Birth control pill for men could begin human trials later this year | Hacker News Reader

Birth control pill for men could begin human trials later this year

popsci.com

73 pointstosh134 comments

Is there any reason that the medical industry is pushing medicinal therapies to prevent pregnancy when a very promising procedure called vasalgel is just hanging on the vine? It is 1) highly effective, 2) non-hormonal/non-medicinal just a minor injection into the vas deferens 3) long lasting and reversible 4) dirt cheap.

It's mind boggling how this has been able to progress beyond animal trials even though it's performed so well and been studied for over a decade. I've been waiting for any sign of progress but it's glacial. This could really improve the lives of men and their partners. Women wouldn't need the pill, which so many of the women I know hate and as a one time procedure is much more error free.

https://www.revolutioncontraceptives.com/vasalgel

I came here to post the same thing. I don't understand what's holding vasalgel from becoming ubiquitous and approved by various medical institutions out there. It's been in the works for what feels like forever.

Profitability?

A cheap one time procedure (ie. vasalgel) is far less lucrative than a pill that need to be bought repeatedly.

This has been my assumption as well. You'd think this would be a project the Gates foundation would jump on though

Is the gates foundation known for investing in things that don’t drive revenue for them?

Are they known for the opposite?

“The No. 1 objective is preservation of capital,”

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2021/6/21/bill-and-mel...

Perhaps the marketing is good

That's typical for foundations that operate along the lines of an endowment. The idea is that they want to be able to continue the sustain and grow their philanthropy forever and they can't do that if they run out of money.

They invest in things that drive revenue for them. Including Crispr, WHO, farm land, fake meat, vaccines, etc.

It's a non-profit set up to spend their fortune on charity...

> reversible

But requires a visit to the doctor. While a pill can simply be stopped at any time to achieve a pregnancy.

In my opinion, the idea of eating a "magic pills" is easier to swallow than the idea of "injecting cement into a pipe". One adds to your body, the other modifies it (if ever slihtly).

I know several women who have used IUDs or implanted birth control. Vasalgel is like an IUD except its not a painful procedure. If a man wants to take a pill that tampers with his bodies normal biological functions go ahead, but I'd prefer a non painful approach that I can use for 5 years without thinking about it and get it set up and removed in maybe 2 hours total?

Some men prefer to take responsibility of their own biology, if nothing else, to reduce risk of an accidental lifetime of child support.

That's not a response to the parent. Using the gel would still be "taking responsibility of their own biology"

Especially since hormones control a ton of different bodily functions, and tampering with them invites a load of physiological and psychological side effects, while it's easier to understand the effects of a mechanical, albeit crude, approach like this gel.

I legitimately think Vasalgel will make history as one of the greatest advancements in human history, if it proves to be what it claims. It effectively provides men with an "on/off" switch for sperm production, without doing weird things to your hormones, without the trouble of remembering to take a pill.

I too am curious why research/development on it seems to have slowed. I wonder if it's possible to make a donation.

As a gay man, it's always a lot of fun to watch discussions on birth control for men. I personally have my money on that if/when they do launch for the public, they will be too expensive/difficult to get for basically forever, and women will continue to have to bear the cost of preventing pregnancies. "Men using birth control" would become the "hippie" thing to do that you will only see people in LA/NY do.

I am very glad this exists, though, and I hope I'm wrong.

Maybe, it’s a much harder job to produce male birth control for men owing to having much more reproductive material.

I think the hippy option currently is getting the snip “for the sake of the planet”

> "Men using birth control" would become the "hippie" thing to do that you will only see people in LA/NY do.

Assuming it's relatively safe, reliable, and affordable, and especially if it's significantly better in any of those areas to the existing options for women, then it seems like a no-brainer for long-term monogamous heterosexual relationships.

I think this is probably well correlated to a man's socioeconomic status.

