Word: sperms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...device can also reveal that the source of a woman's infertility is a "thick-mucus syndrome" that sperm cannot penetrate, he added. Once identified, this syndrome can be combatted with medical treatment or artificial insemination...
...device being tested by Dr. Daniel R. Mishell of the University of Southern California School of Medicine seems to hold unusual promise: it is a small (two-inch diameter), doughnut-shaped flexible plastic ring that a woman can insert into her vagina. It prevents conception, not by blocking the sperm, as does the diaphragm, but by releasing a small steady trickle of steroids into the bloodstream through the mucous membranes of the vagina. The quantity is sufficient to prevent ovulation, says Mishell, but should be low enough to avoid the Pill's potentially hazardous side effects...
...Russians first mix the casein with gelatin to produce a kind of porridge. This is poured into a steel centrifuge and mechanically agitated until the mixture emerges as a mound of little white pellets. The pellets are then laced with quantities of sturgeon sperm (for authentic taste), bathed with tannin extracted from tea leaves and stems (for color) and finally given a salty bath (the same preservative used on natural caviar...
SPONTANEOUS GENERATION grows more and more impossible, it seems. Our civilization's relentless progress towards a controlled creation has brought us beyond test-tube babies to DNA-making; we don't even need the sperm and the egg any more. Careful analysis, research and thought have unraveled the fundamental mystery of human life. Soon our children won't be merely the fruit of our desires, but of conscious intellect. "I think, therefore I am" takes on a new dimension...
...quieter ironies as well. They deal with human limitations, and the all too human ability to invent illusions that disguise those limitations. For example, there is brilliant Dr. Skreta, head of the spa, a slightly mad scientist who practices personal eugenics by inseminating unwitting patients with his own sperm. A rich American expatriot named Bartleff dispenses fistfuls of U.S. half dollars while preaching a Christianity of joy in which saintly asceticism is practiced out of sheer lust for adulation. Kundera also introduces a character named Jakub, a former political prisoner who believes that the only true freedom in his country...