Wanted: Men to Participate in Live, Public Vasectomies

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“Carefully now, ever so carefully…” Maybe not the words you want to hear if someone’s operating — with actual cutting instruments — in your nether regions. But imagine them being spoken as you sit (or rather lie), fully conscious, in front of a riveted, live audience.

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The Royal Institution of Australia in Adelaide is looking for a few, umm, incredibly bold men to undergo vasectomies while being scrutinized by the public. Why? To get people talking about male contraception and population control, says Institute’s program manager Lisa Bailey.

“How vasectomy fits into cultural practices both in Australia and around the world and, to go along with all of this, we will actually be having live vasectomies performed on stage,” Bailey told ABC Australia, adding that while the institute isn’t shopping the live exhibitions as a panacea to global population issues, she thinks “it’s a good way to get people starting to discuss how we do think about population, how we do think about managing birth rates and things like that?”

Not to worry, says Australian Medical Association’s Patricia Montanaro, safeguards will be in place for both the audience and the men who opt to go under the knife for education’s sake.

“Those safeguards would be for the patient, making sure they had full understanding of the procedure and also the possible psychological unexpected consequences of being in front of a live audience, but finally also for the public who might be viewing,” said Montanaro.

And how exactly do you safeguard the public? The “I’m watching a live procedure of someone being sliced open down there” equivalent of air sickness bags? More like airing the potential outcomes beforehand, just in case: “[The public needs] to have full disclosure to ensure they are aware of what they might be confronted by,” said Montanaro.

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