May 11, 2010 • 19 mins
Immunocontraception is a humane type of birth control that's used to control wild animal populations. In this episode, Allison and Robert discuss the pros and cons of immunocontraceptives -- and whether they'll ever be used to control human reproduction.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Matamilth, the science editor at how stuff
works dot com, and this is Robert Lamb, science writer
at how stuff works dot com. Today we're talking about contraception,
(00:25):
specifically immuno contraception. But don't turn off the podcast just yet,
because we're kicking off by talking about out of control rabbits. Yeah,
so let me lead you into I actually hadn't heard
of immuno contraception until an article by our very own
intern marian english Um on five invasive species you should
know was just written. It's not up yet, so don't
(00:47):
go look for it, but it is gonna be up
and it is going to be good. Thank you, Marianne.
Be good. So one of the ones that made Marianne's
list was none other than the rabbit, famed for its
ability to of course reproduce like matt so they're known
for so all wonder that they're invasive, and especially in
Australia thanks to one Thomas Austin who purposefully introduced the
(01:08):
European rabbit to as a state in Geelong, Australia back
in the eighteen fifties. What old Thomas didn't know was
that handful of rabbits that he purposefully introduced we're going
to escape their enclosures and multiply to ten billion by wow,
that is a lot of rabbits just out of control,
rampaging across the countryside. Yeah. So in the article that
(01:30):
Marianne wrote, she said that the Free Invasion also inspired
the commonly coined phrase breeding like rabbits. I did not
know that. I knew that it inspired a nineteen sixty
four novel by the name of the Year of the
Angry Rabbit Um. It was written by a guy named
Russell Brandon, and it's it basically had to do with
(01:51):
like giant, giant rabbits rampaging across Australia, tearing up the country,
and then somehow Australia ends up being the global superpower.
Is kind of somehow. Yeah, I have not read it,
but it's supposedly really tongue in cheek, and it actually
inspired a movie that more people are probably familiar with,
called A Night of a Lelipis. And you, of course
have seen it, because you've seen every film under the sun. Well, no,
(02:12):
I think it used to come on TBS a lot
or something. But but yeah, it's just like I think
it takes place in Arizona instead of Australia, and it's
just bunny rabbits running all over like a toy town
and people running in fear and all it's it's it's horrible.
I highly recommend seeing it. I always think of Danny
Darko and that crazy rabbit. Yeah, but that was just
a kind of from the future in a rabbit suit.
(02:34):
That's time travel. That's a different podcast altogether. That's a
pretty creepy rabbit though, you have to admit it was.
So Australia knows creepy rabbits, and Australia actually has been
hit really bad when it comes to invasives. Yeah, they
have that. They have like a mouse problem on a
regular basis. The hordes of mice teeming across the fields,
eating everything in their path, rampaging into barns. Yeah, they've
(02:56):
lost a ton of mammal species um in large Part
two to invase this. So, of course Australians have triedal
sorts of things to control these rabbits. They've erected fences
that are thousands of miles long. They've used poison. Um,
what was that? You're telling me something about the fences?
The climate right right right? So, Um, the fence on
one side of the fence, According to this New York
(03:18):
Times article, Um, the bunnies have eaten all the vegetation.
It's parched. It's you know, it's a it's a desolate town.
It's parked, it's it's no good. And there are no clouds.
There's no cloud cover above this particular side of the fence,
on the side of the fence where there are no bunnies,
it's nice and lush and there is cloud cover. So
the bunnies are affecting climate change. Just to show just
(03:39):
how out of control it is, it's actually affecting the weather.
So Australians have tried this fence business. Um, clearly that
hasn't been entirely successful. They've they've employed poison, they've also
hunted them, and they introduced a seriously infectious viral disease
by the name of mixomatosis as a biological control agent
back in the nineteen fifties to control all the huge
(04:01):
rabbit population. And the thing about the disease was that
it was host select so it was only going to
infect one type of animal and that being the European rabbit.
And their efforts were successful. Initially. They wiped out about
the budding population in Australia only six months after release.
