What I love about this story is how it shows the strength that can come from diversity of perspective. Quite honestly, as a middle-class male in America, I had personally never considered this problem. I never considered the cost or availability of them. There are some problems that can never be solved by the top earners, because we often don't know there are problems! Of course, this is why we also fail so spectacularly when architecting solutions for hunger, education, sanitation, etc in other countries. We don't really understand the problems, so how can we make solutions?
I'm also stunned at the inventor's wife, since she left him thinking this was just a ruse to meet younger women, but perhaps there's something cultural there that I'm unaware of. If I said I was going to go research these here in the US, I'd be terribly shocked if my girlfriend left me over it.
I had the same thought, but maybe our research would "feel" like a research. It would have forms, focus groups, funding, schedules... a very different situation than his, I presume.
Now that I'm thinking about it, its probably a bit around the lines of "Talking to women about private and inappropriate things would lead toward inappropriate actions. Men don't talk about this, so you must have some other motivation". Still a bit unreasonable, but its hard to say.
I'm also stunned at the inventor's wife, since she left him thinking this was just a ruse to meet younger women, but perhaps there's something cultural there that I'm unaware of. If I said I was going to go research these here in the US, I'd be terribly shocked if my girlfriend left me over it.