/ 9 February 2001

WHO NEEDS MEN?

A US surgeon has devised an electronic implant that gives women an orgasm without the hassle of sex, the New Scientist reports. Stuart Meloy, a surgeon at Piedmont Anaesthesia and Pain Consultants in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, got the idea for the device when he was conducting a routine operation on a woman to relieve spinal pain. The operation entails implanting electrodes into the spine and using electrical pulses to modify pain signals passing along the nerves. The patient remains conscious throughout to help the surgeon find the best position for the right spot. One day, Meloy failed to get the electrodes quite right, and the woman shouted out. “I asked her what was up, and she said, ‘You’re going to have to teach my husband to do that’,” Meloy told the British science weekly. A Minneapolis based company, Medtronic, is expected to start clinical trials of Meloy’s orgasm-inducing prototype this year. Attached to stimulating wires, the signal generator would be “smaller than a packet of cigarettes” and implanted under the skin of one of the patient’s buttocks, according to Meloy’s idea. – AFP

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