The Condom

you want to avoid any awkwardness or whatever. But hey, if you want to keep listening, that's up to you. Yeah, as always, we're gonna tackle the subject matter with decorum here um. But but yeah, it seems like a great invention to tackle on the show because it's one way, as we'll discussed whether the history is interesting and at times not what we necessarily believe it to be in sort of like the pop culture level of just you know, vague understanding of of you know, the history oral truth

regarding things. But then also we we have you know, obviously we thought, well this would be kind of a potentially sexy episode of Invention to you know, to what extent any episode of the Invention podcast is sexy. Um. I do think it is an important note, um, that that condoms, despite their their clinical history, still have a a sexy reality. Uh. And that's one of I mean, that's one of the key talking points on material about condoms uh, provided by organizations such as Planned Parenthood. Um.

And we'll come back to that point in a bit. Yeah, that's a really good point actually, I mean, despite their important you know, their medical significance, I guess if you're trying to encourage widespread use of them to you know, stop the spread of s t S and and discourage unwanted pregnancies, you don't want to treat them as something that's like, you know, people associate with like a hospital or that you know, like you want people to think of them as something that's good to use in their

recreational sexual activity. Yeah, exactly. I mean human sexuality is this mix of the biological, the things that we've evolved to do, and you know, basically environmental conditioning, but then there's all this cultural and societal conditioning as well. And so I think the understanding of the condom and the treatment of the condom and ultimately like communication about the condom and other you know, contraceptive um efforts as well,

you know, have to like take those two movements into account. Yeah, making the condom sexy is a public health concern. Now, before we make it sexy, I guess we should just say, what what are the bare physical essential So the modern condom is a physical barrier or sheath used during sex to reduce the probability of both unwanted pregnancy and the

spread of sexually transmitted infections. Uh. And of course there are other methods and technologies that people have used and do use today to try to prevent both of these things. But the condom is important to talk about because it was one of it has been one of the most widely used methods in history and around the world today

for both of these reasons. Absolutely. Again, one of the other important things that we'll come back to is that, like the condom doesn't you know, exist all on its own within the uh you know, the the the the tool chest of contraceptive methods. It can be used, can and should be used alongside these other methods as well, which we'll get to. Yeah, And so there are two main versions of the condom that have been used throughout the years. Uh. That I think the terminology that will

use is the internal condom and the external condom. The internal condoms sometimes called the female condom, the external condoms sometimes called the male condom. They essentially performed the same job that they're worn differently. Uh. And I also want to go ahead and side at the top of this episode. Probably my main source of for the research today. It's an excellent paper on this subject by Jean Jacques Amy and Michel Thiery called the Condom A Turbulent History from

the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Reproductive Healthcare. From that was a really good resource, especially because it corrects some previously widely circular related myths about the history of the condom. That's right. There are a lot of just like basic lists of facts on the internet that that you can you know, they're not necessarily dangerous facts or anything,

but but they're not necessarily correct. And there is a lot of stuff too that we'll get into some examples of this where there'll be a story about the origin of the condom and it sounds perhaps it sounds believable, but is there any evidence for it? Uh, we'll discuss the details as we proceed here. Yeah. So always on this show, when we talk about an invention, we'd like to ask the question of what came before this invention, And the answer here is well, a lot of s

t I S and unwanted pregnancy, that's right. Uh. You know it's as humans, as Homo sapiens, were continuous breeders rather than seasonal breeders. It's the same with with with our fellow apes species. Um. There's no breeding season for us. Um. However, various environmental factors do influence reproductive rates, so in a way you can argue that this can produce so called

hidden human breeding seasons. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom, we have seasonal breeders, of course, Um, there's a certain period of the year during which they will breed, and then they are also operative, opportunistic breeders who will breed during favorable environmental conditions. But humans and other apes can make year round and we've been this way for quite a while.

