Alright everybody,
(whistle blow)
Settle down!
Babies!
They're the reason we have sex.
And yet, also the least common reason we have sex.
Seriously, in 1997 researchers gave a group of folks a list of eight reasons why they might want to have sex,
and had them rank them from one to eight
and to have a baby ranked eighth out of eight reasons to have sex.
But the fact remains, kids, that baby conception is the
reason that our bodies do the sex thing to begin with.
So, common side effect, of scoodlypoopin'
as my brother John calls it,
uh, is baby-havin'.
So we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to
indulge in the scoodlypoopin' part, while foregoing the baby-makin' part.
And today, we are going to talk about the past, present and future
of how people try to have sex without having babies.
Oh, and this is not a relationship or sexual advice film,
you can get that from your real gym teacher.
Throughout history our ancient friends from all over the world
had a bunch of colorful ideas about
how to prevent getting knocked up.
And their desparation was palpable.
For instance, in Ancient China, women drank cocktails
of lead and mercury to keep them from getting pregnant
which was actually very effective
because you can't get pregant when you're dead.
In Medieval Europe, magicians reccomended that
ladies who did not want to get pregnant
strap a weasel testicle around one of their thighs
Which was also extremely effective, because
who would go within a mile of that.
If you don't have any weasel testicles on hand,
a necklace made from the severed foot of a weasel
might work, or you know, possibly the anus of a hare...
Anus of a hare!
That was a very, very popular homeopathic remedy
for the pregnancy thing.
There's also one I particularly like from the olden days
of Canada, where frontiers-women swore by a liquor
made of beaver testicles soaked in moonshine.
They drank stuff like water, so they didn't have to be
baby-mama to a horny old fur trapper...
sounds reasonable to me...
Anyway, these antiquated methods for keeping women
for keeping women from getting pregnant are pretty stupid.
And ya know, they weren't based on any real understanding of how lady business works.
But there were some remedies that were at least
successful enough at their job that women
kept using them.
Take for example, silphium.
an ancient plant that seemed to have
real contraceptive and abortifacient properties.
Around 2600 years ago, the Greek island of Thera
was becoming overpopulated.
In pretty short after the Cyrenians discovered silphium
this weed in the fennel family that was growing
in the hillsides around town.
and they were suitably impressed by the plant,
not only because it was a delicious garnish to goat tenderlion,
it was also really good at keeping women
from getting pregnant, and from preventing pregnancies
from progressing.
pretty soon, the ancient versions of gynecologists
had women drinking the juice of the silphium plant
once a month, or
just kind of wedging some wool that bad been
soaked in like, silphium juice up... you know, up there.
And silphium was all the rage, the Cyrenians were exporting it all over the place
And though we can actually document the decreased
birth rates in ancient Rome during silphium's heyday,
we will never know how effective it actually is
because, dammit, if the ancients didn't hump it into extinction.
Let's just say that Cyreans silphium industry
did very well, as a matter of fact,
all Cyrenian currency was stamped either with a picture of the
silphium plant itself, or with the heart shaped seed
which may be where we got the modern Valentine-shaped heart symbol.
Or, uh, there's a picture of a lady pointing to a silphium
plant with one hand, and at her genitals with the other.
Nobody ever said that the ancients were subtle.
Anyway, within about fifty years, silphium was
just a memory due to aggressive over-harvesting.
aw, tear.
So during some periods of history, birth control
could make or break economies, but in others,
like right after the Black Plague finished
having it's way with Europe in the 14th century,
any attempt at putting the brakes on population growth
was punishable by death.
In fact, the church got involved as it was wont to do back in the fourteenth century
and started making a big fuss about how wasted semen
was a sin, and an abomination against nature.
And in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued an order
commonly referred to as "Witch-Bull of 1484."
in which he recognized the existence of witches
aka woman who knew about birth control and other useful things
like how to safely deliver a baby and gave his approval
to correct, imprison, punish, and chastise witches accused of having
"slain infants yet in the womb and of hindering men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving."
So basically, the pope made contraception and abortion illegal
and lots of people got killed for it, including lots of
midwives and folks who knew what they were doing
and were trying to make everybody's lives better.
Luckily for all of us, over the last few hundred years
our knowledge of the human reproductive system has grown
and our birth control methods have become a lot safer and more reliable.
