Coming Soon to Your Bedroom: Beef-Tendon Condoms

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about condoms is that they work. Once negotiated out of their crinkly wrappers, they reliably protect against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. They are simple to make, cheap to buy and easy to obtain — whether you’re in Norway or rural Niger. Using a condom doesn’t require a prescription or a health care provider, and there are rarely any adverse effects — unless you consider the loss of pleasure, which, this being sex, matters a great deal.

On Wednesday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced it was disbursing $1 million in grants for a next-generation condom that does the job without the perceived pleasure trade-off. “The undeniable and unsurprising truth is that most men prefer sex without a condom, while the risks related to HIV infections or unplanned pregnancies are disproportionately borne by their partners,” said Dr. Papa Salif Sow, a senior program officer on the HIV team at the Gates Foundation. “The common analogy is that wearing a condom is like taking a shower with a raincoat on. A redesigned condom that overcomes inconvenience, fumbling, or perceived loss of pleasure would be a powerful weapon in the fight against poverty." Read more...