You know, we've been biologically stable as a species for roughly a hundred thousand years in this regard, and sex among our ancient ancestors was still sex, right, meaning that like there was a lot of it going on, and there were a lot of things that sometimes I feel like people can strangely think of as like recent additions to human life and culture like S T I S. Have you ever encountered this belief that it's like that's

a thing that happened recently. There's yeah, in a in a weird way like part of it in terms of like like just nostalgia for the past, like the recent past like this, Like I've encountered like a vague idea that like during the nineteen sixties that were not STDs or something, or that certain STDs didn't exist. Um. And in granted, you know, there's a you know, there's an ebb and flow to to our to both you know, illnesses and diseases that are affecting us and more to

the point, our awareness of said diseases. Um, you know, in addition to the the actual spread of them. Uh. But but yeah, I've seen like shades of this in terms of recent history. I don't know if I've encountered it in terms of ancient history, um, in part because it just seems obvious that there have always been ailments

of this sort. Well, I just think I think it's part of a sort of like naive moralizing that that suggests like, uh, you know, sexual morality is not what it used to be in the past, was better, and therefore it's like this this fantasy that people weren't having sex in the past, and part of that fantasy is that there wasn't you know, any of the negative consequences

that can come from unprotected sex. So so kind of this um like magic cold belief that that sexually transmitted diseases are a product of not only um uh immoral behavior, but a product of recent immoral behavior. Yeah, the false

kind of moral degeneracy theory. You know, the present of kids are so bad these days now in terms of ancient people though, according to David Buss, professor of psychology at the University of Texas, who wrote a book titled The Evolution of Desire Strategies of Human Mating, and he points out that we don't know for sure what sex was like for for you know, ancient humans. But he points out, you know, something very much in line with our past stuff to blow your mind discussions on pain.

You know that that that human sexuality is a mixture of the biological and the social Uh. You know that there's a part of it is like what the body is doing and how we're we're reacting to the sensations. But then on top of that, as with most things that conscious humans engage in, there is that conscious understanding and how that changes what is going on in addition

again to culture and society and societal pressures. Now, as we've also discussed on stuffable in your mind before, uh, other organisms deal with reproduction and environmental demands, but humans alone would seem to exercise conscious understanding of and to

an extent control of their reproductive anatomy. We're also the most advanced tool users on the planet, so it's become as no surprise that we eventually turned our toolmaking and using skills to our own genitals and an attempt to manage our desires the emotional aspects of sexuality and the

purely reproductive side of the act. And again that's just the reproductive side of the equation, because humans have also had to fight off an impressive parasite load but throughout their history, throughout their history, and and to deal with the risks of diseases that spread through, among other things, sexual activity. So it is definitely not effect that sexually

transmitted infections are recent. This is something we've been dealing with as far back as as possible to imagine, right, and and and this is another thing that should go without saying, but I feel often needs to be stressed. Uh, sexually transmitted diseases are not merely a human thing like animals have sexually transmitted diseases as well. This is just

part of being an organism. Yeah. Now, in terms of of ancient accounts of sexually transmitted diseases to back the sort of thing up, uh that there are a lot

of examples. One of the papers that we were looking at in this comes from Frangio at All titled History of Anereal Diseases from Antiquity to the Renaissance, and it points out that some of our oldest records include details of the neereal disease quote clay tablets from Mesopotamia, Egyptian papyri, along with mythology, paintings of erotic scenes and the presence of prostitutes, gives a sufficient information to assume that some form of urethral and vaginal discharge and also herpes genitalis

were present among people at that time. And that these diseases were considered a divine punishment. Oh yeah, bringing the magic into it, right, And this has always been a you know, the history of of humans understanding their diseases and trying to understand their diseases and laying on this

level of society and culture. But on top of that, you you look back to the writings and the work of physicians throughout history, and the Greeks, the Chinese, the Arabic, the Arabics, Indian physicians as well, all wrote about this sort of thing. And I think syphilis alone is a great study and just how pervasive and influential a given venereal disease can be, namely from at least the fifteenth

century onward in Europe. We've talked about this on again our other podcast, Stuff to Blow your Mind in the past, about just how widespread syphilis was, how difficult, if not impossible, to suppress, and just you know, to the extent to which it it affected society. It trickled down into culture too, and we've talked about everything. We even talked about the ways it may have influenced some vampire lore. Oh yeah, yeah,

there's some strong theories for that as well. But of course without germ theory, there's only so much you can do to control STDs, right, and the efforts are going to range from herbal treatments which you know may or may not have have you know, some degree of validity, but two things that are just outright magic and superstition, as well as plenty of classist and misogynistic treatments of

venereal disease. Like even in the twentieth century, as we learn more and more about how these diseases actually work, you still saw like a lot of pretty awful propaganda, especially or at least the main examples I've seen avator from US the U. S. Military during the Second World War, for the First World War, that that play into the notion of monstrous females being like the sole domain of

sexually transmitted diseases. Yeah, the idea that there are these immoral women out there that you don't want your you know, your young soldiers going off to war consorting with, and you warn them about it, almost treating them like their vampires, right, and then ultimately like placing all the blame on on

