Eugen Jonas has combined Babylonian texts and a subgenre of astrology to deduce that less frequent intercourse will reduce the chance of pregnancy.

I could find no challenge to this premise, so we’ll move onto some of his other assertions. While mainstream infertility specialists try to help couples conceive, Jonas goes beyond pedestrian procreation and enables clients to choose the gender prior to conception. Under the Jonas treatment, miscarriages are a misfortune of the past, as are physical and mental defects.

This Brave New World was discovered in 1956 when Jonas came across a fragmented ancient manuscript that read, “A woman is fertile according to the moon.” There was nothing in science to support this, but Jonas insisted there need be no conflict. Yes, women, you CAN have it all: Pregnancy through normal means and through the lunar channel.

He delved into cosmobiology, an offshoot of astrology which emphasizes points between heavenly bodies, rather than planets, satellites, and stars themselves. He emerged with a system that centered on the angles of the sun and moon at the time of a woman’s birth. There was “like affects like” connection; if a woman was born during a full moon, she would be fertile during future full moons. Additionally, the positon of the moon at the time of conception determines gender, while the planets’ positions determines miscarriages and birth defects.

For those seeking to avoid pregnancy, Jonas has designed a chart to follow, with a series of six- and 13-day windows within a month in which the woman should abstain, since she is fertile based on her lunar reading. Persons following this less-than-revolutionary method would likely succeed more often than not. There’s a 50-50 chance the gender request will by celestially granted, and most babies are healthy. These factors have enabled Jonas to accumulate 300 anecdotes from satisfied customers. There are no peer-reviewed studies or publications supporting this, but his website reports that the work of Dr. Jonas has been confirmed by Dr. Jonas.

Conversely, two European studies examined a total of 12,000 deliveries and found that the births were equally distributed throughout the lunar cycle.

In Jonas’ teachings, gender is determined not by a man’s sperm, but by whether the moon is in the male or female sign of the Zodiac. And there is no relationship between birth defects and genetics or chromosome imbalance. Rather, they are the result of “unfavorable distribution of gravitational forces of the near celestial bodies at the time of conception.”

Jonas offers no science to support any of this so I went to lunarium.co.uk, a Jonas-friendly website to see if it could offer any. One tab reads, “How the method works.” OK, here we go, time to lay out the methods, testing, research, hypotheses, predictions, replication, peer review, data sharing, and attempts to falsify.

Here it is: “If a woman was born at the time of a certain phase, each time the same phase will take place in the sky, that will be her moment of unusually high fertility, her potential Lunar Conception moment.” Later, we are told, “The gender of the conceived child will depend on the sign of the Zodiac in which the Moon was at the moment of Lunar Conception.”

This was a rehashing of what this is, not how it works. So there wasn’t much substance in the explanation, although they did throw in the word ‘algorithm’ once or twice. It also noted that, “Science cannot explain this,” which is the one thing science has in common with the portion of the Lunarium website dedicated to explaining it.

In addition to bathing in fertility-enriching moonlight, the website stresses the importance of a healthy, stress-free life in tune with nature. But the only natural way to be completely without stress is to be dead, and that’s not healthy.

Another piece of advice: “If the conception cosmogram for the child is not well-aspected, but the mother’s own cosmogram is favorable, the negative influences are overcome to a certain degree.” If you can’t understand that, it’s OK because they will sell you a consultation with an astrologer to figure out what they were trying to tell you.

While focusing mostly on cosmobiology’s impact on infertility, Jonas also cautions that undiagnosed celiac disease and toxic cosmetic products are to blame, so ditch the rye bread and shampoo as well.