Modern Science proceeds to bring its horror story A-game: Hamster Zona-Free Ovum Test

BLOT: (28 Jan 2014 - 07:57:09 AM)

Modern Science proceeds to bring its horror story A-game: Hamster Zona-Free Ovum Test

I've learned that while men have generally won the historical lottery when it comes to public shaming over fertility—to the degree that men tend to be shamed in private while women are shamed out loud—a flip-side of this is that the directness of fertility test for men seems lacking. You get a couple of vague numbers, that aren't precisely related to the factors you think, and then you find out that the standard ways to test men are actually some of the worst ways to test men, and so on. So, I was trying to figure out some more information about this, and then learned that in at least one test, The Hamster Zona-Free Ovum Test, the line between horror show and science gets a bit blurred.

To quote, clinically, straight from the above Wikipedia article:

Then the article goes on to explain that while the test does sort of of show how badly a man's sperm penetrates the hamster eggs, it is actually a bad predictor for human fertility. And that's nice, isn't it? We take little hamsters, and somehow extract their eggs, strip the outer membrane off, toss in a pot, then dump man spunk on them...wait an afternoon, and see what horrifying blasphemies live in our tiny test-tubes.

Now, I know that men can't get impregnate hamsters, but it just feels weird, you know? Out there, somewhere, I'd like to think there is a human hamster hybrid, that life found a way, and that the scientist that was there that day couldn't find a way to end it, and so is now on the run with its twisted offspring. And maybe, one day, after some shoot-out with the police, the scientist will be killed, and MANSTER will ravage some small, Southwest town.

A man can dream...

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: January 2014