one gender. But throughout history, you know, they've also been these larger scale social movements, um, you know, involving generally abstinence, and they can't stuff the spread of these illnesses as well, because humans continue to engage in this sort of sexual behavior, this kind of sexual behavior they've evolved to engage in, and society. Society continues to provide outlets of accessibility, be

it in war, prostitution, etcetera. Plus, you also have plenty of venerial diseases that can be acquired via other other methods such as, uh, the you know the public baths in history, you know, but before we really knew how to properly maintain them. Uh, and then am ancient romans? Yeah that that that that sort of thing. And then also in some times in places this sort of these

baths provide a social outlet for sexuality as well. Uh. And then there are other cases where they're gonning to be other public health issues that make the spread of these illnesses possible. And then also syphilis is an example of an STD that can be spread uh congenitally as well, so it can spread from a mother to an offspring. Okay, So obviously sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies or like huge issues that people have been trying to avoid going

back millennia. Uh So this is one. This is I guess where we should bring in the condom, and maybe we should take a break, and then when we come back from the break, we can explore the question of who invented the condom? Alright, we're back. We're discussing the invention of the condom. We have not yet gotten to the part in the episode we will make condom sexy because we're gonna be talking about animal bladders here for a little bit. Well, uh so we're asking the question

who invented the condom. We like to ask this about any invention we talked about, and this is one of those cases where we have no idea. Uh there is no known inventor of the condom. So the use of animal tissues such as bladders like the swim bladders of fish, or the bladder of goats or sheep, or intestines or scum like the intestines of sheep. Often, uh these types of animal membranes and tissues have been used as protective barriers during intercourse going way back into history, and we

don't know for sure how far back. Our first direct physical evidence of the use of an animal membrane as a as a condom is from the seventeenth century, but that's just we have accounts going back farther than that. That's just the oldest example we have in the archaeological record, and we'll talk more about that later. Um So, it's an ongoing debate among historians and archaeologists whether anything like a modern condom was ever widely used in the ancient world,

and if if it was used to what extent. There were believed to be tons of different methods of sexual protection in the ancient world. Of course, there was a lot of use of amulets and magic spells and potions and things like that. We mentioned a little bit about herbal remedies before. There was the use of of pessaries sometimes,

which would be like an object placed inside vagina. In an eighteenth century b CE medical papyrus from ancient Egypt, there is the claim that quote crocodile dung mixed with honey and placed in the vagina of a woman prevents conception, which that sounds gross. That might have actually worked some of the time. I don't know. Maybe I don't know that there have been any modern studies into this particular.

We're not advocating, but but yeah, what about condoms? What about a protective physical barrier in the form of like a sheath. So I've come across some claims that several types of protective sheaths in the form of both internal and external condoms were used by cultures like the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, the Chinese, the people of New Guinea, and the people of Japan and some others. As of just one example of a claim like this I've come across.

I was reading apart from a book called The Humble Little Condom of History by Anya Collier, and she writes that before the fifteenth century in China, quote Chinese condoms yin Chia were ultraly made from oiled silk paper and lamb intestines. And she doesn't specify how far back this is thought to have been used. She does say before the fifteenth century, but she writes that this condom only covered the top of the penis, and this is actually

common with a lot of models throughout history. Is not common in condoms today, but many models, especially some you'd see later in Europe, would only cover the glands. And this was employed primarily with an understanding that it would prevent pregnancy. It was not aimed at preventing disease, according

to a. Collier. But whether each of these individual claims about condom use or earlier than the fifteenth century are correct or not, it's clear that some use of physical barrier prophylaxis does go back into the fog of history, and there is no known inventor of the condom. Some of the people who have been given credit as the

inventor are definitely not the inventor. And of course I think all of this makes sense because ejaculation would have been identified as a key event uh in um inmating in pregnancy, and therefore a physical barrier between the opening of the male urethra, if not the entire penis itself and female genitals would seem a likely tactic that that

even you know, ancient people's would have realized. Now, I want to talk about mythology, because there are some indications of something like a condom in uh in the mythology of the ancient world. Here's an example that came up in the paper by by Ommi and Tieri. Uh something like a condom appears in a fascinating Greek myth as told by Antoninist liberalists in the second century CE in his work Metamorphoses. Now, this is a prose work that's

a lot like Ovid's poetry work The Metamorphoses. It's a collection of tellings of Greek myths in which God transforms a person into something else. And this particular story concerns Minos, the king of Crete, and his wife Pacific. So in liberalists version of the story, Minos and specific or married and they couldn't conceive a child because Minos was cursed. His semen was apparently full of snakes and scorpions, which which would kill any woman that he had sex with.

