The Economics of Male Birth Control
priceonomics.com
priceonomics.com
"Any new product they could introduce would be likely to cannibalize their existing products. After all, one reason for a man to want to use a reversible contraceptive is so his partner can stop taking the pill."
Little economical incentive to cannibalize its own market. That makes so much more sense than conspiracy theories preventing this from happening. I disregard real "scientific barriers" here because I believe capitalism would have driven science to where it wanted anyway -- hell, there's very little stuff in the world that won't see any meaningful progress after 50 years of research.
Also, if you find the fact that economics or whatever has prevented male birth control, consider donating to the Parsemus Foundation who is actively working on the Vasalgel product.
I'm not sure that would be the main reason. If you're concerned about security, pills/vasalgel/anything except condoms won't really save you from the worst consequences. Only a barrier method can be completely effective (and even that fails).
I would of course absolutely advocate using a condom with any new non-fluid-bonded partner.
Having said that, there definitely are non-technical issues that can make pregnancy more final than an STD (moral opposition to abortion, not wanting the child while the woman does, ...)
I would not call it completely effective. Someone who uses a condom perfectly, each time, every time, still has a 50% lifetime (35 year) chance of having a child.
And with more typical use a person is all but guaranteed to have at least one child during their life.
Condoms help reduce fertility (i.e. smaller family size), they do not eliminate the possibility of children.
Someone who absolutely does not want children does not really have any good solutions except avoidance. The typical advice is two methods of birth control at once (i.e. hormone plus barrier), but that's only an option for females.
That statement makes no sense. If the condom is not broken or slips off, there's no chance that a woman is inseminated. Unless the man has magic sperms that can teletransport themselves into a woman's womb.
0.98 ^ 35 = 0.49, i.e. 51% chance of failure.
Failure here means child conceived. And keep in mind that there is only approximately a 2% chance of having a child from each encounter, so condoms fail a LOT. (20% chance of a child if done at the right time divided by 3 days out of 30 where it's possible.)
Note that the low 2% conception chance is mitigated by looking at a failure rate over a full year, i.e. multiply 2% by the number of encounters in a year.
Perfect use of male condom: 18% chance of conception after 10 years. Typical usage: 86% chance of conception after 10 years.
Even "the pill": 3% chance at conception after 10 years with perfect use. 61% chance of conception with typical usage.
Everyone thinks they use contraception correctly. It may be true for anyone reading this forum, but if you're looking at policy, you have to account for typical usage. Education campaigns can move "typical" closer to "perfect" usage, but IUDs and sterilization are pretty much the only types of birth control that offer more than 50% chance of not conceiving in 10 years.
And can we please stop using this CIA slur around here? CIA Memo #1035-960 for those unfamiliar.
Wait, what? Couldn't you interpret that as a new company/startup entering an existing market? "Little economical incentive for Samsung to cannibalize on Apple's market."
The economics of regularly-taken pills seem to disadvantage everybody (except the drug companies.)
Condoms are not just birth control. They are protection from STDs.
Hormonal birth control has a lot of side effects. If a man has certain side effects, sex can simply not happen. Then, what's the point? You can skip the drugs and just not have sex. Done.
Many people are incredibly uncomfortable discussing birth control in "casual sex"/dating type situations. It is far easier to assume it is on her or use a condom.
The heat the testicles method provides no proof it is being practiced and no means to show he is temporarily sterile. Plus another comment in this discussion indicates it was eventually shown to cause permanent damage.
Her giggling comments about sex suggest she has no clue what sex is like for a great many people. Her saying that the withdrawal method is something where he has to do it but she has to not protest because it feels too good -- a lot of women do not have orgasms from penetration. There is enormous amounts of shitty stuff that goes on behind closed doors for a great many couples and this woman sounds like she has no clue what the landscape looks like in that regard.
I am just flabbergasted.
Also, if you need to resort to conspiracy theories to make your point, your point is probably not correct.
"men were interested in male contraception. Why weren’t drug companies interested? And why are they not, still?"
Perhaps because the main point of the article that there is no scientific barrier is not actually correct?
There is a scientific barrier, but I think the article provides good evidence that it wasn't until the past two decades that some of the fundamental research related to that has been done. That is, because of the above-mentioned incentives, no one bothered doing some of the basic science necessary.
There are massive biological science barriers to implementing either of those two options - we essentially got really lucky with the female hormone pill that it works at all. It's a blunt, simple instrument that luckily works really well.
That's not at all true for men - it will take new advances in technology before we identify any suitable targets.
Not quite as lucky as you think. The female reproductive system runs in cycles and is in many different states at different times. We happened to figure out how to use the switches that nature already has. Men, on the other hand, have one state. On, all the time, from puberty till death.