So that's some pretty good results, right, But inevitably you're
gonna have some um, some of the rabbits are going
(04:22):
to be immune, and they're going to survive and they're
going to breed, and then what you get what they
ended up having happened, and that's just now you have
a new population um um that's out of control and
all the rabbits are immune to miximatosis. Right, Plus you
have a couple of new strains of the virus developing too,
and maybe a Radiohead song the same name off of
(04:45):
the the album Held of the Thief, the second best
Radiohead album in my opinion. So the Australians aren't given
up on controlling their rabbit population. Their latest effort involves
immuno contraception, which is basically birth control for rab its,
birth control with a twist, and that you can kind
of think about immunocontraception as an internal battle between an
(05:06):
organism's reproductive system and its immune system. Okay, and this
is what stirs up the battle between the two. See,
the animal's immune system is going to manufacture antibodies that
may then target sperm, eggs, or reproductive hormones, thereby preventing
fertilization or the generation of sperm or over. So, an
immunocontraceptive could be delivered to a wild animal via a
(05:27):
deliberately introduced virus, or it could be given in the
form of a vaccine, and the vaccine might be via
dart Yeah, they're really um, they're really strong on the
whole using it like a dart or a dart gun
kind of a situation. Um, it could be injected manually
as well, but ideally, especially wild animals, you know, the
farther way you are, the better, Right, You're gonna want
(05:48):
to minimize contact. Yeah, So I feel like we should
give just a backup on how a regular birth control
pill works. Regular birth control for humans not administered by
art gun at all. Good point, Robert, good point. So
human birth control pill relies on hormones generally to prevent
ovulation or the reaths of eggs. Even if eggs are released,
(06:10):
they may have a hard time rolling down the old
Philippian tube and sticking to the wall of the uterus.
Pill also makes it harder for sperm to slip past
the gate, that being the cervix and into the uterus
for fertilization. So it's a little bit of a different
game for a contraceptive versus an immuno contraceptive. And it's
it's really interesting that the number of animal welfare groups
(06:30):
are really into this, um, namely the Humane Society of
the United States. Yeah. Um, they've been pushing up, pushing
to use it for dear population in the United States
because we have quite a deer problem in many areas. Um,
what's the area up in New York? Fire Island? Have
you been there? I'm not sure you've traveled. I have
not been to Fire Island. So Fire Island, for those
(06:52):
of you guys who have seen Jersey Shore, is one
of those places where people like to go the Hamptons
or the Jersey Shore or Fire Island for the weekend.
So you get a bunch of New Yorkers rolling out
of Manhattan and taking over the island and partying and
going to the beach and women in the face, right,
is that what they do on Jersey Shore. That's the
only thing I know about Jersey Shore. Punched in the face.
(07:15):
I am kind of curious, but I've not seen it. Um.
So the other thing about Fire Island, apart from all
these New Yorkers, is that they have a crazy deer population,
so much so that when you step off the boat
to get to Fire Island, you just walk across the
backs of deer. Right, it's just right in certain New Yorkers,
you know, ride deer to get to the parties. Now,
I'm just just kidding. The interesting fact you can't ride
(07:37):
a reindeer, you know, their backs are two weeks that's
when you took him up to slay. So the Humane
Society is experimented with immune contraceptives on the Fire Island
deer population. Yeah, and they've they've also tried it out
in South Africa with some African elephant preserves there, which
kind of surprised me at first because I'm like, you know,
(07:57):
African elephants. We were trying to protect those guys. But
that's the thing. You start protecting a species, uh, you know,
giving it free reigin within a you know, preserved area,
and the next thing you know, they're breeding like wildfire
and you're having for elephants, yeah, or bringing breeding like
elephants and you have to step in and keep them
from eating up all the resources. Yeah. They've also tried
it on the wild horses of assatigue. Oh see that one.
(08:20):
That's another one that when I first read that, I'm like, oh,
the wild horses. Don't take the wild horses away. But
obviously if you want to keep wild horses, you need
them to not go to get out of control and
starve themselves. The Humane Society is also working on immuno
contraceptive and sterilization agents for dogs and cats as well.
That's awesome because I do hate to see uh. I think,
(08:41):
like most people hate to see straight dogs and cats, right,
I think that this would be pretty useful in that sense.
And also you know for the feral cats. Yeah, I
mean that's that's one of those um I mean, whether
you like animals or or hate them, you know, it's like,
this is an idea you can get behind, probably less
um expensive as well than you know, bringing in a
(09:01):
cat to be spade or neutered. Yeah, just hit it
with a dart gun from down the street. You get
to go Peter, seems to be behind immuno contraceptives too.