So on. On that alone, it sounds like you could look at that is either a possible um you know, magical version of sexually transmitted disease like his his semen causes some sort of illness that eventually is painful and could even you know, bring death. Um Or of course it could just be a treatment of infertility. To say that, you know, again kind of a mythological exaggeration. Uh. Yeah.

The method they're going to propose for fixing the problem in this story, I think would not really correlate with it being modeled on a disease, it would correlate more with it just being like a magical convention in the story. But then again, even if this is inspired by some kind of real experience with the sexually transmitted infection or something, you can still see how it could get sort of warped and acquire different mythical baggage over time. But anyway,

so in the story, he's got this problem. His semen is full of snakes, it's got scorpions, it's got centipedes. It's a problem. So to get around the problem, King Minos is instructed to put the bladder of a goat into another woman's vagina. I think this is uh procris and uh, and then to have sex with her. And after that all the snakes and scorpions would be gone, so he and Pacific could safely have sex and conceive.

And the implication is that the goats bladder here serves as a protective barrier for this other woman so that the serpents and the scorpions don't harm her. Now this is straight because you can almost I don't know, could

they not think about other ways around this problem? Yeah, I mean, on one level, it does sound like you could also be an example of uh, you know, there being some sort of situation, some sort of sexual situation that needed to be addressed, and then the solution was here, used this uh, this bladder uh in intercourse as some

sort of a barrier. And then perhaps you just have mythological explanations and story making on top of that, almost as if like the people generating the stories don't understand and or don't care what the original reason was, you know, or it could just be a mythical invention. Certain, but yeah, um yeah, it's interesting to consider how it could have

been inspired by some real practice. Like basically, if nothing else, it shows that during the second century CE, the idea of using a physical barrier during a sex act was at least in the zeitgeist. Right. It's it's at least possible indication that there could have been some consciousness about this in the culture. Basically, this would be the form

of an internal condom. Now, I do want to say something real quick though about the you know, about the use of intestines and and bladders in all of this. I feel like it seems gross to people today. It can seem gross to us today, and I think a lot of that is because we are so many of us anyway, are removed from the culture of butchery and can easily forget that animal bladders could be used for

a number of different things. A dried animal bladder was essentially a balloon, well, and these membranes and tissues were used for all kinds of things in the ancient world. I mean, this isn't the only use of a goat's bladder or sheep intestine in the ancient world. They were, uh, they were very versatile materials that were used in all kinds of consumer goods. And we'll come back to this

in a bit, Okay. So another thing that Ammy and Thierry point out in their paper is that a lot of sources point to a sixteenth century Italian physician and anatomist named Gabrielli Fallopio as as the person who published the earliest confirmed description of the condom and so Filippio lived fifteen twenty three to fifteen sixty two, and he was very influential in his discoveries about the human body and in overturning some of the misconceptions of physicians from

antiquity like Galen and through dissection of cadavers, Filipio made a lot of important observations about about the human head, about the ears, and about the reproductive organs. Uh he discovered the tubes that travel between the ovaries and the uterus, now known as phillopian tubes. But uh I Mean and Terry dispute this tendency to give Filipio credit for the first published description of the condom, and they disputed in

multiple ways. First of all, there is at least one known example, much earlier than this, of a published description of a condom. In the tenth century, the Persian physician al A Kawani published a treatise in which he advocated the use of an animal's gall bladder to cover the penis during sex, and this was understood to be for the purpose of preventing pregnancy. But Amy Interiery also dispute the Filipio ever described a condom as a barrier to

be used during intercourse. Well, then what's this dispute about. Well, Filipio did definitely right about a thing that covers the penis. According to Ammi Interieri, Philippio wrote about a sheet of fabric that would be filled with a concoction of wine and wood shavings and bits of copper and antler ashes and mercury precipitate whatever that is, um, and that by placing this sheet full of stuff over the glands, it

would protect a man from contracting syphilis. However, what the authors here point out is that he actually doesn't recommend using this during intercourse. He recommends using it after intercourse has already taken place. Okay, Well, that that makes a lot more sense given all the details of the ingredients that are placed within. Yeah, and so obviously that's not a condom. That's just more like a bizarre home remedy. Uh. If Philippio claimed that men had used this method and

