Imagine male birth control that could be flipped on and off like a light switch. If German inventor Clemens Bimek has anything to say about it, his small, valve-like device, the Bimek SLV, will allow men to take sperm in and out of their ejaculatory system at will. And to prove he’s serious about it, Bimek decided to experiment on himself—he’s already implanted the valve in his own body.
The basic idea of SLV, as Bimek tells GOOD, is almost 20 years old now. Back in 1998, when he was living in Berlin, he wondered why the decision to have a vasectomy had to be so final.
“The idea came while I was watching a health advice program on television,” Bimek says. “It showed a segment about vasectomies, something I had never heard before. The first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Why not just insert a valve instead of simply cutting it?’”