I read at least one letter in which a Peter
wildlife biologists recommended an immuno contraceptive program as a means
for controlling a deer population. And this particular population I
think was in a Texan town. So yeah, that shows
(09:23):
you how humane it is, because Peter, generally they don't
get behind anything unless it's pretty pretty humane, ridiculously humane.
Even so, let's talk about how these immuno contraceptives work.
I could find two that are out there. So the
first one that I look at, it was called the
spay back vaccine, and this is still experimental, and this
is the one made from picks, right, well, a lot
(09:44):
of them are a lot of them rely on poor
signs Zona pellucida antigens, and these are just proteins drived
and extracted from pig ovaries. The spayvack vaccine has poor
sign Zona pellucida antigens or p Z p antigens, and
these are the common ones in immunocontraceptives. And the pc
p antigens are just proteins that are extracted and purified
(10:07):
from pig overies. An antigen you remember, is just a
foreign body that will get your immune system all riled up,
and then it combine with whatever your immune system throws
at it, usually like an antibody or a T cell.
So spay back causes female mammals to produce antibodies that
adhere to the surface of her own egg, and it
(10:27):
blocks sperm from binding to the egg, so preventing fertilization.
Spay Back has been tried on seals and rabbits, she pourses,
grizzly bears and wolves. Just to give you an idea
of its longevity, it worked for ten years on a
population of gray seals with a single with a single dose,
so you can just completely shut down reproduction for an
(10:50):
entire decade species. It's pretty incredible. So this is still experimental.
Um I did find another one called GonaCon, not to
be confused with dragon con or comic con, but there's
a there's a great joke about nerds rereading there somewhere,
but that the listeners to come up with. So GonaCon
(11:10):
was just granted regulatory approval by the e p A
in February. And this is also a single shot, multi
year vaccine, and it stimulates the manufacture of antibodies that
bind to Canada trope and releasing hormone and animals, and
it basically puts a deer in a nonreproductive state. This
is also the one UM that they make a point
of of mentioning that if you eat one of these deer,
(11:32):
it's not going to have an effect on your own
reproduction system. Yeah, so the ideas that the proteins are
digested as opposed to a hormone based contraceptive that you
might ingest good enough. So I feel like I should
give you some idea of how effective this particular gona
con contraceptive is. One study that I found numbers for
UM had twenty eight deer and it was found to
(11:53):
be eighty eight percent effective among in the first year
and forty seven percent effective in the second year. I
found another study that was kind of roughly correlated with that,
and it was July two five, again maybe a handful
of deer, like under fifty or something like that, relatively small,
sixty seven percent effective UM the first year and forty
eight percent effective the second year. So while they're saying
(12:16):
that it can last for years, I'm not so sure
that it's effective for that The whole time period, right,
It's just sum depends on the individual animal. I'm guessing.
The other interesting thing is, I mean you're basically putting
an animal in a non reproductive state for an extended
period of time, I mean decades, right, and you have
to wonder does this have significant implications for on the
animal's behavior. But maybe this isn't so different from a
(12:38):
woman being on birth control for an extended period of time. Yeah,
didn't you say that there's a study like you have
women on birth control like they're they're less enamored with
like husky men. That. Yeah, there was actually a big
study that came out in two thousand nine in the
journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and the authors were
(13:00):
tending that birth control pills were altering mate selections. So
women who are on the pill, um, the authors said,
mate with Yeah, the less preferred partners. Cool, that's all
I managed to get married, so you know you a pill? Uh? So.
I mean the flip side of that is that women
who are ovulating tend to be attracted to so called
the manly men. Those were the those with the more
(13:23):
masculine facial features, the traits of dominance and competitiveness, and
women also tend to prefer the man who's not like
them genetically speaking. So there are a number of arguments
against this that are out there, according to reproductive expert
Desk Cooper from the University of New South Wales. What
does that? What does Cooper have to say? Yeah, so
it goes back to our earlier discussion about the rabbits. Um,
(13:44):
not all the rabbits were um, we're susceptible to the virus,
and then the ones that survived ended up reading and
then you had a new population of rabbits it was immune.