none of them ever got syphilis, I'm suspicious of that claim. Yeah, I mean, especially given how confusing syphilis, uh, you know, historically was to h to document. It was called the great imitator, for example, because it could was so often misdiagnosed as other things, and then it can of course go dormant for long periods of time and seem as

if it is cured. Yes. So, even though this doesn't actually describe the use of a condom during intercourse, some historical writings do indicate that by the seventeenth century, animal membrane and linen condoms were being used in various places throughout Europe. So by the seventeenth century, there's definitely their writings all over the place indicating people are using these things. They're definitely in fashion by then. And another thing is

the physical evidence here. So we mentioned a while back that the earliest surviving physical evidence of a condom goes back to the seventeenth century. What is this physical evidence. Well, in the nineteen eighties archaeologists found sheep intestine condoms in an excavation of an English latrine pit from the sixteen forties. So it looks like they were used and then thrown in the latrine sometime between sixteen forty two and sixteen

forty six. The pit was actually covered in sixteen forty seven, and we know that. Uh and this was at a keep of Dudley Castle in West Midlands, England. Uh So if anybody's been there and has seen the famous condom pit right in, let us know. Now this brings us to the obvious question condom, Like, where does the word itself come from? This is a huge debate all on

its own. Yeah, exactly and uh and and we should note that you know that there's certainly the myth out there of the British doctor Condom or Colonel Condom or colonel yeah who Reverend Condom. Well, I didn't run across reverend, but Captain. I mean, as long as we're we're just

clearly making him up. His holdiness the Pope Condom, Well, he said, well, probably not that one, but he was said to have lived in the seventeenth century, uh in England under the reign of Charles the Second, and he's pointed out by Ammy and Terry in Condoms of Turbulent History. There there's seemingly no basis for this at all, but there is a whole lot of conflicting stories on where the term condom comes from. Just be beyond this story.

So if it's not from a non existent English name, and that's the thing, like condom is not even an English name from that time period, then where did it come from? Well, they point to a few plausible theories. It could come from the verb um condary, which has numerous meanings, including to protect, to protect or to sheath, or the corresponding noun condus, which means one who stores

that which preserves or a receptacle. Or It also could derive from the Italian word guantan, which more specifically is it's a Phoenician variant gondum, meaning a gauntlet or glove. Yeah,

I love really. Another thing that's great in this paper is a documentation of many of the euphemisms that people have had for condoms throughout the centuries, especially in the eighteenth century, you had these great One thing about euphemisms for condoms is that almost every national culture puts the name of another national culture in the euphemism for the condom. So like the the French sometimes called them the English writing code, and the English sometimes called them quote French

letters letters What does that mean? The letters apparently comes from a common word meaning envelope, so like you know, the letters would be the envelope. So it's like saying the French envelope. Now I wonder where this comes from? It is it is it perhaps tied to the invention actually you know, entering into the country from say France or or from England. You know, are they actually contributing the source or is it like this is the kind of it's useful, but it's the kind of thing that

those French would have come up with or correspondingly. This is a very useful invention, but clearly the English did this there. I wish there was a name for this. I know there might be a name for it, I

don't know of. Yeah, this general phenomenon of um applying the name of another country to an object or practice doesn't necessarily come from there, right or you know, another way of looking at is that since for so long contraception has been you know, unfairly thrust solely upon on females in these situations, I guess it's possible that it's it could be due to um men traveling to another country, say French traveling to England, English traveling to France, uh,

in a military scenario or outside of a military scenario, and then it is, you know, they attribute it to the nation in which the females are introducing them to the technology. Oh that's interesting. Yeah, but that's that's merely my guesswork. Okay. So by the nineteenth century, condoms had definitely become very popular in Europe for both contraception and prophyl access against infections, but they weren't without problems. That

the most popular condoms were these skin condoms. There were linen condoms to There were various materials used, but the most popular were the skin condoms made from animal membranes. And these could actually be expensive and expenses a problem in contraceptives and in uh profile access against infection. Yeah, I mean as as well. We'll discuss later. To Like, one of the big appeals of the modern condom is

that they are generally inexpensive and or free. Uh So yeah, if you if it's expensive, that is, that's that's not good for overall, um, public health and also just overall public usage of the technology. In terms of animal membranes, like we said, membranes and bladders, they were used for a number of different purposes, you know, the creation of wine skins or floats. The Aztecs would use inflated bladders inflated with air for religious purposes. They were like, you know,

burned afterwards. And uh you see the sort of sort of thing pop up in other people's writing too, sometimes the outside of of actual um you know, utilitarian use of the bladders. Uh. Leonardo da Vinci wrote of inflating intestines as a means of better understanding their structure. Um, you know, after you know, after dissecting could havever uh.

