SHORT blasts of ultrasound could be used to give men vasectomies without
putting them under the knife. This might encourage more squeamish men to take
responsibility for contraception, the technique’s inventors hope.
In the US alone, more than half a million men a year are sterilised with a
vasectomy. The operation is cheaper than female sterilisation, and has a higher
success rate with fewer complications. Yet American women are still sterilised
twice as often as men, says Nathaniel Fried at Johns Hopkins Medical School in
Baltimore, Maryland.
In most vasectomy operations, a surgeon cuts out a 1.5-centimetre section
from the…
