New “Hydrogel” Condoms Feel Better, But Will They Be Big Enough To Fit Me?

Now that I'm in the back nine of my thirties, it's far more believable that I could have had a vasectomy, which has replaced "I'm too big for condoms," as my go-to excuse for not wearing them. Thanks to a new miracle material called Hydrogel and the good people at the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, however, my excuse making days may be drawing to a close. 

According to Metro (link below), Dr. Robert A. Gorkin of the University of Wollongong in Australia was working toward creating a more realistic material for prosthetics when he got wind of a grant for researchers trying to make better feeling condoms. "Fuck people missing limbs," he seemed to say as he decided to answer a higher calling...

Gorkin, who's leading the research, was inspired back in 2013 when he heard that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was offering grants to research groups working toward creating a better-feeling condom. At the time, he'd been working with a material called hydrogels in order to develop human prosthetics that mirrored skin in a more natural way. It got him thinking: could the tissue-like material be used to make condoms?

 

They've since received $100,000 in funding from the foundation and have been working intently on using the material to develop the next-generation condom.

 

What exactly are hydrogels? Made up of water and polymer, hydrogels have a jelly-like texture that closely resembles human tissue. The material, which has only been around for about a decade, has the potential to replace latex.

 

"Our material is something called a tough hydrogel, which is akin to something like a contact lens," says Gorkin. "So it has a similar feel and similar structure. They're really touted as being skin-like substitutes, so they're supposed to have the mechanical properties that more closely match what skin does."