Performance enhancing materials?
According to today's Bad Science, The Sun, irony of ironies, is having conniptions over the NHS's provision of pornography in fertility clinics. After dealing with the complaint in short order — the average spend is twenty quid per trust per year — Dr Ben investigates the more interesting question of whether there might be valid scientific reasons for provided, um, performance enhancers:
But it gets more interesting. There is already evidence from animal research that males increase the amount of sperm in their ejaculate when there is more competition around. In 2005, Kilgallon and Simmons conducted an experiment to see whether human males viewing “images depicting sperm competition” also had a higher percentage of motile sperm in their ejaculates.
God knows what the right wing press would make out of the grant proposal for this bit of research...