So not every organism is going to is going to
be susceptible to these different immuno contraceptions. All right, So
(14:06):
well that also means the individuals who wind up surviving
and reproducing maybe what Professor Cooper calls genetically unusual individuals. Right, So,
if they're in the genetic minority and they've become a majority,
I mean, should they should they assume that position? What
what kind of impact does that have on the genetic point?
Should be a superorganism or it could be UM like
a very you know, disease prone organism, organism, and either
(14:29):
extreme is going to be an unbalancing effect on the ecosystem.
The other, very real downside of immuno contraception is that
it could be slow. You're gonna have to wait for
natural causes to run their course among a particular animal population,
which is why wildlife agencies a lot of the time
are probably going to employ another strategy in addition to
immuno contraception, So like shooting with the dart, wait a
(14:51):
little bit, once it gets up, then you shoot with
the rifle. Possibly I'm just saying the herd in more
than one way. It could be expensive too. There's a
lot of fieldwork involved. You have to hit enough of
the population to make a difference. Um, and I think
this might be about And lastly, your animal could suffer
(15:12):
side effects, although I didn't find a clear explanation of
what these might be in my research other than you know,
just the usual puffiness at the injection site. I guess
they might die, but I mean, you're trying to cut
down their number anyway, right, that's true. That's true. So
the big question for me was what about immuno contraception
(15:32):
for say, human males. Yeah, I think there's a I mean,
it sounds like there's a huge possibility there. Obviously, you know,
you'd have to go through trials and experiments and legislation.
I mean, you have to go through so many hoops
to get it to you know, to finally be on
the market. But I think it would be a good option. Yeah.
(15:53):
There's a two thousand four study by rand at All
that was published in Science and its studied reversible immuno
country reception in monkeys. It was a pretty small study.
It was just seven out of nine monkeys who became
infertile after receiving a dose of epin and this is
a protein specific to the testes and epididymis. After the
monkeys stopped receiving the open, five out of the seven
(16:15):
became fertile again, right, so to you know, stayed infertile.
So that should promise um. And but if we were
to adopt that for for humans, of course, it would
have to go three years and years of clinical trials
and take up a whole lot of cash to get there.
I still hope it's the administered by dark gun because
I think that's the way that you could really make
it be like the manly option, you know, because this
(16:37):
is they're not taking pills and little you know, around containers.
It's like they're having to shoot themselves in the foot
with a dark guns. Well better, yeah, let your partner
take out a little aggression and yeah, shoot your everybody
everybody daily basis. So I think that about wraps it
up from Uni Contraception this week. If you want to
find out a little bit more about regular contraception, head
on over to how staff works dot com. Hey, got
(17:00):
a few minutes, you want to do some listener mail? Sure, sure, yeah,
I'd love to. We had a couple of people right
in on our Weapons that Changed the World podcast, and
you guys feel strongly about your weapons. Yeah, we got
a lot of responses, some of some of them were
pretty awesome. And by a lot we mean like five
well that's that's a lot, but a lot. They listed
(17:21):
a lot of weapons. Um, you know, everything like the
club got mentioned, um right right. A gentleman by the
name of Joey thinks that we definitely definitely should have
mentioned boats and clubs and swords and bows and arrows.
Although he thinks us and he says, keep up the
good work. Awesome. We're always always open for you know, suggestions.
Blaine from California also writes that he thought that the
(17:44):
episode was titled a little bit misleadingly. Yeah, yeah, the
title was a little misleading because we really dealt more
with weaponized technologies as opposed to specific weapons. Um and
and certainly things like the long bow have had a
huge impact on the evolue of warfare. Yeah, Blaine would
have liked to see machine gun on on our list,
(18:04):
but we'll have to come back to these. We could
easily do an entire podcast on on on how the
machine gund changed warfare or the law of the long book.
Fan of the longbow, Yeah, Tim from Dallas was a
big fan of the long bow as well. He wrote
that the long bow allowed for British military domination during
medieval times, and the crossbow, invented yet again in China,
did much the same there. So thanks to him for that. Yeah.
(18:26):
So thanks everyone for writing in with your comments and
feedback on the Military Technologies podcast. We do appreciate it.
