Science has now proven what all but the dumbest among us already knew -- Coca-Cola is not effective as birth control -- but research now shows that it's not as bad as you probably think.
At Harvard University's annual Ig Nobel Awards -- a satirical honor for the latest in outrageous research -- this year's kudos went to medical researchers at Boston University who published a study that proves Coke actually kills sperm on contact.
Diet Coke is an even more effective spermicide, according to the work of Gynecology Professor Deborah Anderson and her team, who published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Not that it's my job to play school nurse, but let us get one thing straight: Anderson and her colleagues were just putting an old Urban Legend to the test -- and they were doing it as a joke. You wouldn't want to drink or douche with the soft drink in place of, say, using a condom.
"We're thrilled to win an Ig Nobel, because the study was somewhat of a parody in the first place," Anderson said.
To underscore this information, the Ig Nobel committee also honored a group of Taiwanese doctors that proved the soft drink doesn't work as a contraceptive, even if it does kill sperm.
My favorite cola legend involves a woman in North Texas who supposedly drank dried rat urine and contracted a deadly disease. I'll leave the debunking of that whopper to the great David Emery.
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Related:
- Coke Folklore
- Weird Science
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Comments
“You wouldn’t want to drink or douche with the soft drink in place of, say, using a condom.”
I would suspect you wouldn’t want to do it in addition to using a condom either. The carbolic acid probably isn’t very kind to latex.
I can’t believe this study was published. That’s strangely awesome!
Well, when I taught birth control classes at the health department, we had people who actually thought grape jelly worked well in the diaphragm! So you just never know…
coke may not be much of a birth control device but it has been my experience that alcohol is a great fertility device
I remember when I was younger, my parents got me this ’70s era puberty book from the public library to help me understand the ins-and-outs of hair down under.
Needless to say, I remember reading about the coke thing and thought, for a woman, that must be one awfully uncomfortable means of contraceptive. And, without proper…uh, cleanup, sticky, too.
To this day, the thought of someone actually doing this gives me the willies. No pun intended.
As a Diet coke drinker 6 cans+ im now on my 4th pregancy have beautiful children and whoever writes this crap get real facts
Nope……
http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/sperm.asp