Lots of guys have gotten vasectomies for decades, and I don't see a lot of correlation between making that choice and being a "hippie", in my family & friends circles.

Straight man here. I have a solution to all this and it's the same solution many (though my understanding not all) gay men practice: anal sex.

It's all my wife and I do together. No pill needed! (Practice safe sex.)

Still not 100% proof. Things such as internal fissures and external trickles can still cause pregnancies. Granted, the risks are very low.

To be fair, birth control isn’t 100% either.

Wait, women can get pregnant through internal fissures of the intestines?

Not exactly the same, but in the 80s a woman without a vagina got pregnant by a stab in the abdomen shortly after having oral sex with her boyfriend.

IMO that’s a similar tradeoff as condoms, though probably more cost-effective.

Strictly by pregnancy risk, I believe anal sex is far less likely to result in pregnancy than condom use. And that's only compared to perfect condom use every time, which is not what I'd consider realistic.

I’m not talking about pregnancy risk, which IMO is acceptably low in either case.

“Perfect condom use every time” is unrealistic on a population level, but I wonder how much of that generality is a hedge against the general stupidity and incompetence of large parts of the population. It’s probably more realistic for the type of people who can reliably pull off your technique.

I think you are incredibly out of touch with reality. It is men that generally worry about unwanted pregnancies. If there was an on/off switch, almost all men would set it to 'off' and it'd quickly turn into women using any techniques available to get them to put it into the 'on' position.

As another gay man, I cannot help but compare the hypothetical case of a male birth control pill and the fast expansion of PrEP.

Extrapolating from that I would guess that saving unwanted pregnancies will make most governments and healthcare systems give male birth control for very cheap, which will cause an increase in STDs and a _big_ decrease in unwanted pregnancies.

Up until now, all/most male birth control pills have centered around exogenous testosterone + progesterone/something else. Ignoring the other compound, exogenous testosterone supplementation would lead to all sorts of potential abuse since it's an anabolic steroid. There's also the fact that any oral formulation of testosterone (see dianabol for example) is extremely toxic on the liver, and leads to much higher levels of estradiol (which has its own side effects) due to homeostasis. The secondary compounds also have their own significant side effects, to the point where it really makes me wonder how bad hormonal birth control can be for women.

So this compound blocking vitamin A is a pretty novel approach.

The problem with male birth control pills is that it's the women who bear the bulk of the risk/responsibility when it comes to pregnancy. If a woman says "trust me, i'm on the pill" and lies -- they're the ones that get pregnant and likely get stuck raising the kid. Sure the father might be on the hook financially, but if the woman lied about their birth control and went forward with the pregnancy anyway it's not absurd to imagine the father bailing on the situation.

Flipped around the other way, if a man says "trust me, i'm on the pill", now a woman has to trust this man even though they're the one's at risk of getting pregnant. What's worse is that the woman can't easily verify if they did in fact take a pill. At least with a condom you can be check that it's being used properly..

This asymmetric risk profile makes me think think that male birth control pills won't work outside of trusting long-term relationships, and then there's better options than a chemical pill for those situations already.

what better options do you mean?

A financial medallion

for long-term birth control a copper (non-hormonal) IUD might be a better option. You don't have to remember to take pills, and it's less chemically disruptive to the body. Or better yet a vasectomy if you never want kids.

total anecdotal: a couple years ago, I went to a gender reveal party. The wife had IUD, but it was not properly put, iirc. Then talking to another couple there, they were expecting a baby. Guess what was the birth control of choice?

In the end, all methods can fail. Combining male + female controls is the best, since both would have to fail for a pregnancy to happen.

Men can only "bail on the situation" when they don't have much to lose. Any man with a reliable job and good salary is very vulnerable to having wages garnished.

Which is sad. Should be treated like sexual assault

How would that help the child?

The state should pay the child support equivalent to help the child in a case like this.

With whose taxes, exactly?