If you want to send us more suggestions or just
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can find that at how stuff works dot com. For
(18:56):
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com home page
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Matamilth, the science editor at how stuff
works dot com, and this is Robert Lamb, science writer
at how stuff works dot com. Today we're talking about contraception,
(00:25):
specifically immuno contraception. But don't turn off the podcast just yet,
because we're kicking off by talking about out of control rabbits. Yeah,
so let me lead you into I actually hadn't heard
of immuno contraception until an article by our very own
intern marian english Um on five invasive species you should
know was just written. It's not up yet, so don't
(00:47):
go look for it, but it is gonna be up
and it is going to be good. Thank you, Marianne.
Be good. So one of the ones that made Marianne's
list was none other than the rabbit, famed for its
ability to of course reproduce like matt so they're known
for so all wonder that they're invasive, and especially in
Australia thanks to one Thomas Austin who purposefully introduced the
(01:08):
European rabbit to as a state in Geelong, Australia back
in the eighteen fifties. What old Thomas didn't know was
that handful of rabbits that he purposefully introduced we're going
to escape their enclosures and multiply to ten billion by wow,
that is a lot of rabbits just out of control,
rampaging across the countryside. Yeah. So in the article that
(01:30):
Marianne wrote, she said that the Free Invasion also inspired
the commonly coined phrase breeding like rabbits. I did not
know that. I knew that it inspired a nineteen sixty
four novel by the name of the Year of the
Angry Rabbit Um. It was written by a guy named
Russell Brandon, and it's it basically had to do with
(01:51):
like giant, giant rabbits rampaging across Australia, tearing up the country,
and then somehow Australia ends up being the global superpower.
Is kind of somehow. Yeah, I have not read it,
but it's supposedly really tongue in cheek, and it actually
inspired a movie that more people are probably familiar with,
called A Night of a Lelipis. And you, of course
have seen it, because you've seen every film under the sun. Well, no,
(02:12):
I think it used to come on TBS a lot
or something. But but yeah, it's just like I think
it takes place in Arizona instead of Australia, and it's
just bunny rabbits running all over like a toy town
and people running in fear and all it's it's it's horrible.
I highly recommend seeing it. I always think of Danny
Darko and that crazy rabbit. Yeah, but that was just
a kind of from the future in a rabbit suit.
(02:34):
That's time travel. That's a different podcast altogether. That's a
pretty creepy rabbit though, you have to admit it was.
So Australia knows creepy rabbits, and Australia actually has been
hit really bad when it comes to invasives. Yeah, they
have that. They have like a mouse problem on a
regular basis. The hordes of mice teeming across the fields,
eating everything in their path, rampaging into barns. Yeah, they've
(02:56):
lost a ton of mammal species um in large Part
two to invase this. So, of course Australians have triedal
sorts of things to control these rabbits. They've erected fences
that are thousands of miles long. They've used poison. Um,
what was that? You're telling me something about the fences?
The climate right right right? So, Um, the fence on
one side of the fence, According to this New York
(03:18):
Times article, Um, the bunnies have eaten all the vegetation.
It's parched. It's you know, it's a it's a desolate town.
It's parked, it's it's no good. And there are no clouds.
There's no cloud cover above this particular side of the fence,
on the side of the fence where there are no bunnies,
it's nice and lush and there is cloud cover. So
the bunnies are affecting climate change. Just to show just
(03:39):
how out of control it is, it's actually affecting the weather.
So Australians have tried this fence business. Um, clearly that
hasn't been entirely successful. They've they've employed poison, they've also
hunted them, and they introduced a seriously infectious viral disease
by the name of mixomatosis as a biological control agent
back in the nineteen fifties to control all the huge
(04:01):
rabbit population. And the thing about the disease was that
it was host select so it was only going to
infect one type of animal and that being the European rabbit.
And their efforts were successful. Initially. They wiped out about
the budding population in Australia only six months after release.
