Jizzing around for 600 million years

Kurt Vonnegut once said that when we write, we write as if we were doing it for one specific person in mind. I believe he said he often wrote for his sister. This is a post about jizz, or more specifically the sperm therein, so I am writing it for my buddy Robert. He will recognize not one but two reasons why.

Recently, researchers identified what appears to be THE gene for sperm production (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100715172000.htm). As in it is found across many if not all of the phyla of the animal kingdom. Humans, rainbow trout, sea anemones - if you are an animal and you produce sperm then you have this gene. The gene goes by the name of Boule and it's significance lies in the fact that it has remained unchanged over 600 million years of evolution. Sounds impressive, but you might mention that humans share a large percentage of our genome with fruit flies. Well apparently sex related genes are changing all the time, but Boule is so vital to what we would call an animalian experience that it has remained the same throughout the eons.

The lead author, Eugene Xu, suggests that this discovery has several real-world applications; it may lead to a different approach to pest control and even a new human male contraceptive. On the latter front, I only wish him the best of luck. When a lot of guys still believe that pulling out is the second best alternative to a condom, I do not think they will take to something that requires them to mess with what's made in the family jewels. What most people don't know is that we probably could have a male contraceptive pill that was based on hormones a decade or two ago, but cultural attitudes in the Western world were so against it that almost all research and development was stopped. It would have been just as safe as The Pill that we are all so familiar with now, but many men were completely against that could be perceived as tinkering with anything "Down There". This story is captured in "The Male Pill" by Nelly Oudshoorn. My guess is that 15 years from now us Dudes will be no less open to the idea of having our Sperm Gene shut off (or whatever the approach might be) than we were to having our hormones messed with 20 years ago. The book I mentioned talks as much about how masculinity is envisioned as it does with the nuts and bolts of hormone therapy. (Perhaps unsurprisingly?) India and China were actually interested in the male pill, but the hurdles of getting this approach to work in places like Great Britain were insurmountable. Among other things they needed to develop special clinics for the men involved.While the book does a better job of explaining it, the medical system and its infrastructure were just not able to pull through.

On a somewhat related note - talking about reproductive issues and the medical infrastructure - here is an interesting story in the NYT Magazine about how the abortion "landscape" has changed and how the medical system has adapted and incorporated the procedure.