Male birth control study cut short as some participants experience side effects
npr.org
npr.org
> Eight participants had not recovered to meet the criteria of return to fertility after 52 weeks in recovery phase, the last visit according to the study protocol. These participants were followed on a case by case basis until they regained normal sperm counts (n 5, up to 74 wk of recovery) or declined further follow-up (n 2). One volunteer did not recover within 4 years since his last injections.
It could be something that would have happened anyway... right? I am not an expert :P.
That's a really STEEP Price to Pay for an "experiment". Anyone know how much the participants were compensated for taking part in the study? No amount of money would make me do something like this. But that's just me.
"Couples enrolled in the efficacy phase were asked to rely only on these injections for contraception."
And there were four pregnancies during the study (from the abstract of the study):
During the efficacy phase of up to 56 weeks, 4 pregnancies occurred among the partners of the 266 male participants, with the rate of 1.57 per 100 continuing users (95% CI, 0.59 – 4.14)
Q: Anyone know how much the participants were compensated for taking part in the study?
A: To answer you question, I do not know what they were compensated.
Yes they did.
It didn't say his sperm count was actually zero.
Generally IVF is still possible when the male is classified as "infertile" by traditional measures (i.e. extremely low sperm count or dysfunctional sperm).
"It was a pretty big study; they gave shots to 320 men every eight weeks, in different countries around the world."
Every eight weeks, but for how long?
In my experience, it would probably be in the neighborhood of a few thousand dollars, but not much more. For the participants, even that much money to take some pills over the course of say a few months would probably be seen as easy money.
But then again, there's those pesky side effects.
FYI: All the drugs I tested were already FDA approved and were not considered in a "trial" phase.
If you are considering a vasectomy anyway then it's not nearly the same problem.
I know many who would see that as a blessing though: License to have as much unprotected sex as they want without the unfortunate side-effect of an unwanted pregnancy. And they get paid for the experiment in the first place too? Win-win, they would argue.
Right, but I suspect the parent implied that this could be a feature that many would seek out - basically the chemical equivalent of a vasectomy that can't be undone.
Some people, like me, really don't want kids. Taking control of it so that you're not relying on your partner is important as trust (that they haven't forgotten to use contraception or worse - deliberately not take it) isn't a rock-solid security policy. It's also not fair on females to be the only ones in charge of contraception for bare-skin sex.
Is the existence of injectable insulin scary just because someone could kill someone just by injecting them with it?
1975 isn't that long ago. If this technology is cheap and available, it will be abused.
What you're really trying to do is make out that somehow sterilisation is a special case of something with a potential negative use case, where if they can easily be used, they will be, without arguing why it's different from all the other things that meet that criteria.
That does not address jamesrcole's argument. He's not saying "it was always possible, therefore being easier is no different".
He's pointing out that there are worse bad things that are just as easy to do, yet they aren't considered scary.
You can't make an argument that the ease matters, because he's asking about things that are equally easy if not easier. Why is easy availability of such a drug different from easy availability of the knife/car/etc.?
You should be focused on access, control and any inappropriate uses. Not on whether the things being used exist or not.
One thing I've learned as I've collected laps-around-the-sun is that Present Me is a poor judge of what Future Me wants.
I find it much more interesting to ask why somebody wants no kids. That gives much more insight into the person's mind than when you try to persuade them with your own experiences and produces much better followup talk opportunities.
Anyway, I'm curious what you think it might be evolutionary advantageous. On the face of it, if others have less kids, that would seem advantageous to your own kids.
Well if you can't see it, that surely must mean nobody can, right?
Sure, as a side effect, it's unfortunate, but if a pill were available that was designed for this effect it would be a blessing.
Along the same lines, I know several people who have had knee replacement surgery and they all said it was the most painful thing ever. All of them though, are very happy reaping the benefits of that years later. It was only a few months after saying that if he knew it would hurt that much that he wouldn't have had it done that an 80yr old friend of mine was proudly showing me how he could jump down some steps!
