effectively sterilizing the owner of the affected gonads.
[ Plus, with this technology maybe you can get a good ultrasound scan of your balls out of it, which could potentially be of clinical interest: for example, diagnosis of the amusingly-named but potentially life-threatening "bell-clapper syndrome", in which the testicles swing freely instead of being restrained by flaps of connective tissue to the inner lining of the scrotum. Or, you know, testicular cancer. Mind you, I don't know if the procedure would be performed the same way, or if the energies used for imaging the scrotum would be sufficient. ]
You know what's really amazing to me, though?
This stuff was known since the 1970s. It hasn't been seriously worked on until now. And that's a real shame.
In any case, our contemporary research team has once again demonstrated that this procedure works at drastically reducing sperm counts and depleting reserves of stored sperm and spermatogonia. Now they're looking to quantify that depletion and make sure it's only temporary.
This research was funded in whole or in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, so I think we owe them some congrats on funding really neat work.
Links:
BBC News article
UNC Health Care News article
Ultrasound for Men project website