Thinking outside the condom box - A news story

According to this week's issue of The Economist (the one with a sinister-appearing Putin on the cover), the "incredibe melting condom" is out there, and maybe heading to a neighborhood pharmacy near you....after it has been proven safe for human use, of course.

Before you picture (as I did) a condom-shaped apparatus that melts like one of those Listerine breath strips, have a look a the article link below. The melting condom actually changes from liquid at room temperature to solid at body temperature.

A Listerine breath strip in reverse.

Gasp.


In my experience, the solid-at-body-temperature phenomenon was a characteristic unique to cheese fondue when eaten in excess.


Of course, I am no polymer chemist. Chemical bonds and the study of such bonds have not interested me since I mistook that vial of super glue for eye drops back before I knew better.

Now I know better. Do I ever know better.

In any case, the melting/solidifying condom is an interesting (and apparently potentially practical) idea, and I thought that this was a good article to post with the slightly less, er, "innovation-oriented" article discussed in the entry from earlier today.

After all, if HIV were not a complicated problem, it wouldn't be such a large problem.

There is no problem, no matter how complicated, that does not contain hidden within it potential solutions.

Take the Trojan Horse, for example.

A better example, perhaps, is this: female disempowerment and the unpopularity of latex sheaths (both realities in much of Africa) imply the need for a female-controlled, non-latex alternative.

So, click below, and behold the "incredible melting condom!"

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8407243