My vasectomy was not painful at all. You do get a needle into your scrotum to inject the anaesthetic, and that is not a nice feeling at all. But it's over in two seconds. You don't feel the rest, because, you know, modern medicine.
What part do you think is painful?
For me the only major downside was the cost. If I ever decide I want children, I guess I'll have to adopt.
He said he didn't use to, but then he had a vasectomy himself.
It takes 20 minutes and you walk out. You'll feel not a thing (you might feel the injections of anesthetics). You 'recover' over a week of mostly nothing. I was riding my bike the day after the procedure.
You don't see a change, you don't feel a change and it is completely painless. Ignoring myself I've talked to a good number of friends who've done the same thing, said the same thing. I haven't heard of one single person that had a vasectomy and complained about pain in any way or form.
Honestly, I wonder why people would even wish for a 'chemical castration' all over this thread. Maybe your first line is something widely 'well known' and often repeated?
> I was riding my bike the day after the procedure.
Think of it as someone saying their children turned out fine without immunizations. Your words can become incredibly dangerous once you begin questioning doctors if you are not trained or have added knowledge in the area of specialty.
I asked my doctor if there's _anything_ I shouldn't do and he said 'No'. He told me an anecdote about a patient of his that HAD a bit of pain after flying for most of a day directly after the procedure (being cramped being probably a reason for that), but he explicitly said that there is no reason to hold back. "Be reasonable, be sensible".
But I honestly don't even know what drove you to comment here. I never said 'Ride a bike on the next day' nor am I a doctor or even TRIED to give out medical advice. Instead I explicitly called out (and tried to dispell) the 'OMG it is so painful' FUD.
Your comment is a) irrelevant (I don't give medical advice) and b) assuming things that are completely unrooted in reality and wrong.
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/contraception-guide/Pages/vasec...
Honestly though? I totally didn't plan for that. I planned the trip, planned the operation. The operation's date was changed by my doctor, I didn't cancel the trip and just .. went along, because I felt fine.
Again: My doctor didn't list any limitations, even when I explicitly asked about it. But I certainly don't claim that people should jump on a saddle as soon as they've left the room. I merely pointed out what I happened to do on the next day to mock the 'the pain is unbearable' FUD.
Feel free to rest for a week. As far as I'm concerned and as far as I'm aware after talking to people that decided to take this step: There's no need to. There's no pain. A feeling ob numbness maybe (think strained ankle, but a week later) and obviously you have cuts that you don't want to strain.
But I had a lot of accidents with a razor or a kitchen knife (mind you, we're talking "face" and "fingers" now, right?) that were far worse than the vasectomy.
Regardless of what one feels about children, I'm kind of shocked anyone could see accidental sterilisation as a benefit of any kind.
If permanent inability to produce offspring is what you want, there's always the snip. Of course, you'd still be subject to the risk of STDs if frequent change of partners is what you desire.
I know plenty of heterosexual men who would see this as a license to have unprotected sex with as many women as possible and never be burdened by the responsibility of a child.
I'm not saying I agree with this attitude (furthest from it, actually), but "you'll never have kids" probably won't come to them as a negative.
(I'm not hetero, for what it's worth.)
Obviously these men signed up for an experimental protocol and presumably were made well aware of the risks. Nonetheless dismissing this as possibly "win-win" is spectacularly tone-deaf at best.
Is it somehow hard to understand the statement that some men (not all men) would be OK with the outcome? I for one am never going to have biological children, so I don't particularly care whether I'm sterile or not.
The fact that there may be men in the first group is totally irrelevant to the experience of the second group.
We don't know the test subjects or their life goals - I know that I want kids someday, but I also know that I don't want them now.
If I underwent a birth control procedure found out due to an error I couldn't have kids ever, I'd be pretty devastated.
This was a clinical trial, not a procedure. They don't just spring trials on you with no warning.
