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Biotech Medicine Science

DNA Vaccine Sterilizes Mice, Could Lead To One-Shot Birth Control For Cats, Dogs 153

Posted by samzenpus from the one-shot-will-do-you dept.
sciencehabit writes: Animal birth control could soon be just a shot away. A new injection makes male and female mice infertile by tricking their muscles into producing hormone-blocking antibodies. If the approach works in dogs and cats, researchers say, it could be used to neuter and spay pets and to control reproduction in feral animal populations. A similar approach could one day spur the development of long-term birth control options for humans.
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DNA Vaccine Sterilizes Mice, Could Lead To One-Shot Birth Control For Cats, Dogs More

DNA Vaccine Sterilizes Mice, Could Lead To One-Shot Birth Control For Cats, Dogs

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  • "think of the harbles!"

  • Suuuure.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...cats and dogs... why do i suddenly have flashbacks to the "vaccine" guns from X-Men: The last stand...?

    Next up: Cure for overpopulation found...

  • Umm... WHAT? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by orlanz ( 882574 ) on Monday October 05, 2015 @05:59PM (#50665687)

    ...new injection ... long-term birth control options for humans.

    What could possible go wrong? Did some government police state / apocalyptic scenarios run through anyone else's minds when they read that?

    • Re:Umm... WHAT? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Fwipp ( 1473271 ) on Monday October 05, 2015 @06:02PM (#50665723)

      Yeah... it's not like our government has a history of sterilizing undesirables or anything, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nutria ( 679911 )

      Yes. Yes they did.

      And don't forget conspiracy theory wingnuts of all stripes: "Obama wants to destroy us!" and "African holocaust!!"

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by TheCarp ( 96830 )

      Not much really, your DNA is in every single cell, reproduction will still be possible, albeit through lab technique, which is preferable since it wont ever happen accidentally.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's a neat idea. ALL pregnancies have to be planned, and only when you are established enough financially to afford it. That's awesome.

    • Did you watch that UN speech when Agenda 2030 was announced and the whole crowd started applauding? Reminded me of Palpatine's Empire's birth. That dystopian future nearly every apocalyptic movie talked about might not be so imaginary, nor so far away...

    • ...new injection ... long-term birth control options for humans.

      What could possible go wrong? Did some government police state / apocalyptic scenarios run through anyone else's minds when they read that?

      If Australia had this in the 1970s there would be very few Aborigines left today.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Consider this for every other species on the planet, that would be considered a good thing. How many is too many, wait before the whole system collapses and the species ceases to exist or start effective birth control that has impact even in cases of intoxicated boredom and too lazy to do anything about it but that OK some one else can look after it and pass on the intoxicated bored lazy genes.

      So which is it, a few billions things going wrong or a few billion things going right, which is going to be by f

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Maavin ( 598439 )
      Yes: "YAY! A way to avoid the Idiocracy scenario"

  • Short form: instant castration and spaying

    Long form: Just have a mass-injection program to implement a dictator's "final solution."

  • > A new injection makes male and female mice infertile by tricking their muscles into producing hormone-blocking antibodies [...] control reproduction in feral animal populations [...] similar approach could one day spur the development of long-term birth control options for humans [...]

    Not sure how I feel about that. Part of me is going hey cool, technology! Part of me is going, wait, didn't I see that movie in the 1970's? I seem to recall it didn't end well.

  • shot away shot away

  • SG-1 Episode Foreshadowing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Shoten ( 260439 ) on Monday October 05, 2015 @06:27PM (#50665943)

    "Aschen Vaccine Causes...causes...what does this word mean?"

    "Sterility."

    "Oh, shit...not again..."

    • This is the flip side of the vaccine debate. I absolutely believe vaccines are effective and on the balance beneficial to society, and everyone should be vaccinated. But stuff like this is why I reluctantly agree the government should never have the power to force people to get vaccinated. You can't just give government powers based on what good things they could do with it. You have to limit government's powers based on the worst thing they could do with it.

      • Except it's not the flip side because the only people the government can force to get vaccinated are soldiers. Forcing vaccines on people is not something that has been done, despite how many whiners there are in California.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by moeinvt ( 851793 )

          "... the only people the government can force to get vaccinated are soldiers."

          Nonsense. Coercion by threat of consequences is exactly the same as force. Requiring injections for kids as a precondition of their enrollment in taxpayer funded public schools is coercing people to make decisions which they might not otherwise make. That "do what we say or there will be consequences" approach is a perfect example of the way government uses force against The People. The threat of having their kids banned from

          • Seriously. We don't need government coercion, what we need are walls around our cities to keep the disease ridden, herd immunity breaking unvaccinated in the slums where they belong.

      • A government can do bad things with any power, so you seem to be advocating anarchy.

