Friday, December 01, 2006

New Spray-on Condom: A Car Wash for your Penis

It was almost exactly a year ago today that the world’s first “spray on condom” hit the market in China. The product, which was called the Nanometer-silver Cryptomorphic Condom (NCC) was actually a spray for women, which coated the inside of the vagina and created a “physical membrane” that prevented fluid transmission and provided contraceptive and disease prevention.

Yesterday’s LA Times reported on a new venture, by a German company, to develop a spray on male condom. The product, which is both described and illustrated on the company’s website http://www.vinico.de/home/index.php actually sounds a little like spray-on tanning, but for your penis. It is a canister that you insert your penis into, and then latex is sprayed onto the penis, forming a condom around it.

Jan Vinzenz Krause from the Institute for Condom Consultancy who is developing the concept explains:

"It works by spraying on latex from nozzles on all sides," he said. "We call it the '360 degree procedure' - once round and from top to bottom. It's a bit like a car wash."It’s an interesting concept, and at a projected $13 for 20 applications, it would be a surprisingly inexpensive condom product. But it sounds like a product that would be unlikely to ever make it to the North American market, both for financial and safety reasons.

To develop an inexpensive mechanism that could evenly spray latex consistently without clogging would be a challenge. And the fact that each condom is made “live” raises questions as to how the failure rate be determined and evaluated. In North America there is an acceptable failure rate for products like condoms and surgical gloves. The FDA would need some way of determining the quality of the condoms, and it’s not clear how they would be able to test this affordably.

Finally, given the fact that both men and women say lack of spontaneity is a reason for not using condoms, one has to wonder how “hold on honey, I just need to spray on my protection” will go over.

Read more – LA Times: German sex educators plan spray-on condom

Related - About Contraception

Source- Cory Silverberg About.com

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