Also, you definitely can have kids: foster or adopt. :)
So I'm guessing they're not too happy with permanent infertility.
The many people you know that would love to be permanently infertile can get what they want in a matter of minutes, in a proven/well-known way.
Are you sure about that? As far as I know nearly all urologists in the US will refuse to perform a vasectomy on a childless man, especially if they're in their 20s and/or unmarried.
But the doctor didn't ask about any of this (he obviously knew my age). I just had to sign that I was lectured about the potential risks and consequences - similar to the preparations for any medical operation really.
And I had to agree on the price, since this (obviously?) isn't covered by basic health care here.. ;)
So.. No idea. My doctor didn't know about my marriage or kids though.
The shot's side effects sound significantly more humane.
If you really want solid male birth control with no side effects, bank your gametes for $50/mo and get your vas deferens snipped.
Female birth control may not cause permanent lack of fertility, but it can cause cancer. Breast cancer. Cervical cancer. Liver cancer.
Do you have some idea of the likelihood here? Are we talking a 10% chance of cancer or a 0.001% chance?
The whole "it can have X side effect" is the same argument anti-vaccine people use without respect to any sort of cost benefit risk analysis.
This study was presenting at around 20% (IIRC, I was reading the outrage version of this stuff a few days ago)
It is also important to note that this is by no means the end of the drug. The people involved consider this to be a very promising study and are going to continue working on it.
It wasn't stopped early "as a failure" to be shelved and never looked at again. It was stopped early because they knew enough about the upside and didn't have to continue on the down.
The next rounds of trials will likely try to alleviate the side effects while preserving the MOA (mechanism of action)
The VOX article was a reasonable balance to the "men are selfish pigs who can't handle side effects" version of this article. http://www.vox.com/2016/11/2/13494126/male-birth-control-stu...
So can dental fillings, breast implants, and artificial sweeteners.
Like female birth control though, most people agree that the risk for developing cancer associated with the activity is well worth the benefits. Saying "boo fucking hoo" about someone who can never reproduce again is pretty cold-hearted, in my opinion.
[1]: https://www.parsemusfoundation.org/projects/vasalgel/vasalge...
The material was discovered and synthesized in India at IIT by a Indian person. The largest clinical trial on Vasalgel - also in India.
Media coverage doesn't happen organically. In almost all cases it is a two way street, with networks and personal contacts creating the bridge. The researchers in India and the cultural epicenters of the Western media establishment are about as distant as two nodes can be. Discovery and contact between the two parties is probably very hard.
On the other hand if they tied it to a pre-dominant narrative in Western media about India - increasing sexual freedoms or a pathway to population management - and worked with the non-profit institutions that connect back to the nodes of cultural influence in the Western world, they would probably get a decent of amount of earned media coverage.
Lack of media coverage doesn't mean no one is paying attention.
Of course the criteria are likely to preclude a cancer treatment!
Because how are pharmaceutical companies going to make billions from selling $0.10 of chemicals?
Even if they could patent a formulation, someone else can always jump in with a slightly different formulation at half the price.
How much do you think the raw inputs for Cialis are?
Gross margins at the aggregate level are around 80% for this stuff. If they are practicing value based costing they could simply just undercut surgical vasectomies slightly- I'm sure every man out there would choose an outpatient injection that is reversible vs a surgical operation.
I'm eagerly awaiting it getting to the market but don't buy that as an explanation
of course the health industry is bored by non-ingestible medical solutions as they don't conform to subscription pricing
> Nearly a quarter of participants experienced pain at the injection site, nearly half got acne, more than 20 percent had a mood disorder, 38 percent experienced an increased sexual drive, and 15 percent reported muscle pain. Other, rarer side effects included testicular pain, night sweats, and confusion. One study participant died by suicide, though the researchers determined it wasn’t related to the birth control. Twenty men dropped out of the study because of the side effects.
[1] http://www.vox.com/2016/11/2/13494126/male-birth-control-stu...