So that's some pretty good results, right, But inevitably you're
gonna have some um, some of the rabbits are going
(04:22):
to be immune, and they're going to survive and they're
going to breed, and then what you get what they
ended up having happened, and that's just now you have
a new population um um that's out of control and
all the rabbits are immune to miximatosis. Right, Plus you
have a couple of new strains of the virus developing too,
and maybe a Radiohead song the same name off of
(04:45):
the the album Held of the Thief, the second best
Radiohead album in my opinion. So the Australians aren't given
up on controlling their rabbit population. Their latest effort involves
immuno contraception, which is basically birth control for rab its,
birth control with a twist, and that you can kind
of think about immunocontraception as an internal battle between an
(05:06):
organism's reproductive system and its immune system. Okay, and this
is what stirs up the battle between the two. See,
the animal's immune system is going to manufacture antibodies that
may then target sperm, eggs, or reproductive hormones, thereby preventing
fertilization or the generation of sperm or over. So, an
immunocontraceptive could be delivered to a wild animal via a
(05:27):
deliberately introduced virus, or it could be given in the
form of a vaccine, and the vaccine might be via
dart Yeah, they're really um, they're really strong on the
whole using it like a dart or a dart gun
kind of a situation. Um, it could be injected manually
as well, but ideally, especially wild animals, you know, the
farther way you are, the better, Right, You're gonna want
(05:48):
to minimize contact. Yeah, So I feel like we should
give just a backup on how a regular birth control
pill works. Regular birth control for humans not administered by
art gun at all. Good point, Robert, good point. So
human birth control pill relies on hormones generally to prevent
ovulation or the reaths of eggs. Even if eggs are released,
(06:10):
they may have a hard time rolling down the old
Philippian tube and sticking to the wall of the uterus.
Pill also makes it harder for sperm to slip past
the gate, that being the cervix and into the uterus
for fertilization. So it's a little bit of a different
game for a contraceptive versus an immuno contraceptive. And it's
it's really interesting that the number of animal welfare groups
(06:30):
are really into this, um, namely the Humane Society of
the United States. Yeah. Um, they've been pushing up, pushing
to use it for dear population in the United States
because we have quite a deer problem in many areas. Um,
what's the area up in New York? Fire Island? Have
you been there? I'm not sure you've traveled. I have
not been to Fire Island. So Fire Island, for those
(06:52):
of you guys who have seen Jersey Shore, is one
of those places where people like to go the Hamptons
or the Jersey Shore or Fire Island for the weekend.
So you get a bunch of New Yorkers rolling out
of Manhattan and taking over the island and partying and
going to the beach and women in the face, right,
is that what they do on Jersey Shore. That's the
only thing I know about Jersey Shore. Punched in the face.
(07:15):
I am kind of curious, but I've not seen it. Um.
So the other thing about Fire Island, apart from all
these New Yorkers, is that they have a crazy deer population,
so much so that when you step off the boat
to get to Fire Island, you just walk across the
backs of deer. Right, it's just right in certain New Yorkers,
you know, ride deer to get to the parties. Now,
I'm just just kidding. The interesting fact you can't ride
(07:37):
a reindeer, you know, their backs are two weeks that's
when you took him up to slay. So the Humane
Society is experimented with immune contraceptives on the Fire Island
deer population. Yeah, and they've they've also tried it out
in South Africa with some African elephant preserves there, which
kind of surprised me at first because I'm like, you know,
(07:57):
African elephants. We were trying to protect those guys. But
that's the thing. You start protecting a species, uh, you know,
giving it free reigin within a you know, preserved area,
and the next thing you know, they're breeding like wildfire
and you're having for elephants, yeah, or bringing breeding like
elephants and you have to step in and keep them
from eating up all the resources. Yeah. They've also tried
it on the wild horses of assatigue. Oh see that one.
(08:20):
That's another one that when I first read that, I'm like, oh,
the wild horses. Don't take the wild horses away. But
obviously if you want to keep wild horses, you need
them to not go to get out of control and
starve themselves. The Humane Society is also working on immuno
contraceptive and sterilization agents for dogs and cats as well.
That's awesome because I do hate to see uh. I think,
(08:41):
like most people hate to see straight dogs and cats, right,
I think that this would be pretty useful in that sense.
And also you know for the feral cats. Yeah, I
mean that's that's one of those um I mean, whether
you like animals or or hate them, you know, it's like,
this is an idea you can get behind, probably less
um expensive as well than you know, bringing in a
(09:01):
cat to be spade or neutered. Yeah, just hit it
with a dart gun from down the street. You get
to go Peter, seems to be behind immuno contraceptives too.