I don't know, maybe the military could spare 0.1% of its hundreds of billions. Why do taxes become a problem when someone proposes using them for something practical that benefits society, rather than making Boeing richer?

I hate this mentality. If the guy should be on the hook it should depend on the circumstances in my opinion. However, that is not the current case.

Yes, I'm a strong believer in personal responsibility, and as a corollary, I believe that men should take responsibility for their effluvia. It takes two to make a child, and the kid cannot be responsible before adulthood. Don't want a baby? Wrap it up, don't have unprotected sex, or coming soon, take a pill.

It's not common, but there are cases like this:

Here a women took a use condom form the trash to get pregnate. https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2003_07_thu_01.shtml

Women Forged a signature of her ex-husband at an IVF clinic that had his sperm, and he still had to pay child support. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8544783/Woman-had-tw...

There are numerous other cases like this, not common but it does happen. Lying about birth control is similar, but harder to prove, but even in these blatant examples men are still forced to pay child support. You can't argue this is even just?

Edit: also looking there are some cases just as blatant as those two that have happened in the US. Not common, but it does happen. This is why I think child support should take into account the circumstances. Edges cases are always a thing in real life. A hard rule of a man must always pay child support is not good public policy and unjust to those who are victims of such things.

While lying about birth control is more murky it still should not be something we condone, and if there is proof of it and not some she said he said battle I think family courts should to take that into account.

There also cases of sperm donors ending up on the hook, for child support, not common if the clinic is doing things correctly, but it does happen.

There also cases of underage boys who end up on the hook for child support, despite what happened being statutory rape. This is insane. For example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statut...

Two anecdotes pales in comparison to the frequency of deadbeats: less than half of custodial parents* receive the full amount, and almost a third never receive a payment.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018/cb18-tps...

But ultimately, the child is the most vulnerable party in question. Yes, our legal system is geared to protect them first. It's not the best outcome for either parent. But the kid comes first, because the kid is the most vulnerable and has the greatest potential for societal harm/benefit.

Those cases are bad, yes. Are they statistically significant? Citation please. Men lie about having had vasectomies, too, to have unprotected sex, resulting in unwanted pregnancies. Frequently? I don't know. Guys sneaking their condom off is pretty frequent in my experience, though.

* note the gender neutral term. There are quite a few deadbeat moms too. Single dads need child support too.

I saying this happens and courts need to have legal discretion to handle the circumstances of the case. In cases like this it's insane a man should have to have shoulder responsibility. Discretion is important for edge cases. Further putting a the child above all else and causing unjust harm to people is wrong, and should not something we want courts doing. They should ensure things are just. Statistically significance should not matter this is matter of injustice in these cases.

I am not arguing against going after child support from dead beats. Although, the punishments some times go to far. Taking a driver license away for example and then they can't get a job/lose it ect... and even at times putting them in jail and forcing them to pay while in jail while unable to work makes it even worse. These are different issue than what we were talking about though. Let's not move the discussion to much.

As for lying about birth control I said it's more murky, but such blatant edge cases as pointed out above certainly should not be handled as they currently are.

> Discretion is important for edge cases. Further putting a the child above all else and causing unjust harm to people is wrong, and should not something we want courts doing.

I'm taking a Utilitarian position on a Trolley Problem here. Of course you can change the equation by putting Hitler or Mother Theresa on the tracks. I've agreed that some edge cases have been handled badly; what is your desired outcome of this?

I am saying courts should be allowed to use common sense in edge cases. Ideally in more murky situations the burden should be lessened.

An other statutory rape case: https://www.lawlink.com/research/cases/74059/county-of-san-l...

The victim should not be paying any child support in this case.

Similar, when sperm is taking with zero consent.

Maybe more murky things like lying about birth control if there is solid evidence of that the courts should be able to take that into account ect...In such murky situations I am not saying responsibility should be completly absolved. The child always first is just black and white thinking, and lacks nuance and common sense. That leads to injustice.