1) Bag over the dick - makes sex less enjoyable
2) Fully trust your partner to not "forget" to take her birthcontrol or lie about being on it in the first place.
3) Abstinence.
I'm not suggesting all women or even a significant percentage of women are evil liars. However, there have been many studies & surveys that have indicated nearly half of all women are willing to lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, regardless of their partners wishes, and fully half have said that if they became pregnant by another man but wanted to stay with their partner, they would lie about the baby’s real father.
I'd much rather know for sure by taking personal ownership of birth control myself.
I don't know a single woman who has been happy on a single form of BC for a long time. My fiancee was on the implant until she started bleeding and didn't stop for five months.
Genital bleeding is really a very gender specific thing. Women already bleed from their genitals the issue is that it is now prolonged. If a man started bleeding from the penis that'd probably be a fairly serious condition lol. I get your point though. That said discomfort is a perfectly reasonable trade to avoid 18+ years of responsibility and a financial cost currently estimated at $250K per child (not including opportunity cost mind you)
Of course in terms of discomfort, trauma, having your life turned upsidedown, etc you certainly can't compare paying alimony to having to give birth to a child.
I don't understand why women would want to keep a child on such an illegitimate basis (without the father's consent) but it does/can happen and is horrifying. Men have not right to choose, unlike women, which makes some sense, but can put you in a pretty nasty pickle.
For one thing, not all women would even consider abortion of pregnancy as an option, due to personal beliefs. There’s also emotional impact of such decision to consider.
The point was not to put absolute values on the risk of unprotected sex for either gender. I’ve only tried to illustrate that men have, just as women, enough of an incentive to consider protection a very serious matter.
Under modern paternal support laws, I would say the unfairness of biological burden of pregnancy has evened out. So it should be a non-complaint. Especially, since abortion decision is exclusive to the woman.
The social burden hasn't (the stigma of unwed motherhood remains; there's no significant stigma to unwed fatherhood).
And you're completely ignoring the medical burden of pregnancy, which STILL includes risk of death. There's the physical pain of childbirth and major tearing of the flesh of one's genitals (and often added to that, a major abdominal surgery).
And pregnancy often brings major changes to the body that linger for the rest of the woman's life - from swollen feet to incontinence.
So men (those who don't discover that most states have a way for men to opt out of legal responsibility early in the pregnancy if they also relinquish all parental rights) now actually take on some responsibility for a pregnancy they participated in causing. Good. But don't think for a moment that the burden is now equal.
If Elon Musk gave me a free ride on a rocket ship, I know the risks and I can refuse - I don't have to complain about how life is so unfair because the rocket ride could kill me.
I didn't say that. But the medical and social burden though real, are not things that should be tackled with policies to prevent.
Medical burden is a law of nature. Neither of those are factors that should be neutralized.(Think surgical castration of women at puberty.. bad idea.)
Social burden is there for a reason and society(and culture) will evolve if the reasons die out.
So overall, complaining about burden of reproductive control is simply whining and reinforces the "women are whiners" cliche.
E.g.:
> studies with the Mirena IUD the rate of acne is 6.8%." Remember that in the study, nearly half of the men got acne.
I don't believe what I'm reading. Give up your life as you know it or live with the guilt of "not being there", + the social and financial stigma that comes with it?
No risks? You must be joking.
Since the subjects here are otherwise healthy men, who have other options for avoiding pregnancy, the DSMB should be fairly risk adverse and willing to kill the trial (as happened here). If, on the other hand, the trial were testing a new kind of anti-cancer therapy on patients with terminal cancer, the Board might be willing to tolerate a few more adverse events because the pay-off s are much higher.
The article seems to be saying, in a ham-fisted way, that the DSMB would have tolerated slightly more risk to women because pregnancy also carries its own risks.
The biological consequences, on the other hand, are certain and universal.
I've been reading about steroids and from what I understand different esters have different half life/release. Still every side effect described is usually associated with testosterone.
