Category Archives: Health and Medicine

Turning Cynicism into Optimism 1

by • Health and Medicine, Strategy • Tags:

A review of Disaster Fitness: Make Your Demons Do the Work, by Ann Sterzinger and Ann Hedonia.

Disaster Fitness: Make Your Demons Do the Work by [Sterzinger, Ann, Hedonia, Ann]

By Keith Preston

I confess to having never been a fan of so-called “self-help” books. Mostly, these kinds of works have always struck me as having goofy titles and charlatans for authors, and nothing of any real value. Some years ago, I was involved with a company where my division head used to hand out copies of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, a quasi-Christian work written in 1952, for Christ’s sake (no pun intended). It was a book my supervisor seemed to think was vitally important for his staff members to read. The same guy used to hand out copies of books by Joel Osteen (WTF?). Most self-help books are based to some degree on the model that Peale made a fortune from in the mid-twentieth century. Just throw out a lot of cheery-sounding sloganeering, combined with some quasi-Christian or quasi-Buddhist or hippie New Age nonsense, plus some basic common sense ideas that everyone over the age of fifteen ought to be able to figure out anyway. Do all this while claiming to possess some special path to financial success, spiritual enlightenment, and good health, and you’ve got an instant best-seller so long as you’re willing to pay for advertising space in the National Enquirer.

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“Study Death Always” Reply

by • Health and Medicine, Religion and Philosophy

I enjoyed this.

—-

By James S Romm

Why Seneca’s advice for living centered on dying.

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The Death of Seneca, by Manuel Domínguez Sánchez, 1871. Prado Museum

Recent experiments have shown that psilocybin, a compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, can greatly reduce the fear of death in terminal cancer patients. The drug imparts “an understanding that in the largest frame, everything is fine,” said pharmacologist Richard Griffiths in a 2016 interview. Test subjects reported a sense of “the interconnectedness of all people and things, the awareness that we are all in this together.” Some claimed to have undergone a mock death during their psychedelic experience, to have “stared directly at death…in a kind of dress rehearsal,” as Michael Pollan wrote in a New Yorker account of these experiments. The encounter was felt to be not morbid or terrifying, but liberating and affirmative.

“In the largest frame, everything is fine.” That sounds very much like the message Lucius Annaeus Seneca preached to Roman readers of the mid-first century, relying on Stoic philosophy, rather than an organic hallucinogen, as a way to glimpse that truth. “The interconnectedness of all things” was also one of his principal themes, as was the idea that one must rehearse for death throughout one’s life—for life, properly understood, is really only a journey toward death; we are dying every day, from the day we are born. In his works of ethical thought, Seneca spoke to his addressees, and through them to humankind generally, about the need to accept death, even to the point of ending one’s own life, with a candor nearly unparalleled in his time or ours.

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Keith Preston: Drug abuse, poverty, wealth gap reducing US life expectancy Reply

by • Health and Medicine, Uncategorized

Press TV. Listen here.

Deaths from drug overdoses, the growing wealth inequality, rising poverty and a poor diet are among the main factors reducing life expectancy in the United States in recent years, an American analyst says.

“It’s rare that you see a country that’s classified as a First World nation, or a high-income nation, actually experience a decline in life expectancy and they’re several reasons for this,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“It’s been pointed that the rate of drug overdoses has increased dramatically in recent years, largely through the widespread use of opioid drugs,” Preston said in an interview with Press TV on Thursday.

“The rate of life expectancy is declining for other reasons,” including the widening wealth gap, increasing poverty, heart disease and poor dietary habits, Preston said.

 

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Keith Preston: US war on drugs led to opioid epidemic Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Health and Medicine, Law/Justice, Uncategorized • Tags:

Press TV. Listen here.

The US has been waging a war against drugs for half a century, viewing drug addiction as a criminal phenomenon instead of a health issue, therefore no headway has been made in curbing the US opioid crisis, an American analyst says.

The so-called ‘War on Drugs’ refers to a US government campaign launched during the administration of former President Richard Nixon, which included the prohibition of drugs and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade.

The United States leads the world in both recreational drug usage and incarceration rates. Many experts believe that the War on Drugs has been costly and ineffective largely because inadequate emphasis is placed on treatment of addiction.

The current opioid epidemic in the United States has multiple reasons, among them the excess prescription of pain killers, which in turn contribute to an increase in pharmaceutical financial gains, said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“People become addicted to pharmaceutical drugs when undergoing medical treatment, and then because of the addiction, they develop they can’t stop the habit, so when their medical treatment is over with, and they are cut off their drug supply then they start buying prescription drugs off the street that are sold on the illegal market and often they will switch to heroin because heroin is actually cheaper than prescription opiods,” Preston said in an interview with Press TV on Wednesday

“So we have now this wave of heroin addicts as well as people who are addicted to prescription opioids as well,” he added.