And he also wrote of the vessels and the penis that were filled with wind to make it erecked, which wind, which isn't exactly how it works, but I guess it's the same idea, uh, you know. And by the way, having access to rubber, some Mesoamerican cultures used actual rubber in the creation of enema bags for the administration of smoke or other substances. In other parts of the world, such as Africa, animal bladders had to be used to

create such medicinal devices. Well, it's funny you mentioned rubber there, because the revolution in the condom world was definitely insured by the introduction of rubber as a material that you could use in manufacturing these things. So in eighteen thirty nine, when Charles Goodyear invented the process of vulcanization, I think I think that was a turning point and this could even be the subject of a future invention episode. Um. But in short, vulcanization is a process used for improving

the material properties of rubber by chemically treating it. Specifically, you expose rubber to sulfur and other additives and things called accelerants at high temperatures, and the sulfur and the rubber and the additives they'll combine and they form these these chemical cross links, and the final product is much

more durable and elastic than untreated rubber. And vulcanization opened the door to using rubbers of versatile industrial material and made it useful in a huge range of consumer products. It sort of changed the world of materials, and in eighteen fifty five condoms became one of those products that used rubber on the interior. Note that at the first World's Fair in Philadelphia in eighteen seventy six you could

buy quote rubbers that people were calling them. They were quote handmade and as thick as inner tubes had a seam, and being costly, they were sold by the unit, so not really selling all the advantages on those early ones. But the the early model rubber condoms were not extremely popular since they were they were expensive, a lot of people didn't like how they felt. Some industrial modifications were

made over the years and how they were molded. But another major upgrade was in the nineteen thirties when the process of using latex was introduced, and latex rubber is made from a dispersion of rubber particles in a water based solution, and latex manufacturing made condoms significantly cheaper and lead to people widely thinking of them as disposable, single

use products rather than as like a reusable appliance. Both of these ultimately um selling points for the modern condom right, and of course today they are also non latex condoms you can buy. Some are still made from animal membranes actually like lamb secum. Some are also made from materials like polyurethane, and this can be useful for people who

are allergic to latex. Some people are, though I believe the scientific consensus is that animal membrane condoms don't protect against S t I S t I s like latex condoms do, and that polyurethane condoms have a lower rate of effectiveness at contraception and are more owned breaking than latex.

All Right, well, on that note, let's take one more break, and when we come back, we're going to discuss more about the current state of condoms, especially the benefits of condoms, some of the statistics backing up why you should be using condoms. All right, we're back. All right, Robert, tell me what have condoms ever done for the world. Oh, well, they've done a great deal for the world and continue

to do a great deal for the world. UM. I was looking up some some good stats on this, and one of the great sources you can go to is the World Health Organization UM. They point out that condoms are safe and they're highly effective in preventing unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Like, one of the take comes from looking at the information is really like there's no better time than now to make use of condoms in terms of just where the invention is, just

how well engineered and refined everything is. It's come a long way. It's no longer the a ginner tube rubber with the seam right. Yeah. And if and like you said, if you have one is allergic to latex, uh, there are these other options as well. Uh. And also none of the made The World Health Organization points out that none of the major manufacturers of male and female latex condoms use mb T or ZMBT. This is a chemical material that has recently been identified as a potential carcinogen

by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Again, you are not going to find that in being used by major manufacturers of male and female latex condoms and uh on. On top of that, evidence just shows that male let aatex condoms have or greater protective effect against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. That being said, we do have to stress that condoms are are not one effective. Um

you know that. And then that can be said for for for most contraceptive methods, you know, aside from abstinence. Uh and by that I mean absolute abstinence, not a striving for abstinence, because I think there is an important distinction to be made there. Uh Still, if used correctly every time, they are proven means of preventing the spread of HIV in women and in men. According to Planned Parenthood, which if you if you haven't visited the Planned Parenthood website,