As for aggression, from what I've seen there is no direct relation in most cases but it can affect some (just like not everyone gets acne or hair loss, etc)
The 1000mg every 8 weeks is pretty much for marketing and sales, because having to get an injection every 2 months is already a turn off for their consumer base let alone get an injection more frequent than that.
There are a lot of confounding variables when you're looking at a prison population.
I'm still not sure if you're serious with your comment about decreasing women's rights or if this is possibly the greatest troll comment in history.
You compare 0.35 mg norethisterone to 200 mg norethisterone enanthate used in the study. The normal dose for women of norethisterone enanthate injection is 200 mg every 8 weeks. The same is true of the testosterone undecanoate used in the study. One injection is released over weeks, not all at once. You mention hypogonadism. In an early study of testosterone decanoate for hypergonadism, they used (almost) exactly the same dose, 1000 mg every 6-9 weeks.
It does seem like the testosterone may have been too much, based on the side effects listed, but you shouldn't come on HN and start posting diatribes when you aren't sure what you're talking about. And if you were sure, well, that's another problem.
When I'm not programming, my hobby is bodybuilding. To make it as a bodybuilder, you have to use steroids. With a sample size of ~30 (fellow lifters and me), I can tell you that more testosterone makes you calmer, leaner, and bigger. My stress and anxiety on steroid cycles vanishes and all that's left is confidence, even with powerful steroids like trenbolone.
This study was designed by some of the most incompetent people around. Athletes inject long esters every 3-5 days and these guys were doing a shot every 8 weeks. Athletes take additional drugs to control the conversion of testosterone into estrogen (the hormone behind acne and mood swings). If I had designed this protocol, it would've looked like standard Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) plus an injection of nandrolone decanoate every week (which is great because it heals your joints). Of course, good luck selling bi-weekly injections.
For decades we shouted about reefer madness from the rooftops, arrested millions of people and threw them in jail, and expanded corrupt government agencies because marijuana was "dangerous". It seems like we're learning our lesson on that front and I hope we get our act together when it comes to hormones.
What does it even mean to "make it" in something you do as a hobby? If you're willing to risk your health to play competitive games, go ahead, but to say you "have to" sounds like you're rationalizing a bit.
Does this not disqualify you? Or is everyone just cheating like in cycling?
In software, we say: good, fast, cheap; pick two. In bodybuilding: big, lean, natural; pick two.
You can have a lot of mass and if you carry extra fat, or you can be shredded to the bone and carry a lot less lean mass. Naturally, the lower fat reserves run, the higher the chance that catabolic hormones break down lean mass. If you want to be big, lean, and win shows, you need to take the growth and steroid hormones to flip some bits on the config files in your muscular/adipose tissue to allow it.
Your DNA is the software for your body. Hormones bind to receptors on cells, get transported into the cell, bind to internal receptors, and then this complete structure moves into the nucleus where it transcribes certain DNA sequences into RNA chains that will be fed through ribosomes to produce proteins (your hardware).
Steroids/hormones (everything from vitamin D to testosterone) is the body's mechanism of editing /etc/* and calling kill -HUP on select daemons. Steroids evolved as the process for doing this because it's biologically impractical to grow a nerve ending to every single cell in the body.
Article: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/
Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2602785
It's a matter of degrees.
The study was terminated after serious safety concerns. Over half of participants reported adverse effects.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11934396
That post was 137 days ago was... June 19, 2016. I had verified on about May 15, 2016 that I was azoospermic, and stopped the aggressive heat treatments on that date. I had used a variety of testicle-heating interventions for about 4 months. My sperm were completely gone for 2 months, then slowly started to return.
I intend to get a professional sperm analysis at the six month mark (November 15th), then redo the heat protocol, collecting more data this time... I suppose I need some better slides.
would be very interested to discuss more, send a mail if you like hn(a)tokiop(dot)com
not yet... I'll have to figure something out I guess.
