Quite a few people including Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice are chuckling over this year’s awarding of the IgNobel Prize for Medicine to Gregg Miller, the inventor of the neuticle:
BOSTON – Gregg Miller mortgaged his home and maxed out his credit cards to mass produce his invention — prosthetic testicles for neutered dogs.
What started 10 years ago with an experiment on an unwitting Rottweiler named Max has turned into a thriving mail-order business. And on Thursday night Miller’s efforts earned him a dubious yet strangely coveted honor: the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine.
“Considering my parents thought I was an idiot when I was a kid, this is a great honor,” he said. “I wish they were alive to see it.”
The Ig Nobels, given at Harvard University by Annals of Improbable Research magazine, celebrate the humorous, creative and odd side of science.
Miller has sold more than 150,000 of his Neuticles, more than doubling his $500,000 investment. The silicone implants come in different sizes, shapes, weights and degrees of firmness.
The product’s Web site says Neuticles allow a pet “to retain his natural look” and “self esteem.”
None of the articles or posts seem to understand the reason for neuticles: they’re a form of fraud.
The showing of purebred dogs is big business. More people participate in it than in any other sport in the United States. On any given weekend there are hundreds of dog shows all around the country. Top winning dogs can earn big stud fees. And, of course, there are the bragging rights.
Only intact dogs can participate in AKC dog shows. An AKC dog show is a show of breeding stock. Neutered dogs cannot become champions. Monorchid (possessing only a single testicle) or cryptorchid (testicles withdrawn into the abdomen) dogs cannot become champions. Monorchidism and partial cryptorchidism are heritable characteristics and can be passed to the offspring. Neutered or fully cryptorchid dogs, of course, will have no offspring.
Neuticles aren’t just for cosmetic purposes or to help dogs’ or owners’ self-esteem. They allow unscrupulous owners to show neutered, monorchid, or cryptorchid dogs, passing them off as intact. This defrauds other competitors and also possible purchasers of stud services who pay for stud service from an intact dog not a monorchid or cryptorchid dog.
If you pass off a dog that has had neuticles installed as an intact dog, it could result in a ban from AKC competition.
Neuticles aren’t funny.
i don’t get why anyone would neuter a dog if the money to be made from breeding comes after the show ring wins…. Of course, I can see that a problematic dog might need to be… umm… controlled, and that any winner adds to the prestige of the bloodline, but it seems to me about as stupid as researchers who mistreat their animals. There’s no money in it….
Can they be detected via x-ray or US? Why not require an owner to submit proof of “intact” status before entering the dog in a show?
People get their dogs neuticles to allow an otherwise ineligible dog to compete. I.e. monorchid or cryptorchid.
As to why the AKC doesn’t require proof of intact status, what proof other than an onsite x-ray would do it? If the intent is to defraud, X-rays from some other animal could be submitted. Besides the AKC is stuck in the 19th century. They should be getting and storing genetic profiles of every AKC registered dog, for example. Ensuring absence of various heritable health conditions.
But, unfortunately, the AKC is in the business of registering dogs not ensuring that registered dogs are healthy.
Greg Hlatky, who shows Borzoi, once posted a story about an exhibitor who, anxious about a specimen’s undescended testicle, installed one of the fakes before a show.
Karma being what it is, the stuck nard unstuck itself during the trip into the ring, and the judge, upon examining, was quite surprised: “Three?”
No points, of course.
Any product can be abused. Neuticles are not a product intended for fraud in the showring but was created to provide pet owners Worldwide an option to the traditional form of neutering. As a result over 150,000 pet owners Worldwide have selected Neuticles which has not only reduced the pet overpopulation but has made for healthier happier pets that simply would not have been neutered otherwise. Since the purpose of showing a male dog is to win ribbons so the owner can charge a highly inflated stud fee-why would anyone show a neutered dog with Neuticles in a show? That’s like putting a big fancy race car in the Indy 500 with no engine. The posters here are ignoring the obvious and even IF a Neuticled dog was, in fact, shown in a dog show-would dogkind come to a crashing halt? The naysayers should put their wringing hands to work helping to reduce pet overpopulation in a country where over 20 million pets are slaughtered each year because of pet overpopulation. Neuticles are encouraging pet owners – repeat pet owners- to neuter that somply would not before and is providing a solution. As for the “show dogs” that make up 1/1,000.000th of 1% of pets in this country…
Bravo Mr Miller! These show dog people give me a pain I can’t locate. I Neuticled my Boxer with your product and its just like your company says- its like nothing ever changed. Henry looks the same and i want my make dog to look like a male dog. Congratulations on your noel peace prize and may God bless you!