I recommended planned parenthood dot org. They have a whole host of services, uh you know, aimed at at educating people about reproductive health and reproduction. Uh. And in fact, just the other day had a Planned Parenthood representative come out and give like an age tailored talk uh to my son and some of children from from his school group. Um, you know, on just like the parts of the body and what the official names for these parts of the bodies are and you know what's different from a boy

and a girl, etcetera. You know, just like a very base age level, um uh, you know, talk on on

on the the realities of our our different bodies. That's a great service because I think a lot of times, you know, if people don't know how to talk about reproduction and you know, reproductive organs and stuff with kids, just like the not having the right words and feeling awkwardness about it can lead to not talking about it at all, which can put like a kind of like shame or stigma around it that there shouldn't be right. And that can also be of course the same thing

with the use of contraceptives and condoms. I know, for for my part um, like, the main bits of sexual education that I was exposed to in school were like high school level, like highly snickery class environments where like a football coach was begrudgingly demonstrating a condom being applied to a banana, that sort of thing, and I don't

think anybody learned anything from it. You know, you had to sort of hope that that each individual in the class had somebody else, some other um you know, group or individual in their life taking an interest in explaining to them, you know what this was, how it worked, and how it fits into into healthy sexuality. Yeah, not teaching kids about reproductive health and reproductive reproduction does not

mean they're not going to find out anything. It just means they're going to learn mostly like dubious facts from their friends. Right, or television which you depending on, or or the internet nowadays. Right. But again, planned parenthood um a really good source for information. Uh. It's a nonprofit

organization that provides reproductive healthcare in the United States and globally. Uh. And according to them, condoms are ninety eight percent effective at preventing pregnancy if you use them perfectly and use them every time you have sex, but making a room for user air, the rate is actually more like percent effective. So statistically, they say, quote, fifteen out of a hundred people who use condoms as their only birth control method

will get pregnant each year. Okay, So, as such, Planned Parenthood suggests using condoms and conjunction with other forms of birth control in the form of a pill and i U D, an implant ring or a shot. Basically, the combo just increases your odds of preventing pregnancy. And they also mentioned that employing a pullout method that means uh, pulling the penis out prior to ejaculation with the condom can also help, though on its own, the pullout method

is not recommended. Also, we mentioned, you know, internal and external condoms, the male and the female condom, how they you know the usefulness of both. However, they should not be used at the same time. Likewise, one should not use more than one condom at once. Uh quote. Condoms are designed to be used on their own, and doubling up won't necessarily give you extra production. One condom used correctly is all the production you need. But again that's

just the pregnancy angle. They also helped prevent the spread of STDs like HIV, clamydia, and gono rhea. They also point out the condoms are a great option for a number of other reasons. They're you know, they're inexpensive and sometimes free like we mentioned, and they do not require a prescription. You can you can buy them or obtain them again sometimes for free, from a number of different places.

And they have no side effects, you know, aside from you know, some individuals may have a latex allergy or have sensitivity to latex. But again, there are other condoms on the market made of say plastic, and this can make is essentially makes this a non issue. And really the only downsides two condoms that the according to plant parenthood, or that they do require just a little getting used to. But again, I feel like that can be said for

pretty much everything in human sexuality. So it's just one

more thing to you know, learn the ropes on. But but that is but but also they stress that as part of a like modern human sexual culture, they're actually part of the excitement of sexual activity and and not a like hard stop to the action, you know, like the the Again, like we said at the beginning of the episode, like condoms are and should be considered sexy and not something that's like this purely clinical, like deeply serious thing that's want to you know, take you out

at the moment, right. I mean, yeah, I guess that's a really interesting issue. It comes up throughout the history of the condom that we were reading, um, you know, different reports about how the different technologies at different times were said to feel and how people felt about using them. Where they you know, excited to use them, where they

disinclined they kind of not really like having to use them. Uh, these are the kind of things that I feel like from from one type of like medical or clinical approach, you would look at stuff like that and say like, well, that's just extraneous details. You know. What we want to know is like how effective is it when it's used? But whether or not people feel like using something is an important thing in public health. That's going to tell you probably how often it actually gets used in in

people's real lives. Yeah, and you know, this is an area probably where you know, things like portrayal of condoms and media are ultimately important because if the if the scene in which a condom is produced, it is still erotic, cortitilating um. You know, that is going to be part of the overall messaging that this this is, this is not you know, a deterrent to your sexual activity. This is a part of the sexual activity. You don't want people thinking about it as like something you've got to

do but it's a bummer. Yeah. And it's interesting to think about all this too, in in comparison to other inventions, because there are probably let their levels of this within the invention, like the invention not only we've seen this in some of the examples we've discussed on the show, where it doesn't only have to work, Uh, it has to be something that people are you know, have ease and using and want to use. You know, see that in the history of let's say, you know, the motion

