Will New Tampon Prevent HIV Infection? (Psst! Don't Tell Iran!)

SEATTLE, WA—With the FDA's recent approval of daily doses of Truvada as a guard against HIV infection in people who have a lot of sex (or inject a lot of drugs) but aren't so good at remembering to put on a condom (or clean their "works"), the advances in HIV prevention seem to be leaping forward—and the researchers at the University of Washington are hoping for another breakthrough in that quest. According to a preliminary study published in the scholarly journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, it is reported that the scientists have managed to combine maraviroc, a drug that's used both to treat HIV infections and to lower non-infected people's chances of contracting the disease, with silky, incredibly thin electrically spun fibers which form the outer shell of a tampon-like insertable device that will dissolve upon coming in contact with moisture—like the inside of a vagina. Once the outer shell dissolves, it releases the medication and allows the user able to have unprotected sex without fear of HIV infection. According to an article on Huffington Post, "The hope is that women will be able to discretely insert a tampon-like device containing the fibers into their vaginas—either with their fingers or an applicator—minutes before sex." "We want something that dissolves quickly so that people can say, 'Hey, I wasn't planning on it, but I'm going to have sex in five minutes so I need to use this product, and I want it to be completely dissolved before that'," said Cameron Ball, a doctoral student in bioengineering and lead author of the journal article. But the tampons—which most definitely aren't intended to absorb menstrual flow and shouldn't be used for that purpose—have yet to undergo formal clinical trials, and there is concern that such topically-applied preventatives may be less effective than medications taken orally. "Follow-up trials have shown that the real barrier for women in using them is that they don't adhere to the products," Ball cautioned, stressing that it may be a decade before the product is commercially available. "There's leakage that makes it messy for them to use, so we're interested in creating a different form of the drug; basically, a different product that women might be more likely to use." One place that likely won't welcome the product when it does become available, though, is Iran, where the country's Parliament, at the insistence of leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has voted to ban certain forms of birth control as well as any discussion in the media about contraceptives and any type of "family planning" altogether. Specifically outlawed are vasectomies and tubal ligations—and there are stiff fines in place for any doctor who performs them. Used to be that Iran had "one of the most effective, comprehensive family planning services in the world," according to an article on ThinkProgress.com, but that was last decade (and the one before it). The idea then was to help Iranian families to be smaller, the better to deal with the lousy economy resulting from, among other things, international economic sanctions on the country—which generally are still in effect. But now, according to Iranian officials, the country is suffering from underpopulation, and Khamemei has called on women wives to have more babies, both to "strengthen national identity," and to offset certain "undesirable aspects of Western lifestyles." (According to the Iran Times, women who have sex outside of marriage "may be stoned to death if married and lashed if unmarried.") The country has also cut off all subsidies for family planning programs, and as a Salon.com article notes, at the end of 2013, "billboards appeared across Tehran proclaiming 'A single blossom is not spring' and 'More children, better lives.'" The Salon article goes on to opine that the push for more pregnancies is the conservative government's not-so-subtle way of "push[ing] Iranian women back into more traditional domestic roles," and opponents of the new measure "have expressed concern that the birth control ban will prompt an increase in the number of illegal abortions," though abortion is generally legal in Iran for women with certain medical conditions. But let's hope that in that push for popping out more squealers, women are taking steps to prevent becoming infected with STDs.