Preston said the Trump administration’s approach to the drug crisis is encouraging in the sense that it has not recommended the escalation of the war on drugs and instead has taken a non-criminal approach to the crisis recognizing the crisis is more of a health issue.

“There may be some signs of a turning of the tides there,” he said.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers said Monday that the true cost of the opioid epidemic in 2015 was $504 billion, more than six times the most recent estimate.

The council said a 2016 private study estimated that prescription opioid overdose, abuse and dependence cost $78.5 billion in the US in 2013.

Most of that expense was attributed to health care and criminal justice spending, along with lost productivity.

US President Donald Trump said Monday at a cabinet meeting in the White House that the “opioid epidemic that is ravaging so many American families and communities” would be among topics for discussion.

Last month, Trump declared the US drug crisis a “public health emergency.” He also announced an advertising campaign to combat the epidemic, but did not direct any new federal funding toward the effort.

Opioids are drugs formulated to replicate the pain reducing properties of opium. They include both legal painkillers like morphine, oxycodone, or hydrocodone prescribed by doctors for acute or chronic pain, as well as illegal drugs like heroin or illicitly made fentanyl.

The word “opioid” is derived from the word “opium.”

US government and healthcare officials have been struggling to stem the epidemic of overdoses, which killed more than 64,000 Americans last year alone, up from 52,000 the previous year. More than half were related to opioids.

What the FDA Allows into Food Products May Be Impacting Your Brain Reply

by • Health and Medicine

If you believe that the old adage, ‘You are what you eat,’ is passé you may need to think again. The Food and Drug Administration is charged with ensuring that food manufacturers follow certain rules to ensure that what ends up on your dinner plate is indeed safe to eat. Autism rates have been skyrocketing, children are going through puberty at earlier ages, and cancer rates have gone up tremendously. All of these medical factors have been linked directly to what’s going into food products. Students taking an NAACLS accredited medical laboratory scientist program have seen brain scans and medical reports that detail how sick the U.S. population is becoming. So, should you go vegan or start growing your own food? It may be helpful to simply pay attention to FDA protocols and learn what is being allowed into food sources.

The FDA and International Food Sources

More than a decade ago there was a Mad Cow disease scare in the United States that led other nations like China to ban beef imports from the U.S. All of the poultry products that are purchased in the U.S. are domestically manufactured. Although U.S. food manufacturers aren’t always known for having the best practices, they are typically thought to be safer than many third world countries. Sometime in 2018, the U.S. will start accepting poultry from China on a large scale. That means that FDA inspectors won’t be on-site to see how the chickens are fed, raised, or even slaughtered. Even still, those international food products will likely end up with an FDA stamp of approval on the label.

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National-Anarchist Movement Conference 2017: A Summary Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Environment, Fourth Generation Warfare, Health and Medicine, Immigration, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Secession, Strategy, Uncategorized • Tags:

Image result for national anarchist movement

By Keith Preston

Special thanks to Peter Topfer, Adam Ormes, Thom Forester, and Sean Jobst for their assistance in the writing of this summary.

On June 17 and 18, the first ever conference of the National-Anarchist Movement (N-AM) took place in Madrid. The process of arranging this conference was certainly not without its difficulties, and the organizers deserve much praise for their diligence in this regard. Originally, the conference was supposed to be hosted by the Madrid section of N-AM, who dropped out of the project shortly (and out of N-AM altogether) before the conference took place. This led to the irony of a conference being held in Spain where no actual Spanish people were among the attendees. Because National-Anarchists are widely despised by leftists who mistakenly regard N-A as a “fascist” tendency, security was a paramount concern.

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“The most socially destructive public policy since slavery…” Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Health and Medicine, Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties, Therapeutic State, Uncategorized • Tags:

By Simon Oxenham

Politics.Co.UK

Suzanne Sharkey is a former constable and undercover officer at Northumbria Constabulary
Suzanne Sharkey is a former constable and undercover officer at Northumbria Constabulary

Last week Neil Franklin, a retired major from Marylyn State Police, led a troop of serving and former police chiefs, soldiers and a former spy into the Parliament to call MPs to end the war on drugs. Their testimony was damning and revealing.

Franklin opened the meeting with an explanation of the campaign’s mission to “reduce crime, disease, death and addiction by ending the most socially destructive public policy since slavery.” Franklin explained how his organisation of “police officers, agents, judges, criminal prosecutors, corrections officials and others” including over 180,000 members and supporters in over 180 countries share one goal, to end “the world’s longest war”.

