Check your sperm count at home with DIY male infertility test
By EJ DicksonFebruary 27th, 2012, 5:00 pmComments (3)
In the olden days, men who were concerned about low sperm count either had to head to the nearest fertility clinic for a costly sperm analysis, or just relied on information from old wives' tales and started shunning laptops, tighty-whities and Mountain Dew. In this Year of Our Lord 2012, however, there's a revolutionary new way for you to determine whether or not your boys can swim: the world's first at-home screening test for men, brought to you by the good folks at SpermCount Infertility.
According to Time, the SpermCheck test — which was recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — assesses sperm count with 98 percent accuracy in 10 minutes, providing an efficient and cost-effective alternative to what the website refers to as an "inconvenient and often embarrassing" trip to the fertility clinic. Although the test is currently only available online, at the Walgreen's and CVS websites, by next month it'll be sold for $39.99 at major drugstores across the country.
Although there are almost twenty at-home fertility tests for women on the market today, SpermCheck is the first such test to be aimed at men, which SpermCheck CEO Ray Lopez attributes to men's general squeamishness regarding issues of infertility. “In our society, the woman carries the burden of trying to determine the issues surrounding infertility,” Lopez told Bloomberg News. “Men don’t say, ‘Let me go to the urologist and give a semen sample.’”
Chairman of SpermCheck John Herr suggests that the product is aimed not only at men trying to conceive with their partners, but also at dudes who are "just curious" about their sperm count, a claim that Time reporter Bonnie Rochman finds dubious (clearly, Rochman has never seen that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer goes to a fertility clinic for that very reason). First and foremost, however, the test seems like a great way to help diminish the stigma and embarrassment surrounding male infertility issues (as well as, potentially, a great way for bored frat boys to pass the time, provided they've got $40 to spare and a wireless connection to YouPorn).
Commentarium (3 Comments)
This is something I've always been curious about. I'd buy it just for the novelty.
Seems like lazy men like myself that had a vasectomy but never went back to verify if it worked are also good candidates.
How does Rochman find the curiosity claim dubious? If there's a Seinfeld episode about it, you can guarantee that it's a question that has plagued many. I would totally plonk down forty bucks to find out how virile I am.
Now you say something