My husband is not allowed to get any of this stuff… but for those who wish to take advantage of family planning measures, RISUG promises to be a skin patch-type contraceptive that effectively sterilizes sperm, and can be reversable with relatively little effort.
/via +Steven Sudit
RISUG, called VASALGEL in the USA, is current under testing to FDA standards…. and yes your description is totally wrong, except it is easy to reverse.
Sorry, but I don't see the patch type contraceptive? Only thing that strikes me is the "injecting a non-toxic polymer (gel) above the scrotum"…….nononono, noone is injecting me with anything in my scrotum region (or any other region, for that matter).
And "250 volunteers" can hardly be seen as regular clinical trials.
Back to the lab RISUG, and come back when you have something more substantiated results.
The linked article is about a year old, US Patent 5488075 was issued 16 years ago, and it doesn't appear to be particularly safe nor effective in clinical trials.
It also suffers from the asymmetry of burden associated with all invisible male contraception: "Sure baby, I'm totally on the male pill, I'll call you tomorrow, and the cheque is in the mail".
Even in a monogamous, trusting relationship, trying to stop millions of motile gametes with no natural inhibition mechanism to exploit is significantly harder than coming at it from the other side.
It would be useful in principle, but seems to be a tough nut in practice.