THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 7, 1994 TAG: 9407070623
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID PERLMAN, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Two prominent scientists want the U.S. military to store the frozen sperm of soldiers and sailors who volunteer to test a novel theory aimed at making males more responsible for contraception.
Developing a reversible male contraceptive pill within decades is so unlikely that the two far-thinking scientists have come up with a new approach to the problem:
They propose that the Defense Department encourage thousands of American servicemen to collect samples of their sperm that would be frozen for years in military sperm banks while researchers test the cells periodically to learn if they remain fertile.
And if the sperm do stay viable, the scientists suggest, then any man could share the task of birth control by storing his own sperm and undergoing a vasectomy years before fathering children. Later, whenever couples decided to start a family, they could do it cheaply and easily by using the man's frozen sperm for artificial insemination, the scientists propose.
The concept is described today in the journal Nature.
The proposal comes from Dr. Carl Djerassi, the Stanford chemist who invented the world's first contraceptive pill more than 40 years ago, and Dr. Stanley P. Leibo of the University of Guelph in Ontario, an expert on techniques of ``cryopreservation'' - the freezing and storage of cells and tissues.
The two scientists are not suggesting that young military men should undergo vasectomies.
But because tens of thousands of samples would be needed to establish that frozen human sperm can prove fertile after five or 10 or even 15 years, only the military can provide the numbers for the research, Djerassi and Leibo argue.
In their words, it would be a ``swords-into-plowshares initiative'' that could result in the world's first reversible technique for male contraception.
According to Leibo, sophisticated new techniques now make freezing and storing sperm cheap, easy and safe. Leibo notes that a single small refrigerator about the size of a microwave oven and costing only $1,000 can store up to 1,500 frozen sperm samples at 320 degrees below zero for nearly a year without any electric power at all.
In his own work with cattle semen, Leibo says, frozen sperm cells have produced calves successfully by artificial insemination after 37 years in storage.
Tens of thousands of women have become pregnant around the world - 17,000 of them in France alone - after artificial insemination with thawed frozen sperm, according to Djerassi and Leibo, and the success rate of normal births is high.
In fact, the scientists note, women inseminated with sperm stored for more than 10 years have already given birth to normal children.
Vasectomies are one of the most widely used methods of permanent contraception. Nearly 500,000 American men undergo the simple and inexpensive operation each year.
Djerassi and Leibo are publishing their proposal ``to initiate serious debate and possible implementation,'' they say. But to Djerassi, the future could involve a true revolution.
``The `normal' reproductive state of an adult,'' he and Leibo say, ``may be infertility, (with) a subsequent deliberate step being needed to effect fertilization.'' by CNB