Modern birth control can be divided up into a few categories:
sterilization, barrier methods, hormonal methods, contragestion,
and of course, you've got your good old fashioned abstinence which works 100% of the time
if you tie a weasel testicle around your leg.
So I'll start with sterilization
because as a mechanism it's sort of the most obvious.
Basically, you take the female Fallopian tubes or the male vas deferens
both structures that allow the transport of sex cells to the sperm or the egg
from the place where they are stored to the place where they get their fertilization on
and you just snip 'em or you clamp 'em or block 'em or tie 'em up some way.
Now you hear about people sometimes having these surgeries undone
but these procedures are considered permanent
so when you decide to get sterilized pretty good idea to make sure you damn well don't want a baby.
Now with barrier methods, the idea is to block the sperm before it gets through the cervix
and to the egg. So condoms, diaphragms fit into this category
In fact, even though nobody even knew about sperm until like the mid 15th century
people have been suspicious about the role semen played in the whole pregnancy situation for a long time.
In fact, there are cave paintings in France dating back to around 15 thousand BC depicting condom use.
Well, I mean, probably, it's kinda hard to tell what's going on in a cave painting.
We're also pretty sure that Ancient Romans had condoms and so did the Ancient Egyptions
The thing is a lot of times these beta version condoms
were made of like oiled silk paper or lamb intestine
so, you know, not 100% effective.
Quality products made from quality materials.
So fast forward, quite fast, to the 1950s
when some American drug companies started researching a way to make synthetic progesterone
a hormone that helps regulate the female menstrual cycle.
By the early 1960's they had developed the first oral contraceptive
a honkin' horse pill of hormonal goodness which was far from perfect but it was pretty reliable
at making you not have a baby
and the ladies of the 1960's were pretty frickin' psyched.
Loretta Lynn even wrote one of here more awesome songs
about how much she loved the pill because she was sick of being so damn pregnant all the time.
Anyway, these days we've got all kinds of hormonal birth control methods
like the pill, hormone implants, shots, patches, rings, hormone-laced IUDs - we'll get to IUDs in a minute.
Basically all of these things just release synthetic estrogen and/or progesterone into a woman's system at the right time each month
essentially preventing her ovaries from releasing eggs
or making her womb sort of an inhospitable environment for fertilized eggs
In this way hormonal methods of contraception are like barrier methods
they prevent the sperm and egg from ever meeting each other
In fact, the word contraception really means against fertilization
Now we come to contragestive methods like intrauterine devices, or IUDs
They allow the sperm to fertilize the egg but prevent the fertilized egg from implanting on the wall of the uterus.
So contraception means against fertilization. Contragestion means against gestation.
The most common contragestive method of birth control comes in the form of IUDs
although IUDs kind of straddle the lines as it were between contraception and contragestion
That's a hard word to say.
IUDs are these T-shaped pieces of plastic covered with coiled copper wire
that are inserted directly into the uterus. Some of them release low levels of synthetic progesterone as well
Interestingly, how IUDs work is still a little bit of a mystery.
Nobody can quite figure out what is going on.
But it looks as though partially the coiled copper works as a spermicide to kill all the sperm before they can ever find the egg.
Also, IUDs kind of inflame the area which means there are a lot of white blood cells
which somehow start attacking the sperm and even a fertilized egg.
So these days, we've got a bunch of different options for birth control
and you'd think we'd be satisfied
But we're not.
We want more!
So the future of birth control is looking pretty space age.
All kinds of crazy things are being tested
like a hormone gel that woman rub on their bellies instead of taking the pill
and also one-off hormone treatments for women that can be taken, you know, as needed instead of constantly.
However, researchers are looking into things like using ultrasound to, like, zap the fertility out of men's testicles
which doesn't sound particularly fun
or potentially a male pill or injection of sort of a huge amount of testosterone
that would make your sperm producing parts be like,
"Well, I've produced all the sperm!" and then they just stop.
But do we want a bunch of infertile, testosterone jacked men walking around the world?
I'm not sure but, you know, options are good.
Thank you for watching SciShow. If you'd like to ask us questions please do so in the comments below
If you'd like to suggest other topics, uh, like this one about birth control
but i will not be giving you advice on what you should do with your personal reproductive life
so that's up to you!
Science does not make those decisions.
We'll be down in the Youtube comments and on Facebook and Twitter
We'll see you next time.