Foundation Offers Massive Prize for Technique that Might Render Spays and Neuters Unnecessary
Anyone who has ever used treats or praise to train a canine companion knows that dogs respond to incentives. I’m sure you’re aware from your own experience that humans do, too. For many of us, one of the greatest incentives is money, which is being used to inspire us to find a solution to one of the most intractable problems for dogs, cats, and the people who care about them: canine and feline overpopulation.

Could potentially dangerous surgery become a thing of the past?
Throwing money at a problem rarely solves it; cash has a way of being used up without results being attained. However, a new model of incentivizing scientific progress has shown that money can motivate true changes, if it is in the form of prizes.
The X Prize Foundation has shown that offering large sums of cash, along with heaps of prestige, can spark rapid scientific progress. Most famously, the Ansari X Prize motivated massive leaps forward in the exploration of space by nongovernmental entities.
Therefore, I was very happy to see that veterinary medicine now has its own version of the X Prize. And it’s aiming big.
The January/February issue of Animal Sheltering (a publication of the Humane Society of the United States) published an article on the Michelson Prize and Grants program. The program is named after Gary Michelson, a billionaire with a strong interest in animal welfare. Here is a quote from the article. (At the time of writing, the article was not available online so I was unable to link to it.)
In late 2008, the [Found Animals Foundation] announced an eye-popping brass ring: the Michelson Prize and Grants in Reproductive Biology. The prize promised $25 million to the first entity to develop a low-cost, single-dose, nonsurgical method of permanently sterilizing cats and dogs. The project made another $50 million available in grants for related research.
People have been discussing an alternative to spaying and neutering for decades. Many experts see it as a massive step forward in large-scale animal welfare. But finding an almost mythical alternative has proven devilishly difficult.







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