I can't help but think a male contraceptive that is not visually verifiable by the women is not entirely trustworthy. Perhaps in committed relationships, but not for casual sex. I'm sure we're all nice guys here, but men in general are not exactly known for being trustworthy when they're drunk and about to have sex.
Both men and women should have access to contraceptives. Saying that one gender is less trust worthy then another is ridiculous.
What possible incentive is there for a man to impregnate a woman, especially without her desire? I don't think many guys are out there begging to pay child support.
A woman has multiple options to prevent unwanted children (including two after the fact options). She therefore has full control of the child/no-child outcome based upon cost/value for her personal situation. A man has two options to prevent childbirth: a permanent vasectomy or using a condom (these fail and they fail too often in real world settings). A man has limited (or in the case of a condom mishap potentially no) control and potentially if the woman decides it should be so no value whatsoever.
Perhaps your confusion is that I stated "There is no incentive for man to impregnate a woman", and you interpreted that as a universal statement. It was not. It was a direct response to the question for a man's motives in the given scenario, which assumes unwanted pregnancy.
The point I'm trying to make it that the cost is not the only part of the equation and that we must also account for reward and control.
Cost/reward When the female birth control pill became available the cost/value was weighted very heavily against the woman and female control was much more essential. However today the cost/value is more evenly weighted. Back then a man could deny everything and move on leaving the woman with the baby and a ruined life. Now the man can't deny everything and as a minimum will be committed to child maintenance but he may still be denied access to the child. So the situation now is: woman high cost coupled with high reward; man moderate cost and potential reward controlled by the woman.
Control Let's assume that both parties decide for themselves based on their own cost/reward situation. Let's assume that they don't always inform the other of the their decision honestly. Neither is perfect judge of character.
Current situation Scenario 1: Man wants child. Woman does not. Woman controls outcome. No child. Scenario 2: Man doesn't want child. Woman does. Woman controls outcome. Child. Scenario 3: Both want child. Child. Scenario 4: Neither want child. No child.
Situation with male birth control Scenario 1: Man wants child. Woman does not. Woman controls outcome. No child. Scenario 2: Man doesn't want child. Woman does. Man controls outcome. No child. Scenario 3: Both want child. Child. Scenario 4: Neither want child. No child.
P.S. Personally I think that the pill was one of the greatest drivers of women starting to have rights on a par with men (I'm not saying that 2015s western world is perfect gender equality wise but it is a lot better than the 1950s western world was).
P.P.S. I just think that men should if possible have the option to control their reproductive function and that it does not matter whether woman trusts the man -- the man's control does not affect the woman's control (except in the scenario that the woman is a deceptive actor - NB that the inverse situation where the man is a deceptive actor is already under the woman's control).
This is just a fact of biology before you look at any of the social contextual factors.
maybe we can make a website where we "verify" if people are trustworthy before drunken hookups.
tryna take home a dude at the bar? just verifyhim
we can even call it verifyhim. scan his fingerprint on your iphone and/or use your cameraphone to scan his eyes to verify if he was using the man pill last time he hooked up.
That doesn't even mention the privacy issues involved.
Sadly, I am also sure of this.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nearly-half-a-million-new...
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hiv-infections-continue-t...
etc
Wait, there's a standard for that? What is it, ISO-69? Did they also standardize the different sizes and textures?
Regardless, I bet it was an interesting working group.
Uh... how is that different from what we have today? Women take a pill. It's not visually verifiable by men.
Surely you can't object to the idea that men have the same choices about the pill as women do?
Because he implied that a man's word that he's taking a daily contraceptive is less reliable than a woman's.
Jesus, I can only imagine the reaction from HN if you made such a sweeping generalization about how trustworthy women are. How can you verify that a woman is on the pill? Even more, what if she says she has an IUD? How is that verifiable?
Edit: Nevermind, I didn't realize that there was thread that could be found if you were looking for it. My girlfriend had one put in somewhat recently and I never noticed.
As a man I want to take care of my own reproductive function. Women can already take care of theirs and a male pill-equivalent product won't change that.
Research continues, no? Its going to be available sometime soon (3-5 years), even if I have to get pills mailed from India or China every month (or I go on a medical tourism trip to have the Vasalgel procedure done).
If I'm worried about the reversibility, I'd have some semen cryogenically preserved. I'm also not too worried with how quickly protocols are being developed to coax stem cells to grow into reproductive tissue.
Such as?
This is your solution? This isn't marketable because you can't have six-month induction periods with repeated testing for azoospermia that only works on 3/4 of patients in the first place. That's a practical problem, not a political one.