I read at least one letter in which a Peter
wildlife biologists recommended an immuno contraceptive program as a means
for controlling a deer population. And this particular population I
think was in a Texan town. So yeah, that shows
(09:23):
you how humane it is, because Peter, generally they don't
get behind anything unless it's pretty pretty humane, ridiculously humane.
Even so, let's talk about how these immuno contraceptives work.
I could find two that are out there. So the
first one that I look at, it was called the
spay back vaccine, and this is still experimental, and this
is the one made from picks, right, well, a lot
(09:44):
of them are a lot of them rely on poor
signs Zona pellucida antigens, and these are just proteins drived
and extracted from pig ovaries. The spayvack vaccine has poor
sign Zona pellucida antigens or p Z p antigens, and
these are the common ones in immunocontraceptives. And the pc
p antigens are just proteins that are extracted and purified
(10:07):
from pig overies. An antigen you remember, is just a
foreign body that will get your immune system all riled up,
and then it combine with whatever your immune system throws
at it, usually like an antibody or a T cell.
So spay back causes female mammals to produce antibodies that
adhere to the surface of her own egg, and it
(10:27):
blocks sperm from binding to the egg, so preventing fertilization.
Spay Back has been tried on seals and rabbits, she pourses,
grizzly bears and wolves. Just to give you an idea
of its longevity, it worked for ten years on a
population of gray seals with a single with a single dose,
so you can just completely shut down reproduction for an
(10:50):
entire decade species. It's pretty incredible. So this is still experimental.
Um I did find another one called GonaCon, not to
be confused with dragon con or comic con, but there's
a there's a great joke about nerds rereading there somewhere,
but that the listeners to come up with. So GonaCon
(11:10):
was just granted regulatory approval by the e p A
in February. And this is also a single shot, multi
year vaccine, and it stimulates the manufacture of antibodies that
bind to Canada trope and releasing hormone and animals, and
it basically puts a deer in a nonreproductive state. This
is also the one UM that they make a point
of of mentioning that if you eat one of these deer,
(11:32):
it's not going to have an effect on your own
reproduction system. Yeah, so the ideas that the proteins are
digested as opposed to a hormone based contraceptive that you
might ingest good enough. So I feel like I should
give you some idea of how effective this particular gona
con contraceptive is. One study that I found numbers for
UM had twenty eight deer and it was found to
(11:53):
be eighty eight percent effective among in the first year
and forty seven percent effective in the second year. I
found another study that was kind of roughly correlated with that,
and it was July two five, again maybe a handful
of deer, like under fifty or something like that, relatively small,
sixty seven percent effective UM the first year and forty
eight percent effective the second year. So while they're saying
(12:16):
that it can last for years, I'm not so sure
that it's effective for that The whole time period, right,
It's just sum depends on the individual animal. I'm guessing.
The other interesting thing is, I mean you're basically putting
an animal in a non reproductive state for an extended
period of time, I mean decades, right, and you have
to wonder does this have significant implications for on the
animal's behavior. But maybe this isn't so different from a
(12:38):
woman being on birth control for an extended period of time. Yeah,
didn't you say that there's a study like you have
women on birth control like they're they're less enamored with
like husky men. That. Yeah, there was actually a big
study that came out in two thousand nine in the
journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and the authors were
(13:00):
tending that birth control pills were altering mate selections. So
women who are on the pill, um, the authors said,
mate with Yeah, the less preferred partners. Cool, that's all
I managed to get married, so you know you a pill? Uh? So.
I mean the flip side of that is that women
who are ovulating tend to be attracted to so called
the manly men. Those were the those with the more
(13:23):
masculine facial features, the traits of dominance and competitiveness, and
women also tend to prefer the man who's not like
them genetically speaking. So there are a number of arguments
against this that are out there, according to reproductive expert
Desk Cooper from the University of New South Wales. What
does that? What does Cooper have to say? Yeah, so
it goes back to our earlier discussion about the rabbits. Um,
(13:44):
not all the rabbits were um, we're susceptible to the virus,
and then the ones that survived ended up reading and
then you had a new population of rabbits it was immune.
So not every organism is going to is going to
be susceptible to these different immuno contraceptions. All right, So
(14:06):
well that also means the individuals who wind up surviving
and reproducing maybe what Professor Cooper calls genetically unusual individuals. Right, So,
if they're in the genetic minority and they've become a majority,
I mean, should they should they assume that position? What
what kind of impact does that have on the genetic point?