According to Franklin “we have been attempting to solve a public health crisis with criminal justice solutions and the results have been catastrophic”. While repeated calls from academia and public health have failed to convince most politicians, the group hopes calls from within the criminal justice system will finally make them listen. What follows are all direct quotes, edited for concision.

Suzanne Sharkey (pictured above): Former Constable and Undercover Officer at Northumbria Constabulary

“When I look back at my time in the police I feel ashamed, I feel a sense of failure. I feel ashamed that I wasn’t arresting career criminals. I was arresting people from poor socially deprived areas with little or no hope whose crime was non-violent drug possession, a complete failure of the war on drugs. I believe that one of the biggest barriers for people with problematic substance misuse to seeking help and treatment is the current drug policy. It does nothing, it achieves nothing except creating more harm for individuals, families and society as a whole. All of us know the problems and what we need to do but rather than be united by the problems let’s be united by the solutions. Solutions based in health, education and compassion rather than criminalisation.”

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Augustus Invictus’ Letter to the People of Europe 7

by • American Decline, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Education, Electoralism/Democratism, Health and Medicine, Immigration, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Religion and Philosophy, Therapeutic State, Uncategorized

Here’s the transcript.

To the People of Europe,
Fate lays upon me the task of writing you from distant shores. My name is Augustus Invictus, and I am a candidate for the United States Senate. Though I am an American, I am by blood a son of Europe. My ancestry is British, my name Roman, my religion pan-European. I am trained in Anglo-American law, educated in continental philosophy and politics, steeped in Western aesthetic. Though Florida may be a great distance from my ancestral land of Scotland, I am in blood and in soul your brother.
And though I am an American politician, the issues I raise in my campaign for the Senate here affect every man, woman, and child of the West. I write to you today not to condescend or to advertise my American arrogance, but to call for the unity of all Westerners against the powers that would destroy our people.
From New Zealand & Australia to the United States & Canada, and even to South Africa, we share a common civilization, born of Europe. This is impolitic to say in any country, and it is now evidence of “hate speech” in several. We must ask ourselves why the self-described elites in our respective countries would keep us divided, why they would insist that we have no common culture, why they would insist that we take literally countless immigrants into countries callously neglecting their rightful sons and daughters.
I hope that we may come to see each other as fellows. I pray that we may come to cherish what we share more than we might lament the differences between us. Though we have warred, though we have viewed each other with great suspicion, these misfortunes are, I hope, passed. We share a common bond that the millions of immigrants recently recruited to our ancestral land will never share. We, as Westerners, are brothers, though long-separated; they are foreigners being imported by your own governments to destroy the proud heritage and people of Europe.
Your officials have betrayed you.
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Augustus Sol Invictus – Libertarian Realism: Folk, Culture & Borders Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Education, Electoralism/Democratism, Health and Medicine, Immigration, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Strategy, Uncategorized

Great interview with Augustus by Lana Lokteff. Listen here.

Augustus Invictus is an attorney and community leader in Orlando, Florida who is a candidate in the 2016 US Senate election. Best known as a radical philosopher and infamous social critic, he is Managing Partner of Imperium, P.A., the law firm he founded in 2013. As an attorney, Augustus has worked to defend those who have become collateral damage of America’s two longest-running wars: the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

Augustus begins with an explanation of the name he has chosen to identify with, along with the mystical path that led him to study law and eventually pursue politics. He talks about his affiliation with the Libertarian Party (LP) and the problems he sees with its watered down, mainstream message. Augustus describes the main issues he aspires to tackle as Senator: the drug war, foreign policy, and the financial crisis. We get into the customary LP stances on open borders, immigration and equality, and we look at how these key concerns have been muddled with leftist contention. Augustus shares his view on the problems that will ensue for Libertarian ideals if non-Westerners continue to flood into America, and he also speaks to the Marxist degeneracy that has infected pop culture and the educational system. Then, we discuss the absence of natural law and hierarchy in the current US government system, along with the tyrannical forces pushing oppressive mandatory regulations, censorship and hate speech laws. At the end, Augustus sums up the actions he is taking to tackle the looney left’s war on White men and inspire a resurrection of the American front.

Greening Out Interview #23 – Sean Gabb on Classical Liberalism Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Health and Medicine, Law/Justice • Tags: ,

SeanNew

Sean Gabb joins Caity and Dan for a third time for a fascinating conversation around the topic of classical liberalism.