> Have you developed a technique to evaluate your spermcount yourself ?
there's a new centrifugal sperm count device... ahh, here: https://trakfertility.com/shop/trak-male-fertility-testing-s... (oh my, those 'refills' are expensive...) Thanks for the jogging my memory about that.
This device is new to the market - it launched some time this fall, iirc. I bought a microscope: "yup, no sperm".
I'll send you an email tomorrow.
I am considering using a microscope too, interesting to know that the difference is clearly visible. Do you use any coloring ?
Some lucky folks can take hormones with very little effects. I (F) have had very negative experiences with hormonal birth control, I'd be bummed for anyone else to go through it.
There aren't any actual 'hormones' in birth control. These drugs are supposedly hormone-analogues, but they are only partial replacements for genuine ("bio-identical") hormones.
This assumes that healthy men don't give damn. Which, I don't think is entirely true.
They're also no worse than the side effects (from depression severe enough to cause suicide to life-threatening complications and yes, permanent infertility) that women on various forms of birth control have put up with for the past several decades. And continue to endure.
And even in studies not about birth control, women's medical complaints and concerns about side effects have been shown to be taken less seriously by medical professionals than men's similar concerns.
Your sister, girlfriend, date. That woman you saw on line at Starbucks. They may not all be experiencing those side effects (neither did all the men in the study). But they're all risking a LOT to avoid pregnancy. Today. Right this moment.
Ask yourself why those side effects and risks are OK for them to bear but not for you. Ask where the research is on female birth control without those risks.
I'm not saying this study should necessarily have continued. Just that there's very good reason for the bitterness.
If you want to understand the female perspective on this news, try the below opinion piece:
It will take time to happen but it is worth fighting for it now.
Men seem to ignore that.
> Birth control can have non-contraceptive benefits as well, so plenty of people use it regardless of their level of sexual activity or pregnancy risk. For example, my dermatologist prescribed birth control pills when I was a teenager to help clear up my torturous pizza face – the pregnancy prevention part was a total bonus when I became sexually active later. Other methods, like the hormonal IUD, can reduce and sometimes even stop menstrual bleeding and/or cramps, a side effect that lots of folks appreciate.
I understand that female birth control is not without side effects - even relatively severe ones. But the current narrative that men are being wimps about this is insulting. These side effects would end up in tens of thousands of people dying.
Also, if the researchers wanted people to take the announcement seriously without women whining about what we put up with for birth control, they should have left stuff like acne and mood swings out of the explanation for stopping the research, FFS.
(Which is how my math worked out - I'm not sure where your 50,000 number of successful suicides came from. The study had 320 participants with one suicide attempt. But, again, this sort of multiplication from small sample sizes to large sample sizes is not actually predictive, so it's kinda moot.)
> "An attempted suicide is not really an attempt at suicide in about 95 percent of cases. It is a different phenomenon. It's most often an effort to bring someone's attention, dramatically, to a problem that the individual feels needs to be solved. Suicide contains a solution in itself," he says.
> In attempted suicide, both men and women tend to use methods that allow for second thoughts or rescue. Murphy says that when people intend to survive, they choose a slowly effective, or ineffective, means such as an overdose of sleeping pills. That contrasts to the all-or-nothing means like gunshots or hanging used by actual suicides.
Men truly want to kill themselves far more than women, and your rationalizing is sexist nonsense.
I keep seeing this kind of thing spouted and it's ridiculous. No woman has to take birth control. They do it because they want sex without any risks. If a women gets depression from it then she should stop taking it.
Keep in mind, only 20 of 320 dropped out of this study. That means almost 94% of the participants complete it. The percentage who dropped out due to mood swings appears to be somewhere between 2%-4% (this wasn't entirely clear from the write up, but either way, it's a small percentage). And according to the study, over 75% of the participants said that they would be interested in continuing to take this drug as birth control. Lastly, it sounds like the research study was somewhat successful. This is an initial trial, and it appears to be effective. It probably makes sense to halt the trial at this point, refine, try to increase effectiveness, try to decrease side effects, and try another round.
