Vasectomist, The (ATOM Study Guide)

'You should have a job that you don't consider work; for me, this is volunteer work and I happen to get paid. ' – Dr Doug Stein is The Vasectomist

So begins our acquaintance with Dr Doug Stein, a personable, committed doctor of urology from a small town in Florida in the USA, who is on a mission to deliver safe, economical and speedy family planning to the men who request this procedure, both at home and abroad in third-world countries. Over the course of his career, he has performed 25,000 vasectomies. No-scalpel vasectomy – NSV – is his procedure of choice; it takes just fifteen minutes to perform, no general anaesthetic is required and the patient can return home immediately afterwards. During the course of this documentary, Dr Stein performed 5000 of these procedures. While the world population continues to swell, Doug continues – with the aid of other dedicated professionals in Haiti, the Philippines and the USA – to tirelessly advocate for men to take responsibility for family planning.

As we view this documentary, we will see Doug encounter many hurdles to the achievement of his goal, such as religious embargoes on advertising his clinics, cultural and social objections, lack of education and fear of the results as potentially damaging. And he is well aware that mathematically, his mission may well not save the planet from overpopulation and thus destruction of our biodiversity. But, optimistic and good-humoured, he perseveres, declaring, 'We are fighting against an extremely natural procedure; it carries an inevitable failure ... did we make a dent in it? I don't know, but we're not going to give up. '

NSV was originally developed in China in 1974 by Dr Shunqiang Li. In 1985, Dr Marc Goldstein of the New York–Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College was the first American surgeon trained in this Chinese method. Today over 5000 doctors have received training in the no-scalpel vasectomy procedure, and since then over one million men in the USA have safely undergone this procedure.

In conjunction with this documentary, the producers built an online campaign with the rollout of a series of 'webisodes'. This preceded a premiere launch in October 2013 at the Adelaide Film Festival and Festival of Ideas. A World Vasectomy Day was declared at the launch with a live-streamed vasectomy-a-thon at the Royal Institution of Australia with the film's protagonist, Dr Stein.

This study guide aims to examine the practice and rejection or acceptance of vasectomy as a family-planning technique and the objectives – both individual and global – that it intends to serve. We will be introduced to the variety of responses to Dr Stein and his colleagues' mission as they attend to their work in the developing nations they visit. This film will raise many provocative issues for discussion and writing activities, and will no doubt challenge established views and beliefs.

Students should be aware that this film contains scenes of actual, confronting medical procedures. References to reproductive biology, male/female reproductive organs, sexual activity and related matters are made with complete frankness.

Curriculum relevance
Given the often-graphic medical imagery and observations in The Vasectomist, and the serious moral, ethical and social issues raised, this documentary would serve students in Years 11–12 in subjects such as:

• Geography
• Political Studies
• English
• Health and Human Development
• Religion and Society