Here is an other example of child rape victim forced to pay child support: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-trauma...

Such a legal system is not just if it can't handle cases like this.

The legal system is not just in all edge cases. This is known. The good news is that bad precedents can be overturned.

This is problem with how current statues are written for child support. This would take legislative action at least it looks that way in the USA for most states with a cursory google.

Most statues allow courts to have some discretion to handle edge cases. This is not the case with child support. That's why I said it's bad public policy, and there will be more people victimized by these poorly written laws.

Sure. Needs work. When you say you "hate this mentality" it sounds like you want to toss out the entire legal concept. In further discussion, you're hyperfocused on some edge cases. I agree, those edge cases need work... but you haven't convinced me that the entire concept is unworkable.

Why can't they both take the respective pill? That way nobody has to trust anyone else.

That doesn't follow. You have to trust people to have taken the pill.

If the pill worked when you took it 5 minutes in advance of the act, you could both watch each other take it and find something else to do for five minutes. That's not the case.

You just need to know that you took your own pill

More options are always better. It's common that hormonal birth control won't work for someone, so it's great that we are creating more configurations. You're also correct that the person who is going to get pregnant is the more invested party and the one who is going to suffer the consequences from improper preparations.

> You're also correct that the person who is going to get pregnant is the more invested party and the one who is going to suffer the consequences from improper preparations.

Depending on the country/state you are in. If abortion is legalized, you can do that. And then, if you know you won't get an abortion either because local regulations forbid, or it goes against your beliefs, then you have to weight in your risks and make your decisions, like combining birth control methods for example.

Now, in places where abortion is legalized, women are the only ones with the power to stop the pregnancy, and the guy needs to face their decision. They can't bail (at least, financially)

I've been party to at least two abortions. They're shitty and they come with major side effects. I would have taken the male pill as religiously as I take my allergy pills, to avoid that.

> and then there's better options than a chemical pill for those situations already

What are the better options? Male condoms have a "typical use failure rate" of 13%, and a "perfect use failure rate" of 2%. Which isn't really good compared to chemical contraceptives like the pill.

You can see numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_me...

So your point would be... what? Women already have birth control and still can take it. A male birth control pill helps prevent the opposite situation where she "forgot" to take the pill, or the small chance that a fertilized egg stays attached, henceforth putting the man on a financial hook. What you wrote here comes off as a case of "women most affected" since you're implying there's an asymmetric risk profile that doesn't already exist for men. Somehow having a more leveled playing field only works in long-term relationships? If anything, it's a greater benefit in short-term relationships since you can be assured that even if a condom fails the chance of pregnancy would be scant.

Other than condoms, birth control (used mostly as birth control, not as menstrual regulation) is mostly relegated to trusting long term relationships already: STDs exist. So whether this is better or worse than the pill for women engaging in casual sex is probably not all that big of a deal: If you are trusting someone's recent STD panel results, you are still putting quite a bit of trust in them.

Now, saying there are better options in those long relationships is quite the claim. There's a non insignificant percentage of women that have serious side effects with hormonal birth control: Mood changes and reduced sex drive are crippling, if you are unlucky enough to find yourself in that category. Surgical approaches aren't great if you see a possibility of wanting to change your mind later.

So there's definitely a market for male birth control, if it has few side effects. Will it sell as much as once a trimester hormonal treatments for women? probably not, but you are assuming there's no market there.

> here's a non insignificant percentage of women that have serious side effects with hormonal birth control: Mood changes and reduced sex drive are crippling, if you are unlucky enough to find yourself in that category. Surgical approaches aren't great if you see a possibility of wanting to change your mind later.

absolutely agreed, If there are pills and procedures for both sides, whoever has bad side effects (or risks for a surgery) can opt-out, and the other partner will do it. Or both can combine, decreasing the risk of pregnancy even more

Not exactly. Women have the power to choose abortion but men don't. Men however are liable for financially supporting the child. The greater risk is with the man.