It's a drug trial. This is a good thing. While I can understand the bitterness you've described, I really don't think this study, or the men who participated in it, are even remotely appropriate targets for it.
To answer your question, "Ask yourself why those side effects and risks are OK for them to bear but not for you"? From what I've read, it sounds like the majority of men who participated in this study absolutely are willing to tolerate the side effects and take those risks!
Lastly, you mentioned those women we see in line at starbucks "are all risking a LOT to avoid pregnancy". I don't mean to take your statement too literally, but do women never quit their birth control due to side effects, or in such low numbers that they are essential zero? Keep in mind, it was only 2-4% of men who quit due to mood swings, and 6.25% overall, and this was for an experimental trial.
I found the media reaction to this study to be pretty cringe worthy. That story I just describe was converted into some variant of "birth control study terminated because men can't handle the side effects".
But yes, women do quit or change methods because they can't stand the symptoms. I quit the pill because of depression, weight gain, and loss of libido. A friend had a non-hormonal IUD removed because it escalated her monthly menstruation to the level of hemorrhage. I know one who avoids the pill because of blood pressure and cancer risks. I know others who simply endure mood swings, weight gain, etc because they don't want to get pregnant and their boyfriends or husbands loathe condoms.
There's a lot to be fixed on both sides. I think some cultural change is in order. I hope we're able to develop a version of male birth control that doesn't have severe side effects. And I wish someone would invest in research into birth control for women that is safer than what we now have too.
They're also no worse than the side effects (from depression severe enough to cause suicide to life-threatening complications and yes, permanent infertility) that women on various forms of birth control have put up with for the past several decades. And continue to endure.
Not true at all, literally completely false.
I'm not saying this study should necessarily have continued. Just that there's very good reason for the bitterness. If you want to understand the female perspective on this news, try the below opinion piece:
There is no good reason for the bitterness, frankly. It's just people complaining, instead of actually solving any problems. A classic trait of modern third wave feminism. These pills give women huge control over their bodies and they think men want to poison them or force it on them or something...
As far as I know scientists and researchers are free to research whatever topics they want. And similarly, there are physical means of birth control for which women do not need to take the pill. It's a choice.
And regarding the permanent infertility effect specifically, I seriously doubt the rate is anywhere approaching 1 in 320 at four years of 1 in 40 (8/320) after one year.
>There's been a lot of eye rolling on the Internet about these side effects, because women have been experiencing things like mood swings and weight gain for decades with hormonal birth control.
Short version: The study is interesting but the early termination is largely ethics review working as intended and does not mean that all research into this method is terminated or that the results weren't promising.
Some methods are ongoing maintenance with side effects, some are permanent with varying short-term side effects.
Someone sane pointed out that the problem isn't the men in the study being wimps. Or that frankly there isn't any good drug target for male hormonal birth control. But that vasectomy rates are much lower than they should be. Because if you want something cheap, extremely safe and reliable, and you don't mind it being permanent, vasectomies are what you want.
So they're also adding other drugs to try and compensate for those. And of course that doesn't work very well.
The biggest problem is that there is a lot of taboo with testosterone treatments and finding a doctor that keeps up to date with the research is incredibly difficult depending on where you are located.
I am not including my judgement, as I do not have any, well, at least not a well reasoned one.
Disclaimer: I am man.
I try to list some of the possible fears related to this kind of drugs. Then it would be possible to discuss these.
1) Loosing control of emotions.
2) Permanent infertility.
3) Impotence (temporal or permanent).
4) Unknown risks.
Now these are simple straightforward issues that possibly could be resolved with additional research.
What will remain are more subtle issues. Nonetheless these could considerably affect the fabric of our society.
For example consider the situation where most women are fertile, most of the men have disabled themselves, some of men have kept themselves fertile.
Of note, 75% of the trial participants reported that they would have continued with this treatment if it were available, even after being informed that it was being terminated due to safety concerns, and the (male) study participants reported being more satisfied with the treatment than their (female) partners did.
