Ladies, if you could take a pill that made your vagina smell like peaches, would you?

I wonder how they would test this product for quality control.

Roxxsmom said:

No, I was too. The article doesn't elaborate. Will have to google that.

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I'm curious, because, well...this idea isn't exactly life-changing, but it isn't any worse than a lot of what I've seen on there.

The only thing I saw was that it was kicked off for being too controversial.

Apparently they got booted because Kickstarter considers raising money for synthetic biology as a bit controversial. Well, quite.

While Heinz blamed that decision on Kickstarter's being run by "a bunch of hipsters from New York" who "don't like supporting actual cool science," Gome clarified the situation to Inc. after their presentation, saying Kickstarter had instituted a ban on synthetic biology projects because they are seen as too controversial. "It just created such a big fuss. They didn't want to handle it," he said. "I don't blame them. Most governments around the world are having difficulty regulating this field."

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But, wait. There's more.

Critical update: It turns out that Heinz and Gilad did a terrible job of representing the goals of Sweet Peach and its founder, Audrey Hutchinson, whom they neglected to mention during their presentation or my conversation with them afterward. Hutchinson was appalled at the implication that Sweet Peach is intended to introduce artificial fragrances into its users' vaginas. Please read my follow-up piece to hear her side of the story (and learn how Heinz's thoughtless mistakes cost him new investors).

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It's worth reading the follow up piece.

Heinz, who owns 10% of the equity in her company, hadn't told her he planned to unveil plans for Sweet Peach in a highly public forum. If he had, she would have asked him not to, since she still considered it to be in stealth mode. "I wasn't ready to publicize my company at all, so now I have a lot of questions being asked and a lot of really terrible things being said about my company," she says.

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and

By making sure desirable microbes flourish in their proper balance, the supplements will help ensure that bad ones, like the ones that cause yeast infections, can't get a toehold. The name alludes not to any quality of the product but to the way peaches have been used as a symbol of the vagina in literature for hundreds of years.

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So these guys are real chumps. And in addition to misrepresenting the project, they didn't even mention the person who actually runs the company.

Wow. What a bizarre situation. I don't blame the company's founder for being annoyed with how the company was publicized.

So...does this product make vaginas smell like peaches or not? The comments by the company's CEO/founder doesn't really make that clear to me, though she makes it clear that that isn't the point of the product, at least.

I must be weird I've always liked the smell of my vagina so no I wouldn't change it. I actually find this whole idea a little offensive. Come on vaginas don't smell that bad.

DancingMaenid said:

Wow. What a bizarre situation. I don't blame the company's founder for being annoyed with how the company was publicized.

So...does this product make vaginas smell like peaches or not? The comments by the company's CEO/founder doesn't really make that clear to me, though she makes it clear that that isn't the point of the product, at least.

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I got the impression that the sweet peaches name had no connection whatsoever with what the product actually does, so far as she's concerned, but that this guy who owns 10% of her company and who also has his own start up that wants to make dog poo smell like bananas assumed that this was what it was about.

And he brought in this other guy who had no connection with the company at all who confused things even further.

I remember being told when I was in highschool, that the reason women were not very good managers (sic) was because they don't like to delegate anything. If there is any truth to this cliche at all, I can see why.

Alessandra Kelley said:

I'm flashing back so hard to Rosalind Franklin here.

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One of my favourite parts about all my lectures related to DNA is the different takes my lecturers have on the whole Watson and Crick DNA discovery. They inevitable include words such as stole and plagiarism. One of my lecturers even went so far as to say "And, as typical of scientists of that time, being fascists and sexists, they completely ignored the significant contribution by a female scientist."

Roxxsmom said:

Now you're making me think of the conversation I used to have with a night time dog walking buddy. If only someone could splice a gene into the normal intestinal flora of dogs that made them bioluminesce, we wouldn't have to spend all that time patting the grass with our (plastic bag covered) hand, trying to find the warm, soft pile.

Glowing dog poops would make night time scooping so much easier. The smelling like bananas bit, though. Could do without that.


And of a really serious note, changing the biochemistry of microbes that live in or on the human (or canine) body might have some negative consequences. Pleasant smelling farts might be nice, at least, but there are reasons that gut bacteria make gasses that smell the way they do.

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Unfortunately it was a false alarm.


The original sweet scent of vaginas is here to stay. The "Sweet Peach" is not what it is thought to be.

The actual idea is to "pair DNA sequencing with DNA synthesis in order to sequence microbiomes and write personalized solutions".

There.

As a side effects there may appear a whiff of the peach aroma.

DancingMaenid said:

Wow. What a bizarre situation. I don't blame the company's founder for being annoyed with how the company was publicized.

So...does this product make vaginas smell like peaches or not? The comments by the company's CEO/founder doesn't really make that clear to me, though she makes it clear that that isn't the point of the product, at least.

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It sounds like they were considering having the peach scene happen to let the woman know it's working? This is just weird to me, because it sounds like her idea wasn't anything like this one.

Unwritten Pages said:

Unfortunately it was a false alarm.


The original sweet scent of vaginas is here to stay. The "Sweet Peach" is not what it is thought to be.

