Could This Technology Make Condoms Obsolete?

The shortest route to abstinence is Googling “STD rates in America”: Punch that bad boy into your phone and you’ll have a whole new appreciation for Ciara and Russell Wilson’s arrangement. More than half of all people will have an STD at some point in their lifetime, and there are 19.7 million new STDs contracted in the U.S. every year. The stats are stunning enough to make you want to smack the next guy who claims that condoms don’t fit him.

But while we’re far from living in an STD-free utopia, there are some promising advancements in sexual health on the horizon. “Multi-purpose prevention technologies,” or MPTs, are products that combine protection against pregnancy, HIV, and other STDs — they’re the most promising frontier. Currently the condom is the only true MPT that exists — hormonal birth control, for example, isn’t an MPT because it doesn’t protect against STDs — but several others could hit the market as soon as 2020.

“It’s really exciting to see several MPT candidates now entering Phase I clinical trials, and many more innovative prevention products in the pipeline,” said Bethany Holt Young, the executive director for the Initiative for Multipurpose Prevention Technologies at the Public Health Institute. “But like all drugs in development, it is hard to say exactly when they will be available, as this depends on how they do in the trials.”

Read the full article in New York Magazine.

Originally published by New York Magazine