Bill Gates and Melinda Foundation is working on a birth control chip that can be remote controlled. The birth control chip can be implanted into people’s body – in hip, inside arms or even beneath the back – and can be used for 16 years. The research on birth control chip was kept a secret until now, before the spokesperson for Bill Gates and Melinda Foundation confirmed that the beta testing for the birth control chip would be starting towards the end of this year and that they need volunteers to assist in real life testing of the chip.
The birth control chip is the brain child of a professor, Robert Langer, from Massachussets Institute of Technology. Bill Gates and Melinda foundation has funded the research and the prototype is ready for human testing. The chips will be ready for sale by the year 2018 according to Robert Langer. The institute’s Chip Foundation and Bill Gates’ foundation have been working on the birth control chip for past three years.
The chip’s size is 20mm by 20mm by 7mm. The reservoirs of hormones would be stored on a microchip of 1.5cm. The chip’s data would always be encrypted so that others (cybercriminals or hackers) cannot access the information contained in the chip or misuse/alter or destroy it.
At the core of the Bill Gates and Melinda Foundation’s birth control pill is the huge reservoir that can hold almost two decades worth of hormones. A quantity of 30 micrograms of the stored hormones will be released daily into the body so that the ladies are safe and do not get pregnant. The release of hormones will be done by melting a part of solid hormonal stock using a small electric shock which won’t be noticed by humans.
The safety tests would begin by the end of year 2015 and Robert Langer is confident that the chips will hit market sometime in 2018. The main target of these chips are women in third world who are often subject to pain and risks of death during early pregnancies. This chip will also help couples plan a better parenting pattern as chances of things going wrong would be much less than any other contraceptives available in the market as of now.
