Vaccine Means the Buck Doesn’t Have to Stop Here

The National Zoo is about to start an important study on a new contraceptive that could have great potential for the human race.

This project at a zoo’s research center in Virginia involves deer, 30 white-tailed doe and anywhere from four to six bucks. I am not making this up.

Although this has not been scientifically validated, it is believed that this doe-to-buck ratio closely approximates that of the eligible and extremely desirable females in the human population as compared to males meeting those same specifications.

At the heart of the National Zoo study is the feasibility of a deer contraceptive vaccine, which is the lay person’s term for a protein culled from a membrane that surrounds pig eggs.

The vaccine has already been successfully tested for five years on wild horses at Maryland’s Assateague Island National Seashore. The National Institutes of Health has agreed to underwrite that project, previously funded by the Humane Society, for three more years.

All of this has been confirmed.

What is still up in the air is which major cosmetics manufacturer will be the first to market this same pig membrane formula in a night cream that promises to give the appearance of younger, more supple skin within 10 days, if used according to directions. I am making this up.

The idea behind the deer contraceptive, really, is to humanely limit the deer population in suburban areas.

It appears that deer overpopulation is a growing problem in many areas of the country, where the animals have been helping themselves to neighbors’ shrubbery in flagrant violation of local homeowners association rules.

Still other deer have been spotted dodging traffic, mostly without success, and wandering aimlessly through corporate office parks in search of employees who might throw them, say, the remnants of that morning’s doughnuts, with the jelly sucked out.

It is such pathetic sights that have marshaled animal welfare groups to demand an effective deer birth-control method.

Using such slogans as “Deer Are People Too, Aren’t They?,” these groups have reportedly argued that by denying deer the choice to remain fawnless, we deny something in ourselves. Or something like that.

By contrast, the more traditional deer population control method, the so-called anti-choice option, remains by far the most common. This is to blast Bambi to smithereens.

This is the preferred method of the National Rifle Assn., whose spokesmen have commented on the deer vaccine by pointing out that this being America, bullets are much cheaper than contraceptives.

The NRA, additionally, has noted that birth control for deer doesn’t sound very sporting to them.

While the idea of a deer contraceptive vaccine may sound completely new, it has successfully been tried before on a smaller scale.

Vaccine developer Jay Kirkpatrick, a reproductive physiologist from Montana, said that during the past three years of a project at an Ohio commercial deer farm, there has not been a single doe pregnancy even though the animals have repeatedly come into heat.

“And we haven’t had any bucks dropping over either,” he added.

This appears to be key. The potential for buck exhaustion has been worrisome to pioneers in the deer birth-control field for many years now.

“They are like those candles that you can never blow out,” said William McShea, a biologist and wildlife behavioral expert at the National Zoo research center.

“(And) if they die, they will die with smiles on their faces.”

Kirkpatrick, who has worked in wildlife contraception for the past 20 years, suggests that scientific studies of elk and deer in cold northern latitudes have shown this persistence to be perhaps the most deleterious side effect of being male.

“They really chase these estrous (i.e. ‘loose’) females,” Kirkpatrick said from Vail, Colo., where he was attending a conference.

“Their sleep time drops, they don’t eat much. They are constantly on the prowl. . . . And male mortality is much higher. By chasing after females, they burn up all the fat they’ve accumulated.”

It is worth pointing out that in the cold northern latitudes to which Kirkpatrick refers, scientists have yet to introduce football, television and beer as a possible mitigating factor on such male behavior.

“This vaccine is a strong candidate for human use,” Kirkpatrick went on, clarifying that the funding by the National Institutes of Health stems from its interest in the vaccine’s long-term effects on ovarian function, rather than any application for males.

“We quit thinking about male contraceptives,” Kirkpatrick said. “Even if there were one that was completely effective, totally free of side effects, totally painless, it would be doomed to failure, for social reasons.”

In other words, the young buck syndrome. It’s, you know, a hormonal thing.