  • Frank Herbert covered what could go terribly wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

    by msk ( 6205 ) on Monday October 05, 2015 @06:32PM (#50665969)

    The White Plague.

  • From TFA: "engineered a piece of DNA that - when packaged inside inactive virus shells and injected..."

    I swear the scientists said almost the exact same thing in the movie "I am Legend"... and it caused the zombie apocalypse.

  • Planned Parenthood (Score:5, Insightful)

    by p51d007 ( 656414 ) on Monday October 05, 2015 @07:07PM (#50666251)
    "A similar approach could one day spur the development of long-term birth control options for humans." Oh, wouldn't Margaret Sanger have loved this when she started that abortion milling organization. She could have single handed wiped out the black population, as she wanted, in a couple generations. On blacks, immigrants and indigents: "...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people On sterilization & racial purification: Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial "purification," couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech. On the right of married couples to bear children: Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her "Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932 On the purpose of birth control: The purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2) On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities: "More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      What I find appalling about the anti-PP rhetoric is that it's really post-natal eugenics, given the insistence on having babies and the typically concomitant lack of funding for social welfare.

      • Its also interesting that they attack Margaret Sanger rather than the activities of the organization. Look, she was a eugenicist, so everything she was associated with is the evil!

        For example, Planned Parenthood encourages family planning -- choosing when to have children rather than just having them happen. Are opponents concerned that some of their own might be convinced to have children when they are ready rather than as soon as they are in a relationship? Oh, the horrors!

        • No, the concern of anti-abortionists is that they feel that an unborn child still has the right to life. Most pro-choicers seem to either ignore or not realize this, and keep shouting "it's the woman's choice", as if that were the flip side of the anti-abortionist argument. The discussion that needs to be had is not "does a woman have a right to an abortion?", it's "when does a human gain the right to life?"

          • Or "When does a fetus turn human?" or "When does a human gain the right to life by being a parasite on another?".

            Besides that, I am under no legal obligation whatsoever to donate any of my tissue for the benefit of another. The only legal compulsion (where it exists) is pregnancy. Pregnancy is several months of hormonal whipsawing which includes discomfort (sometimes extreme), sometimes severe pain (frequently when giving birth), and a certain amount of danger. It restricts a woman's ability to work a

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          I'm also inclined to give Sanger's eugenics a sort-of-pass.

          I think you don't have to swing a dead cat very far to find contemporary medical ethicists exploring some of the same issues Sanger was pretty gung-ho about. Like should a couple discover they both carry a gene which will result in a high probability of a child with birth defects have children? Such a child would likely impose a significant dollar costs, and since most people can't afford to self-fund such care, they will just be shifting those co

  • ....Chernobyl tries to reclaim it's title.....

  • Dont need long term.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday October 05, 2015 @07:21PM (#50666379) Homepage

    It's effortless to get the snip, then you don't have to worry if the doc does it right where it's non reversible. I.E. he snaps the vas, seals the ends then folds them back 1/2 an inch back on themselves and uses basically a surgical ziptie to hold them there. there is ZERO chance of the Vas reconnecting.

    Real men get their Vas snipped. You do not "need" to have any more kids.

  • So arm up some guys with dart guns and run around shooting stray cats. Obviously they would get shirts that say "professional pussy hunter." You can actually get those on ebay already.
  • I think this is a good premise for a new scifi film like "Children of Men" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt02... [imdb.com].
    You know, virus gets out, most of the world loses the ability to have children.
    Come on, what could possibly go wrong?

  • The real fun begins when some of that DNA gets picked up by an E. Coli.

  • Yes, I am aware that pigeons are birds and therefor a different domain as mammals, and that there might be some differences in the biochemistry here, but I hope they work something out to get those flying rats under control.

  • Sounds frightful (Score:3)

    by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Tuesday October 06, 2015 @03:11AM (#50668405)

    Invoking autoimmune disorders sounds like a poor idea in pets, and a nightmare in humans. That's what this is. And that's before you get to the possibility that you could absolutely have a future organization that has the desire to eliminate human births, but doesn't have the will to kill humans (and also, that would get them stopped faster), so they use a tech like this. The fact that it's being developed doesn't mean that will happen, but the fact that it's possible should be at least a bit scary.

  • The only thing that could go wrong with this is... everything.
  • "Scientists Invent New Way for Humanity to Destroy Itself" A few possibilities that come to mind are: - Using the vaccine against someone someone doesn't like. Arabs, Palestinians, blacks, Hindus, Israelis, White men in golf shirts. - Adding it other vaccines - only in certain selected areas of course. - Inadvertent contamination, intentional or not - genetic modification to include into food, etc. - release of the carrier virus into the wild using a common vector - Work begins immediately on an oral form

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