We begin by discussing classical liberal ideas going back to ancient Greece and being hard-wired into western European thought and how this can be shown in fairy and folk tales that are quite unique to western Europe.
We chat about John Locke, the social contract and theories about how governments emerged. How the Victorian age seems like a golden age for libertarians until you look closer, the Whigs, the Liberal Party of the 19th century: how it was formed and how they may have laid the groundwork for the political system we now find ourselves in in the UK.
We also chat about the dangers of governments turning our vices into crimes, the mental deficiency act and other eugenics legislation. We get into social liberalism vs. classical liberalism, socialism in the UK, the NHS and how doctors see themselves in the UK.
We go on to discuss whether the Liberal Party of the 19th century was moved more by utilitarianism or desire for control. If the conservatives were more libertarian in the 19th century than the Liberal Party and why politicians want to control what we do.

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Women Against The State 24

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Attack the System radio, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Health and Medicine, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State, Strategy

Attack the System
Women Against the State

February 1, 2014

A panel discussion with M.K. Lords, Becky Belding, Trista Rundatz, and Keith Preston about gender issues in the libertarian milieu, and wider issues facing the libertarian and anarchist movements. Topics include:

Topics include:

  • Why anti-state movements attract more men than women.
  • The left/right divide within libertarianism and anarchism.
  • The role of statist oppression vs oppressive social and cultural norms.
  • The relationship between libertarianism and women’s issues.
  • Currents within feminism and how these compare and contrast with libertarian values.
  • Is the pendulum swinging concerning gender role issues and gender oppression?
  • The men’s rights movement.
  • How the state is a common denominator in all forms of oppression.
  • Why men and women often differ in their political issues of interest.
  • The issues of pornography, prostitution, and sex work.
  • Anarchist strategy and communication.
  • Gender roles and mental health.
  • Psychotropic drugs and the pharmaceutical industry.
  • War-profiteering and the military-industrial complex.

M.K. Lords is an activist, writer, and fire dancer. She edits and contributes regularly at Bitcoin Not Bombs and also writes for Young Voices. Her work has been featured in Bitcoin Magazine. Her activism emphasizes direct action and agorist methods of building the counter-economy. You can get in touch on twitter @mklords, Facebook M.K. Lords, and view her writings at Bitcoin Not Bombs. She is also a returning guest to the Attack The System show.

Becky Belding is a libertarian and married mother of three living in South Carolina. She is a part time wage slave in finance to fund her expensive lapidary and wire art hobby, Eclectic Spectrum. She also has a political blog at Meat Curtain of Doom.

Trista is satanic anarcha feminist, small business owner and blogger. You can read her rantings here: And I rant….

File type: MP3
Length: 2:09:16
Bitrate: 32kb/s CBR

Download (right click, ‘save as’)

Email Keith:
kppgarv@mindspring.com

Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up: Helicopter parenting has caused my psychotherapy clients to crash land 1

by • American Decline, Health and Medicine

Slate.Com

depressed millennial
Rates of depression are soaring among millennials in college.
Photo by Jupiter Images/Thinkstock/Getty Images

Amy (not her real name) sat in my office and wiped her streaming tears on her sleeve, refusing the scratchy tissues I’d offered. “I’m thinking about just applying for a Ph.D. program after I graduate because I have no idea what I want to do.” Amy had mild depression growing up, and it worsened during freshman year of college when she moved from her parents’ house to her dorm. It became increasingly difficult to balance school, socializing, laundry, and a part-time job. She finally had to dump the part-time job, was still unable to do laundry, and often stayed up until 2 a.m. trying to complete homework because she didn’t know how to manage her time without her parents keeping track of her schedule.

 I suggested finding a job after graduation, even if it’s only temporary. She cried harder at this idea. “So, becoming an adult is just really scary for you?” I asked. “Yes,” she sniffled. Amy is 30 years old.

Hamburger Chef Jamie Oliver Proves McDonald’s Burgers “Unfit for Human Consumption” Reply

by • Health and Medicine

GetHolisticHealth.Com

Hamburger chef Jamie Oliver has won his long-fought battle against one of the largest fast food chains in the world – McDonalds. After Oliver showed how McDonald’s hamburgers are made, the franchise finally announced that it will change its recipe, and yet there was barely a peep about this in the mainstream, corporate media.Hamburger Chef Jamie Oliver Proves McDonald’s Burgers “Unfit for Human Consumption”

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Study Accidentally Finds Chemo Makes Cancer Worse Reply

by • Health and Medicine, Science and Technology

CureYourOwnCancer.Org

Picture
A team of researchers looking into why cancer cells are so resilient accidentally stumbled upon a far more important discovery. While conducting their research, the team discovered that chemotherapy actually heavily damages healthy cells and subsequently triggers them to release a protein that sustains and fuels tumor growth. Beyond that, it even makes the tumor highly resistant to future treatment.

