The writers of "Seinfeld" based an entire episode of the hit show on a little-known method of birth control. Instead of focusing on the condom or the pill, they tracked Elaine's quest to find the only available contraceptive sponge, the Today Sponge, chronicling her dismay when she found out it was pulled from the market. In an attempt to preserve her dwindling stash of Today Sponges, she was forced to evaluate the sponge-worthiness of each potential partner.
Most University students were not sexually active in 1995, when the Today Sponge was last sold in the United States, and thus cannot relate to Elaine's distress. But many women across the United States empathized with her search.
According to a press release from Synova Healthcare, the current producers of the Today Sponge, the product was "the most popular over-the-counter form of birth control among women between 1983 and 1995, when it was used by an estimated 6.5 million women."
In April of 2005, the Food and Drug Administration re-approved the product for retail in the United States. The road back to retail shelves, however, was a long one for the sponge.
A long journey....
American Home Products originally produced the Today Sponge. According to Christine Peterson, director of gynecology at Student Health, the sponge was removed from the market in 1995 because of problems related to the manufacturing plant where it was made. The rights to produce the sponge were then purchased by Allendale Pharmaceuticals in 1998. Synova Healthcare subsequently purchased Allendale last month.
Robert Staab, former chairman of Allendale Pharmaceuticals and current regulatory and scientific consultant at Synova, said the Today Sponge itself was never proven harmful through the whole process.
"The product was always legal," Staab said. "What we needed to do was a big bunch of manufacturing control work to prove that the product is the same."
As a result, the Today Sponge currently on the market is exactly the same as it was 11 years ago.
After the FDA announced its approval of the product, Staab said Allendale was inundated with demands for the product. The demand was so great that Allendale was not able to keep up.
"We had a very strong demand for the Today Sponge when it was approved," Staab said. "There is no pharmacy or mass merchandiser that didn't want it. That was one of the reasons we have joined forces with Synova."
The partnership with the larger company will allow the Today Sponge to be supplied to women all across the United States, Staab said.
The Today Sponge of tomorrow
For those who were too young to be members of "Generation Sponge" it might be difficult to understand what all the buzz is about.
According to Staab, the sponge works in three ways. First, it is a barrier method, like a cervical cap, that is meant to keep semen from entering the cervix. Second, it is, as the name would suggest, a sponge. Thus, it is able to absorb semen in a further attempt to keep the egg from being fertilized. Finally, it contains about 1,000 milligrams of nonoxynol-9, the most commonly used spermicide in the United States.
The FDA label on the sponge states that the product is 89 to 91 percent effective when used correctly.
"It has a very high failure rate when used alone," Peterson said. "It can be a backup spermicide but it is not good for regular birth control."
Staab, however, pointed out that these numbers may be misleading.
"Eighty-nine to 91 percent is the label claim that we are allowed to state by the FDA," he said. "It's a little bit scary when people look at it because it seems like every tenth act of intercourse you get pregnant ... [But] when you look at the 2,000 women that were studied in the clinical study and do the math, you get one failure per every 1,500 acts of intercourse."
Staab cited the product's seeming effectiveness as one of the reasons it is so popular.
Other reasons, according to him, include the fact that it puts contraception in the hands of the woman, with her partner often not knowing she is using it.
The sponge's design, according to Staab, is another reason for its popularity.
"Some women have described it to me as cute," he said. "It's soft and designed to be as soft as vaginal tissue. Therefore it needs to be handled very delicately. We tell people to handle it as carefully as they would a contact lens."
Finally, Staab said over-the-counter availability of the sponge makes it appealing to many women as well.
Women in Charlottesville, however, may find it difficult to obtain the sponge. While, Web sites such as www.drugstore.com do offer the sponge. Local pharmacies at Harris Teeter, CVS and Kroger do not currently stock the contraceptive.
According to Peterson, the pharmacy at Student Health placed an order for the Today Sponge last week and it should be available in the over-the-counter section by this weekend.
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