thivest.com
by William Harris
When it comes to human reproduction, men have it easy. They enjoy all of the fun of procreation, but don't have to carry the baby or deliver it. When it comes to preventing pregnancy, however, the advantage lies clearly with the fairer sex. The one egg released every month by a woman makes an easy target for a variety of contraceptive interventions. As a result, women have numerous choices for contraception.
Men, on the other hand, present a greater challenge. Driven by eons of evolution involving complex processes of the endocrine and reproductive systems, men produce tens of millions of sperm per day. To prevent pregnancy, every one of those specialized cells -- think of them as DNA-packed Olympic swimmers -- must be blocked, hamstrung or killed. It's a daunting task, especially when you consider the timelines involved. It takes 75 days for sperm fashioned in the testes to mature in a tightly coiled companion structure known as the epididymis. That means an intervention that blocks sperm production won't become fully protective for two and a half months. And men who go off such an intervention would have to wait the same length of time before their fertility returns...... more