Should be a superorganism or it could be UM like
a very you know, disease prone organism, organism, and either
(14:29):
extreme is going to be an unbalancing effect on the ecosystem.
The other, very real downside of immuno contraception is that
it could be slow. You're gonna have to wait for
natural causes to run their course among a particular animal population,
which is why wildlife agencies a lot of the time
are probably going to employ another strategy in addition to
immuno contraception, So like shooting with the dart, wait a
(14:51):
little bit, once it gets up, then you shoot with
the rifle. Possibly I'm just saying the herd in more
than one way. It could be expensive too. There's a
lot of fieldwork involved. You have to hit enough of
the population to make a difference. Um, and I think
this might be about And lastly, your animal could suffer
(15:12):
side effects, although I didn't find a clear explanation of
what these might be in my research other than you know,
just the usual puffiness at the injection site. I guess
they might die, but I mean, you're trying to cut
down their number anyway, right, that's true. That's true. So
the big question for me was what about immuno contraception
(15:32):
for say, human males. Yeah, I think there's a I mean,
it sounds like there's a huge possibility there. Obviously, you know,
you'd have to go through trials and experiments and legislation.
I mean, you have to go through so many hoops
to get it to you know, to finally be on
the market. But I think it would be a good option. Yeah.
(15:53):
There's a two thousand four study by rand at All
that was published in Science and its studied reversible immuno
country reception in monkeys. It was a pretty small study.
It was just seven out of nine monkeys who became
infertile after receiving a dose of epin and this is
a protein specific to the testes and epididymis. After the
monkeys stopped receiving the open, five out of the seven
(16:15):
became fertile again, right, so to you know, stayed infertile.
So that should promise um. And but if we were
to adopt that for for humans, of course, it would
have to go three years and years of clinical trials
and take up a whole lot of cash to get there.
I still hope it's the administered by dark gun because
I think that's the way that you could really make
it be like the manly option, you know, because this
(16:37):
is they're not taking pills and little you know, around containers.
It's like they're having to shoot themselves in the foot
with a dark guns. Well better, yeah, let your partner
take out a little aggression and yeah, shoot your everybody
everybody daily basis. So I think that about wraps it
up from Uni Contraception this week. If you want to
find out a little bit more about regular contraception, head
on over to how staff works dot com. Hey, got
(17:00):
a few minutes, you want to do some listener mail? Sure, sure, yeah,
I'd love to. We had a couple of people right
in on our Weapons that Changed the World podcast, and
you guys feel strongly about your weapons. Yeah, we got
a lot of responses, some of some of them were
pretty awesome. And by a lot we mean like five
well that's that's a lot, but a lot. They listed
(17:21):
a lot of weapons. Um, you know, everything like the
club got mentioned, um right right. A gentleman by the
name of Joey thinks that we definitely definitely should have
mentioned boats and clubs and swords and bows and arrows.
Although he thinks us and he says, keep up the
good work. Awesome. We're always always open for you know, suggestions.
Blaine from California also writes that he thought that the
(17:44):
episode was titled a little bit misleadingly. Yeah, yeah, the
title was a little misleading because we really dealt more
with weaponized technologies as opposed to specific weapons. Um and
and certainly things like the long bow have had a
huge impact on the evolue of warfare. Yeah, Blaine would
have liked to see machine gun on on our list,
(18:04):
but we'll have to come back to these. We could
easily do an entire podcast on on on how the
machine gund changed warfare or the law of the long book.
Fan of the longbow, Yeah, Tim from Dallas was a
big fan of the long bow as well. He wrote
that the long bow allowed for British military domination during
medieval times, and the crossbow, invented yet again in China,
did much the same there. So thanks to him for that. Yeah.
(18:26):
So thanks everyone for writing in with your comments and
feedback on the Military Technologies podcast. We do appreciate it.
If you want to send us more suggestions or just
a comment, shoot us an email at science Stuff at
hows to freak dot com and dropping the homepage to
check out the blogs. We discuss everything from space, music,
two robots that are designed to digest food, and you
can find that at how stuff works dot com. For
(18:56):
more on this and thousands of other topics because at
how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff Works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
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