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I know, see my posts lower down in the thread (or higher up in the thread, actually, since this is currently at the end)

Unwritten Pages said:

The actual idea is to "pair DNA sequencing with DNA synthesis in order to sequence microbiomes and write personalized solutions".

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Unwritten Pages said:

There.

As a side effects there may appear a whiff of the peach aroma.

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These guys really do want to come up with a probiotic that changes the smell of dog poo, however. I wouldn't give my dogs pills to make their poo smell like bananas for the same reason.

Plus, don't they think it might change the way people feel about bananas after a while?

Celia Cyanide said:

It sounds like they were considering having the peach scene happen to let the woman know it's working? This is just weird to me, because it sounds like her idea wasn't anything like this one.

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Including biomarkers of some kind into transgenic organisms is actually pretty common. The most famous is the glowing monkey. The point of the experiment wasn't to make monkeys glow under fluorescent light, but to have the jellyfish luminescence protein be a "marker" that indicated that the gene splicing technique had worked (since the gene of real concern often has a more subtle effect initially).

So those jokes up thread about bio luminescent vaginal secretions might not have been so far fetched after all...

Lesson here: if you take on investors, beware, lest some jerk with a 10% interest in your company will take it upon himself to use his half-baked idea of what your product is about to fill in time in his own presentation. He'll just use the bits that will boost his own product, and if there aren't any, he'll make them up.

My original thought was "This is what happens when a woman lets a man speak for her", but... she didn't. He didn't ask her if she wanted him to mention her product (she didn't); he didn't mention that it was her product, not his (completely left any mention of her out of the whole thing); let his partner in some other enterprise make stuff up about her product (presumably to show that their own product wasn't a weird outlier).

If I had money and a desire to invest in new technology, I'd avoid this guy and his associate like the plague. If they'll misinterpret and misinform this badly, what does it say about their general level of reliability?

As for this:

While Heinz blamed that decision on Kickstarter's being run by "a bunch of hipsters from New York" who "don't like supporting actual cool science," Gome clarified the situation to Inc. after their presentation, saying Kickstarter had instituted a ban on synthetic biology projects because they are seen as too controversial. "It just created such a big fuss. They didn't want to handle it," he said. "I don't blame them. Most governments around the world are having difficulty regulating this field."

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, more like Kickstarter didn't want to handle complaints about dodgy people and their untested projects.

These two have the air of people who, in an earlier time, would have been going castle-to-castle, offering to turn your lead into gold, for a low, low, 'contribution'.

Perks said:

The article says that their next project is to make dogshit smell like bananas, but I have to say that their priority list makes me a little sad.

Bad Smells To Fix:

1) vaginas

2) dogshit


I wonder where skunks fit in. Is it before or after ballsweat?

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did you now there's a video on youtube on how to de-stink your balls???

milkweed said:

did you now there's a video on youtube on how to de-stink your balls???

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A shower that involves a mild soap and warm water, followed by gently patting the relevant body part dry and wearing cotton undergarments?

But I freely admit to lacking the relevant body part, so...

Roxxsmom said:

I got the impression that the sweet peaches name had no connection whatsoever with what the product actually does, so far as she's concerned, but that this guy who owns 10% of her company and who also has his own start up that wants to make dog poo smell like bananas assumed that this was what it was about.

And he brought in this other guy who had no connection with the company at all who confused things even further.

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Your impression makes sense to me. I think you may be onto something.

I could see the banana dog poop guy investing in this company and thinking it could be a good outlet for his ideas, but not really discussing that with the Sweet Peach CEO before announcing his intentions publicly. That would explain why he and the other guy acted like it was a given while the CEO of the company sounds like she had no idea about it.

DancingMaenid said:

That would explain why he and the other guy acted like it was a given while the CEO of the company sounds like she had no idea about it.

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And was so shocked and sickened, she vomited twice. I agree that all this talk about fruity smelling doggy doo was a bit gross, but I assume it was because she was upset over the effect this could have on her company.

Maybe I'm alone in this one, but I don't think dog shit should smell like bananas. I think we need that smell so that we know what it is and we don't step in it. And just because it started smelling good doesn't make it okay to step in it.

If there was a pill that improved the smell of cat doo-doo, I'd get me some of that and wouldn't be too fussed about what fragrance it was. Bananas, mint, patchouli, Chanel, it's all better than shit.

In fact, if it was found safe, that product might be very good for animal welfare. If it wasn't for litterbox nastiness, I could see taking in a couple more cats.

Celia Cyanide said:

Maybe I'm alone in this one, but I don't think dog shit should smell like bananas. I think we need that smell so that we know what it is and we don't step in it. And just because it started smelling good doesn't make it okay to step in it.

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No, I was thinking the same thing. The bad smell can be a warning.

He's not a dog, but my cat used to have a problem with going behind furniture and pooping there. The smell was the only way I could tell he'd done it.

And I have a hard enough time keeping the dogs away from the cat box now. Imagine how they're be if cat poo actually smelled like food.

Though if it had a pleasant, floral smell, maybe they'd be repulsed. Dogs aren't big on pleasant, floral smells.