There are a lot of men who would love to have the confidence of not having to trust every woman he sleeps with. "Stealing" babies from men and the fear of that is real.

Exactly. Of course, depending on country/state, the regulations vary. But at least here in Canada, if birth control fails, the woman can get an abortion. What happens is that often they don't, but you can't say the option is not there. (again: depending on local regulations, but assuming you are somewhere with this option)

> Not exactly. Women have the power to choose abortion but men don't. Men however are liable for financially supporting the child. The greater risk is with the man.

I find brushing off abortion like this a tad ridiculous. Sure one could say the 'risk' is greater. But abortion carries with it emotional, and physical trauma, not to mention a lot of women are still met with shameful looks in today's society for doing so. It isn't an easy process, and I think comparing it with financial liability like this is a bit.. "Insensitive", I think the word is.

Even still, some women are not comfortable with abortion. And in that case they will be taking a greater risk.

Like I see what you're saying, but I don't think the comparison between abortion and financial liability is something we should be doing.

That financial liability is 18 years of paying some double-digit percentage of your income to somebody that could be a almost a stranger for nothing in return. All those hours of work wasted is huge, so is the emotional toll of being cheated in such a large scale.

Abortion as soon as you discover you're pregnant is just a pill and quite easy.

> Abortion as soon as you discover you're pregnant is just a pill and quite easy.

You mean the intentional killing of a human being is "easy", I read this and I know society is doomed.

Nobody is required by law to sustain life of another human by making internals of your body available and risking your health and/or life.

Except for pregnant women.

We've been killing each other for thousands of years for far more trivial reasons than getting 18 years of financial obligations.

>We've been killing each other for thousands of years for far more trivial reasons than getting 18 years of financial obligations.

Yes we have, and the repercussions of those acts are still being felt to this day with calls for justice, reducing human worth to purely a "financial obligation" to be avoided at all costs makes us lower than beasts roaming the Serengeti

Mifepristone (the abortion pill) only works up to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. All scientific evidence suggests the nervous system is not developed enough to experience anything resembling consciousness or to feel pain until 20 weeks at the earliest. Before that point, the fetus is just a cluster of cells. Brains are what make us human.

> All scientific evidence suggests the nervous system is not developed enough to experience anything resembling consciousness or to feel pain until 20 weeks at the earliest.

Bold claim with no data to back it up and yet a cursory search on Google shows how false your claim is:

1. https://flo.health/pregnancy/pregnancy-health/fetal-developm.... 2. https://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/fetal-development/fet...

Is feeling pain or being conscience the standard upon which we determine the worth of someones life? If yes then please head over to your nearest hospital and pull the plug on all the comatose patients.

> Women have the power to choose abortion but men don't.

Not exactly. Abortion is criminalized in multiple states now. In other states, the father needs to be identified and consent to the abortion. It's also stigmatized and many women don't have a free choice in the matter -- in some religious communities, a woman who seeks an abortion does so at the risk of excommunication, disowning or even beatings/murder.

Everyone should be responsible for their own bodies. The fact that men now have access to the pill does not mean that women will have to stop taking theirs and suddenly leave the risks of pregnancy to others.

Now both will be able to take it. Each individual will be able to choose the level of risk that is right for them.

If you are a woman who is comfortable with the risk, you can stop the pill and trust your partner. If you are not, you can take the pill yourself.

If you are a man who is comfortable with the risk, you can stop the pill and trust your partner. If you are not, you can take the pill yourself.

This is also a great option for stable relationships where the woman cannot take hormone-based pills. The man can simply take this non-hormonal pill and the couple will be protected from unplanned pregnancy.

I don't understand this take. If a woman doesn't want a kid she can get an abortion. If a man doesn't want a kid he better hope the woman feels the same or he is screwed. Women have almost all the power in this situation.