picture cameras that we've recently discussed. Yeah, that's right. I mean it's not enough for a technology or technological capability to merely exist. It has to be adopted. I mean, you know, you can you can lead a horse to water, right, but you can't make it wear a giant rubber condom. I haven't looked this up, but I wonder what some of the like mark keting materials on those things said. You know, is it like vulcanized for extra strength? Yeah,

or just you know, I can imagine them. Uh, you know, like selling this the science of the of the material you know, I mean because ultimately that the history of condoms as the history of material science, because that, again, the basic concept was was clearly evident to us, you know, thousands of years ago. Uh, it's just been figuring out exactly how they work and then figuring out the best

uh you know, use of materials to make it possible. Yeah, But now now that we've had this conversation, it really doesn't make sense to me that most of the marketing you see around condoms is not based on like how effective they are and how you know, it's not like citing statistics about how good they are at stopping the spread of diseases and and preventing pregnancy. It's more about trying to make them sexy, like the brands tend to

advertise with sexually charged imagery and stuff like that. And I mean, on one hand, you could just say, well, they're just trying to elder product, which they are, But on the other hand, you could say, well, in a in a way that's actually a public good. Yeah. Yeah, I guess ultimately you have to have both um streams of communication going on, Like an individual needs to to know like the the the hard medical side of the equation, but also be exposed to like the you know, the

cultural sexy messaging of it. And uh, I mean it would be interesting so to look at, you know, how you know, what sort of tug and poll goes on with these two streams of communication in the media today. But I'm I'm guessing that we have perhaps a healthy

balance of the two, I should hope. So anyway, that being said, clearly, like we we still have to have to push communication on the use of condoms, and they're put plenty of initiatives around the world in the US as well, Uh, you know, to remind everyone, to educate people, to keep the you know, the fire burning on this topic and make people aware that you know, this is what they all, this is why you should use them, and uh and and this is why they are effective.

But also some of these caveats like uh, like you know, it's better if you use them in conjunction with these other birth control methods as well. Right now with a lot of as with a lot of inventions that we've talked about on the show, Um, the innovation is not over.

Oh there are tons of modern variants and it attempts to continue, Yeah, changing it innovating, didn't the was it the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that was investing in prizes for essentially I think that they were trying to create effective condoms that that we're just like better from a sensation point of view. Yeah, that was That was one of the facts brought up to us by Scott Benjamin,

who helped us on the research for this show. He pointed out that this was in March of Bill and Millindi Gates Foundation issued a challenge the public develop econdom that was safe and effective while still preserving pleasure for the user. Uh. Twenty two grants were awarded to organizations claiming to have the next generation of condoms. Um. You know, so of talking about using things like graphene and nano

fabric and hydro gel, etcetera. Which is which does bring to mind the idea of someone creating like the stealth bomber of condoms that is perhaps maybe not at all you know, practical at this point, but you know, hey, could lead to just improved material usage in the future. Yeah. Well, but also making them more and more appealing to the user makes makes it likely that they will be used more often in a greater percentage of cases. Yeah, exactly.

And yes, Scott actually included a list of like various um uh possible future condoms that are in development, things like spray on condoms or the galactic cap, which Scott just tells us looks complicated. Um, things like the consent condom, which requires four hands to open um. Yeah, so there are a lot of different initiatives out there, both technological and again uh, you know, messaging initiatives to uh to to let everyone know you know about the benefits of

condom use. All right, So there you have it. Um, I'm trying to remember if we've done any any other like health related invention episodes. So we did the X ray X ray and we did that's the main one I'm remembering. Okay, well, I guess the call out to listeners a toothpaste toothpaste. Yes, So yeah, we would like to continue to you know, just sort of hit these

different classifications of invention. So if there's another health related invention you would like to hear us cover on the show, or if there's some angle in this episode that you feel like we could explore in another episode, let us know, like, for instance, rubber as we discuss um, let us know, we'd love to explore those topics. And in the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Invention, head on over to invention pod dot com. That's where

you'll find them. And if you want to support the show, here's what you can do. First of all, tell some friends about us, spread the good word, uh, and in spreading the good word. If you have the ability to leave some stars or a few nice comments at wherever you get this podcast, do that because that really helps us out, helps it helps uh, you know, the almighty algorithms that rule our our lives. Huge thanks as always to our audio producer Tori Harrison and our guest producer today,

Maya Cole UH. If you would like to get in touch with us directly to let us know feedback on this on today's episode, to suggest topic for the future, to say hello suggested guest any of that, you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.