Conversely, the adverse events extremely high rates of changed (mostly increased) libido, mood disorders, and pain (both at the injection site and elsewhere); and out of 320 trial participants there were two attempted suicides (one successful -- which the researchers attributed to academic pressure, but suicides rarely have a just a single cause). If the female birth control pill had the same safety profile, it would be the leading cause of death in 20-45 year old women.
Out of curiosity, is this taking into account that the base rate for male suicide in the US is normally ~3.5x higher than for female suicide? Seems like you'd want to calculate a relative risk delta, rather than comparing the male delta to the female base rate.
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa-cause-of-death-by-age...
I understand the point you're making, but your parent poster's reasoning sounds eminently reasonable to me.
The thing for men only to address a male problem exacerbates men's tendency to kill themselves?
"Yeah, but men kill themselves more often anyway" seems like the less reasonable argument.
I might be looking from a more... Emotionally involved perspective?
But yes, depression is a common side effect of female hormonal birth control too. Women who start the pill are twice as likely to subsequently start taking antidepressants as those who aren't on the pill.
> Male Birth Control Study Killed After Men Complain About Side Effects
because... a man literally killing himself is complaining.
edit: "original" meaning TFA. the submission title here was a slight improvement, something like "Male Birth Control Study Ended Due To Side Effects"
If the pill had any sort of side effects like what these drugs had, they'd be the leading cause of death for women 20-45. But no, it's "weak willed men". meh.
And even after the study was cancelled due to safety, 75% of the men wanted to continue taking it. I guess its worth personal safety and health versus the risk of having a pregnancy with a woman when you don't want one.
It's a pity because some years ago NPR used to be a balanced and excellent source of news.
How did you calculate this (genuinely curious, I need some explanation for idiots who're misquoting this trial as "men are wimps")?
Given that uncertainty concluding the study to work on the drug before trialling it again makes a lot of sense.
Most likely the other side effects where the issue.
For example, Isotretinoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotretinoin (known as Accutane/Roaccutane and by other names) is also associated with depression and suicidal behavior. It's still a popular drug used to treat acne, even though that is not a particulary dangerous disease.
I don't know anything about how the pharma industry works, but I'd guess they'll restart the trial, taking depression into account and watching for signs among the participants. And maybe with a lower dosage?
I expected better from NPR. At least Cosmo (which also editorialized the headline), made an effort to report the actual numbers.
Here's the report from cosmo "http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/a8038748/male-bir...
(along with the helpful sub-tag, "Welcome to the club, dudes. Also: WOMAN UP.", along with a weepy picture from Dawson's Creek).
Welcome to the club, dudes. Also: WOMAN UP.
"From the study: "Of these 20, 6 men discontinued only for changes in mood and 6 men discontinued for the following single reasons: acne, pain or panic at first injections, palpitations, hypertension, and erectile dysfunction." The other eight men dropped out because of mood changes. "
I can't quite tell from this if it's 6, 8, or 14 men who dropped out due to mood changes. Overall, 20/320 dropped out of the study, 6.25%. I did a bit of research and found that median attrition rate for drug studies is 7%, but median isn't especially helpful since effects can vary.
The percentage who dropped out due to mood changes are (it's hard to tell from this well written article) 6/320, 8/320, or 14/320, so somewhere between 1.8%-4.3%.
This becomes the headline "Men Quit Birth Control Study". That's one of the charitable headlines, honestly. The fact that it morphed into this headline, to me, kind of is the story here.
I do think there's clearly a problem with suicide, especially among men, and I do think this is because, to some extent, men are particularly concerned about appearing weak and failing to get help. So a round of mockery about this is also painful to see.
I know this is going to sound snarky, but I really am genuinely asking: why? They have a history of very blatantly pushing their political agenda, most people seem to acknowledge that NPR is pretty left leaning. This doesn't seem out of place for them at all.