Director – Vaishali Sinha – 2025 – Canada, India, US – uncertificated – 92m
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An Indian scientist has created a reversible male contraceptive technique, yet a combination of human greed and bureaucracy has so far prevented it reaching the masses – International Premiere at 6.30 pm at the ICA on Tuesday, July 14th in the London Indian Film Festival which runs from Thursday July 9th to Sunday, July 19th in London, Birmingham and Manchester
A man visits a trade show in Las Vegas of healthcare products and technology. He’s touting a male contraceptive, a field in which nothing much has happened since the introduction of the condom in the 17th Century. His product is an injection into the vas deferens of the male reproductive system which can last for ten years, yet is totally reversible within that time. He has date on its use and safety going back to the 1970s. He is not the original developer, but has been refining the formula since then. The product has been used extensively in India.
The film moves to India. “This for the vagina, that for the vagina,” says a woman cheerfully. “And meanwhile, the penis is just sitting in the corner.”
The scientist who originated the idea was fascinated by electric eels, and before you can say phallic symbol, he is talking about the creature’s sperm having a negative charge and why not inject this into the vas deferens in the male?
In the early 1970s, in an attempt to cull its burgeoning population growth, India introduced female sterilization on a mass scale via tubectomy, a non-reversible surgical procedure. Men, too, were rounded up and sent to camps for non-reversible sterilisation. This was not popular; indeed, it was one of the reasons behind Indira Ghandhi losing the 1977 election. In present day India, being what one male interviewee describes as a patriarchal society, it tends to be women who get pressurised into sterilisation rather than men.
Enter Dr. Sharma and his medicines business ICMR who were attracted by Dr. Guha’s research. Guha contracted polymer chemist Dr. Padma Vasudevan to construct a polymer which, when put in the vas deferens in a liquid state, would kill the spermatozoa. Guha’s explanation of how it works is accompanied by inserts of rudimentary animation by an individual or animation house credited as Afterman, including an immensely likeable sequence in which a swordsman decapitates advancing spermatozoa.
Guha started researching via trials on humans in the 1990s. Subjects (couples) have been very co-operative, to the point where the genial Guha describes them as “part of our family.” Their first client was a sceptical doctor who examined his own treated semen under a microscope to check his sperm count was genuinely zero. Judging by the contented reaction of himself and his wife in the interview, they’ve been going at it like rabbits ever since.
A woman who had problems when she stated taking the pill (or “pills” as she calls them) was relieved when he husband, hearing about it from male friends, underwent the new procedure. They both seem very happy about the way it worked out, particularly since for this women, traditional female-centred options proved not viable.
ICMR and Guha were given permission to start a Phase III, large scale trial in 1999. The clunky-sounding RISUG, or Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance, received a certain amount of media attention, but it was not until 2002 that big pharma began to see it as financially profitable. Dr. Ron Weiss, a vasectomy specialist in the US, joined the team after the World Health Organisation (WHO) became involved. He was impressed by the quality of the research that had been carried out, but in the end, the work didn’t meet the international guideline standards.
There was a bigger problem. For big pharma, a product which required “one injection and then goodbye” was never going to be a big earner. Guha muses on not giving up on his RISUG project in the face of adversity, and the editing switches up to a conference where one of the guests frankly describes her painful experience of having an IUD fitted. Likeable interviewer Fox (“I’m L.R. Fox but everyone calls me Fox”) talks about the “frankly embarrassing” contemporary state of contraception.
Fox turns out to be an impressive individual, partly raised in foster homes following life with an abusive mother, whose motivation is simply that there should be better family planning available so that parents are no longer overwhelmed and children don’t get to suffer the consequences.
US female activist Elaine Vessel signed a contract with Guha in 2010 to develop and market RISUG internationally outside of India. By 2015 she was ready to begin trials under the name Vasalgel.
A long section in Akron, Ohio, talks to a couple where he had a vasectomy and they both seem very happy with it. This contrasts with the appalling story of Dinesh in India, whose wife died from a botched sterilisation in which he food leaked out from a nick in her intestine.
Dr. Guha’s research is fascinating, essential and a great subject for a documentary; he comes off well as a decent human being driven to improve the lives of others. The various people who help him or try and take his work out to the mass of people are likewise impressive, but the inability or unwillingness of human society (for which read, in the first instance, India, and in the second, the US) to enable this is something of an indictment.
The documentary thus plays out as a double-sided vision of humanity: a peculiar juxtaposition of hope, optimism and ingenuity on the one hand and inertia, stasis and greed on the other. This presents the filmmaker with a problem she seems unable to overcome; as the pioneers and promoters of RISUG and its ilk attempt to move forward, they get bogged down by the various factors which get in their way. The film similarly begins as an inspiring and hopeful piece, but then attempts to maintain that outlook as various initiatives seem to get stuck playing their own long game, and finds it harder and harder to maintain viewer interest. It’s a fifty year snapshot in time of a human endeavour with great potential which has got somewhat bogged down in trying to achieve its goals, a viewing experience as compelling in some parts as it is frustrating in others.
Give It a Shot has its International Premiere at 6.30 pm at the ICA on Tuesday, July 14th in the London Indian Film Festival which runs from Thursday July 9th to Sunday, July 19th in London, Birmingham and Manchester.
Trailer (London Indian Film Festival):