Not in Texas or the other states following suit. Not sure if you're American or not but women are having the right to choose stripped a lot lately. None of us will have any power soon.

I once came across this statement, which has stuck with me: “All unwanted pregnancies are the result of irresponsible ejaculations.” And I haven’t been able to figure a situation that refutes that. The idea that a woman somehow has power in this situation misrepresents power dynamics and the reality of gender inequality in our society. If men don’t want a kid, or don’t want to risk a pregnancy, it is not difficult to avoid.

No birth control (aside from sterilization) is 100% effective. If you consider all premarital sex, even "protected" sex, to be irresponsible, then that is a fair statement. But most people do not.

When it comes to elective abortion, I am personally most sympathetic to the case where the couple tried their best to prevent pregnancy and yet it happened anyway. (Of course, there is also the case of rape, where the woman should definitely have the option of abortion.)

I can think of four quite trivially. The condom fails. The IUD fails. Your wife forgets to take the pill. Your girlfriend lies about being on the pill.

Not only is it an incredibly callous take devoid of empathy, it is wrong. It is like telling a woman if you didn't want to get pregnant you shouldn't have had sex.

This underplays the risks men face. As a woman, you can take bc and protect yourself against crazy guys who would ditch in the case of a pregnancy. Male bc would similarly protect men against women who would lie about being on bc

Ah yes. We can protect ourselves from the least likely scenario. Good... good...

Do people really think this is so common that we need to consider it a possibility in almost any case? It keeps being brought up but it's highly unlikely, outside of daytime talk shows.

> If a woman says "trust me, i'm on the pill" and lies

The guy can now mitigate the risk by being on the pill himself

I would assume that the male pill is targeted more toward people in relationships. Condoms prevent more than just the one side effect of intercourse, where a pill does nothing for STDs. After our first kid, my wife told me to go get clipped. I didn't hesitate for a second and now I'm happily unable to procreate again. On the other hand, my wife has regretted that decision for years. Selfishly, I love the fact that I don't have to argue about it but had she not been so quick to react to the unpleasantness of pregnancy, I probably would have caved and we'd have two kids. Had a pill been available, she almost certainly would have opted for that. (Birth control pills and devices have caused her serious medical problems in the past, so it's not a viable option.)

> If a woman says "trust me, i'm on the pill" and lies -- they're the ones that get pregnant and likely get stuck raising the kid. Sure the father might be on the hook financially, but if the woman lied about their birth control and went forward with the pregnancy anyway it's not absurd to imagine the father bailing on the situation.

And yet there are whole discussion boards dedicated to the subject how to best catch a man by getting yourself pregnant by him against his will.

I couldn't find a single one for men on how to catch a women by getting her pregnant against her will.

Then you didn't look hard enough.

Care to help me with a link?

Sorry, diving deep into the manosphere is not exactly lining up with my self care goals, but I'm sure you're not as bad at using Google as you'd let me to believe.

If in needs a deep dive into some weird niche of the internet then my point has been proven. Catching man with the use of a pregnancy gives whole pages of google results with simplest of searches.

This problem is solved, just not in pill form.

There's an old solution that allows men to reduce their sperm count, down to an effective-zero: raise the temperature of the testicles to be body temperature.

In ancient times bread bakers were known to not father as many children, until they stopped working the ovens. The heat shock protein disrupts sperm production for longer periods of time. HSP forms at 104 degrees, iirc.

One of my previous comments about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28023798

Sounds like playing demanding games with a laptop on your lap would also work.

The thing about Birth Control for Men is that there's no penalty for lying.

Men aren't the ones who get pregnant after saying "Of course I'm on the Pill, darling."

Women who believe that are as bad/stupid/dumb as the ones who believe a man who says "Trust Me".

It would for sure be an asshole thing to do, but men don't really have anything to gain by getting a woman pregnant right? If anything it's a liability (child support payments)

I think you'd be surprised how many out there just want to 'sow the seed' for the sake of it.

