Fertility Chip

Remote-control birth control may be the wave of the future. In 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave a grant of nearly £8 million to Microchips Biotech Inc, a private company developing a microchip that could be implanted in a woman’s body to control her fertility for up to 16 years. The contraceptive device, which is inserted under the skin, can be ‘activated’ and ‘deactivated’ by the user or her doctor. According to the company’s press release, the microchip would be especially helpful for women who don’t have easy access to health care, and therefore the technology has ‘great potential for developing countries’. This fertility microchip is just one example of the ways large tech companies and tech billionaires are investing in charitable enterprises, often guided by a belief that the world’s problems can best be solved by technology.