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Oral Contraceptive |
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Male Oral ContraceptiveChinese scientists are very close to completing the process of formulating a male oral contraceptive from the cotton seed plant.
The discovery of this contraceptive property of the cotton seed happened by accident in the 1940’s in the village of Wang in the Nanching province of China. During this period, no children were born in this village.
Even when the men from the village wed women from other far away villages, conception did not take place. At that time the villagers were very poor and used cotton seed oil for cooking their food.
After a decade, babies were finally born in the village. It was noticed that during this period, the village had prospered, and the villagers were now using Soya bean oil for cooking their food.
This led government officials to accurately surmise, that the cotton seed oil was responsible for the decrease in fertility of the male population of the village.
Further research and trials confirmed that consumption of cotton seed oil did indeed reduce the fertility of men by reducing their sperm count.
Chinese scientists worked hard to identify the substance responsible for this drop in sperm count and eventually after many years of research identified a substance known as gossypol that is present in cotton seed oil. Gossypol was then tested on over 75,000 Chinese men.
However, the results were not encouraging at all. Although gossypol successfully reduced the sperm count in all the test subjects, the effect was irreversible in 25 per cent of the cases. Gossypol also reduced the potassium content in the blood.
Gossypol was abandoned as a possible male contraceptive on the account of its many undesirable side effects. However, research is still being carried out on other derivatives based on cotton seed oil that may be used as an effective male contraceptive with no permanent side effects.
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