Date:
February 5th, 2008
From:
Nik
Question:
Hannah asked yesterday what it means when a guys gets fixed. She said "Guys can't
have babies, so why would they have to get fixed?" So my QUESTION is Uncle Chris,
how do I explain to your niece why men have to get fixed from having babies?
Goofball Answer:
Nik,
I seem to remember buying a freezer-full of Girl Scout cookies last week. How can I possibly also be responsible for explaining human procreation to Hannah? It seems to fall outside the realm of uncle-ly possibility.
No?
All right then. Here goes...
You're right Hannah. Men can't have babies. But they do contribute to the creation of babies. The human genome contains roughly 3,164,700,000 chemical nucleotide bases arranged in 23 pairs of chromosomes. Creating a baby requires making a new set of these 23 chromosomal pairs. Half of each chromosome pair comes from the father's sperm and half comes from the mother's egg. To produce a baby in the typical fashion, the father's sperm and mother's egg are joined in an act called "coitus", which is like wrestling, but with no clothes, slightly different grunts, and no major corporate sponsorships.
But sometimes adults want to do coitus without creating a new set of chromosomes. In this case, they must use one of many acceptable methods to prevent the father's sperm and the mother's egg from finding one another during the match. One such method is a vasectomy, or "getting snipped".
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
In men, sperm is produced in the testicles, of which there are a pair, which are kept in the scrotum, which itself is kept in the perfect place for impacting bicycle top tubes. In women, the egg is produced in an ovary, of which there are a pair, which are kept well protected in the abdomen, where they will rarely impact bicycle top tubes. (Boy bikes and girl bikes are backwards, in my opinion.) The man's testicles will continuously produce sperm—unless he rides bikes too much—so he is nearly always in the mood to wrestle naked. The woman's ovaries will periodically produce an egg—whether she rides bikes or not—so she will only occasionally want to wrestle naked.
When we say a man is "getting snipped", we are saying the connection between his poorly protected testicles and his wrestling equipment is being cut. The doctor cuts this connection, called the "vas deferens", so the sperm can not find the egg during coitus to create a new set of 23 chromosomal pairs.
Between a woman's ovaries and her wrestling equipment there are also connections, called the "fallopian tubes". And these can be cut as well. But because the ovaries are well hidden, this is typically more dangerous than cutting a man's vas deferens. The easier and less risky procedure is for a man to get snipped.
It is important to consider the cutting of both the vas deferens and the fallopian tubes as permanent. It is not easy to restore these connections if adults change their minds about why they are doing coitus. Therefore, adults will often have serious discussions about whether or not they really want to get these connections cut.
And there you have it—a serious and niece-friendly discussion on getting snipped. If Hannah wants to know more about chromosomes—the interesting part of this whole thing—she should check out the link below. It has some wonderful kid-friendly activities about DNA and nothing whatsoever about coitus...
~ topher
DNA Link: GlaxoSmithKline — Genetics for Kids