Study: Chemotherapy actually increases cancer growth, cancer cells becoming resistant to treatment Reply

by • Health and Medicine

Natural News

The cancer treatment scam that is chemotherapy has once again been shown in the scientific literature to be a major cause of, rather than a cure for, cancer. According to a new study recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, chemotherapy not only promotes the growth and spread of cancer cells by damaging the healthy tissue that surrounds tumors, but it also causes cancer cells to develop full-on resistance to the popular treatment, morphing them into “super” cancer cells.

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Vermont Poised to Become 1st State to Enact Single-Payer Healthcare Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Health and Medicine

Democracy Now

Today Vermont is set to make history by becoming the first state in the nation to offer universal, single-payer healthcare when Gov. Peter Shumlin signs its healthcare reform bill into law. The Vermont plan, called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will attempt to stem rising medical care prices and provide universal coverage. We speak with Dr. Deb Richter, president of Vermont Health Care for All. She moved from Buffalo, New York, to Vermont in 1999 to advocate for a universal, single-payer healthcare system in the state. Gov. Shumlin calls her the “backbone” of the grassroots effort that helped persuade the Democratic-led state legislature to pass the bill this spring.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Today, Vermont is set to become the first state in the nation to offer single-payer healthcare when Governor Peter Shumlin signs its healthcare reform bill into law. The cost of healthcare has risen sharply in Vermont in recent years, as it has everywhere in the country. The Vermont plan, called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will attempt to stem that rise and also provide universal coverage. Every Vermont resident will be eligible for coverage under the state-run health plan.

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Sedgwick, Maine is first town to declare total food sovereignty, opposing state and federal laws Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Health and Medicine, Secession, Strategy

NaturalNews.Com

There is a food revolution taking hold all over America, whether it is in the  form of demanding labeling of GM foods, the right to produce and sell raw milk  and other commodities, or – in the case of Sedgwick, Maine – declaring all local  food transactions of any kind free and legal.

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The Pro-Death Movement 2

by • American Decline, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Health and Medicine, Left and Right, Men and Women, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy

From TakiMag

______________

by Jim Goad

I once read that all societies throughout history were consistent in that they deemed it wrong to kill another human being…but they were wildly inconsistent in how they defined the term “human being.”

Such universal contradictions are compounded by the monotheism under which much of the world’s minds have been yoked for millennia, a strange philosophy that posits a God who says “Thou shalt not kill” yet who kills every creature he creates.

We currently have a culturally dominant and largely atheistic left, who never shut the fuck up about how many people have been killed by religion, Nazis, racists, and guns. Yet they’ll try to shout you into silence if you mention how many people that atheistic communistic egalitarians have killed.

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Mother who went to court in failed bid to stop brain tumour son having radiotherapy says he is a shadow of himself after 30 sessions Reply

by • Health and Medicine, Therapeutic State

The Daily Mail

A mother revealed today how her eight-year-old son is ‘not the boy I know any more’ after he went through radiotherapy treatment she controversially fought hard at the High Court to prevent.

Sally Roberts, of Brighton, East Sussex, who lost a high-profile case last year to stop the treatment for her son Neon’s brain tumour, said he ‘just crumbled into me’ after the radiation therapy.

The 37-year-old said Neon has gone through 30 radiation sessions since the court battle and is now ‘broken’ with chronic fatigue, ‘grey and fragile’, ‘cries over the smallest things’ and ‘barely eats’.

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The Best Birth Control In The World Is For Men Reply

by • Health and Medicine, Men and Women, Science and Technology, Sexuality and the State

From Techcitement.

_____________________

Posted by Jon Clinkenbeard. March 26, 2012, 11:25 AM CST 12.7K

If I were going to describe the perfect contraceptive, it would go something like this: no babies, no latex, no daily pill to remember, no hormones to interfere with mood or sex drive, no negative health effects whatsoever, and 100 percent effectiveness. The funny thing is, something like that currently exists.

The procedure called RISUG in India (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance) takes about 15 minutes with a doctor, is effective after about three days, and lasts for 10 or more years. A doctor applies some local anesthetic, makes a small pinhole in the base of the scrotum, reaches in with a pair of very thin forceps, and pulls out the small white vas deferens tube. Then, the doctor injects the polymer gel (called Vasalgel here in the US), pushes the vas deferens back inside, repeats the process for the other vas deferens, puts a Band-Aid over the small hole, and the man is on his way. If this all sounds incredibly simple and inexpensive, that’s because it is. The chemicals themselves cost less than the syringe used to administer them. But the science of what happens next is the really fascinating part.

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