An abusive man can try to prevent a woman from leaving him by getting her pregnant.

Even if she leaves she'll have to continue to interact with him if he gets partial custody.

He can also threaten to make sure she has her child taken away if she leaves him and threaten to lie to the court about her fitness as a parent.

This works better if the local religion or government is anti abortion.

The same could be said about women. They get pregnant and are entitled to child support.

What would be motivation, though?

I feel like a headline like this has popped up every year for the last 15 years.

What I love about reversible male birth control is that all of the conjecture simply disappears after it becomes available

90% of the comments if this thread simply become comedy

In any case I’m very curious about this Vitamin A solution

> experimental compound that blocks proteins from binding to vitamin A, also known as retinoic acid

thoughts? anything we should know about retinoic acid?

Will be interesting to track the increase in STDs as condom use by men declines with uptake of male birth control pills.

Why would I take poison to make me infertile? This is beyond stupid

Don’t worry too much about this topic. Having sex is a requirement for it to be relevant.

The article doesn’t explain what’s wrong with condoms.

Edit: lol didn’t realize this was just a controversial question

Does it need to?

I’m just curious what problem this is solving. If you’re casually dating your partner has no guarantee you’re on the pill, so you have to use a condom anyway.

If you’re with another dude, you’d still want to use a condom for stds.

If you’re in a long term relationship and don’t want kids aren’t there already better options than this?

Under what circumstances would one use this over a condom?

For tons of people in committed relationships, the woman takes the pill and they don't use condoms. This just lets the guy do it instead (or in addition, if you want to be extra safe). I'm truly not following what's hard to understand about it.

I didn’t realize people still took pills in committed relationships. My doc friends said a copper iud is pretty much the gold standard.

Thanks for the info.

IUDs or injected, persistent "pills", yeah, I'm not sure literally taking a pill every day is as common as it once was now that they can inject something that lasts months and doesn't require remembering to take it, but some form of drug-based contraception is still fairly common (among the ones not using IUDs for whatever reason).

Daily pills are still quite common. The implants are not trivial projects; it's a lot more than just a jab, and takes a few days to recover from. IUDs are also very unpleasant to have put in. And some women like the level of control they get from taking the daily pill.

> Under what circumstances would one use this over a condom?

I personally find sex without condoms much more pleasurable and I suspect I'm not alone. I would be open to using an effective and affordable form of male birth control in a committed relationship if it meant I didn't have to use a condom.

That said, for casual encounters, this could be used in addition to a condom, just to "be sure."

No one actually likes condoms, condom use recommended as a gold standard is just flippant judgey bullshit from people who don’t actually get sex. Condoms don’t prevent a lot of STDs and they don’t always work without failure, but god forbid we accept and design around what normal mammals have done for millenia.

If you’re concerned about HIV there’s PrEP, if you’re concerned about bacterial infection there’s antibiotics, and for everything else you likely already have it (unless you’re a virgin who browbeats people over condom use).

Even in committed relationships, such a pill would be an extra safety factor. There are plenty of people who got pregnant despite being on the pill or having an IUD. It is a small chance, but it is possible. I imagine that still using those methods + using the pill for men at the same time would decrease that small chance to an even smaller one.

And while the chance of IUD or the daily pill failing is small, it is non-zero, and it happens to people in real life. And the consequences of that small chance not playing out your way tend to be very costly in every single way.

While condoms used correctly are 98% effective, typical use is only 78% effective. Condoms sometimes break, especially if you don't use them correctly. You also have to be conscientious about pulling out after ejaculation, which isn't necessarily the most satisfying conclusion to sex. They have to be applied correctly and fitted correctly.

Pills also have a lot of failure modes, of course. But they can provide a more "natural", smooth experience to sex. You don't have to interrupt the process to apply one -- and sometimes that can lead to further interruptions.

For me, the more modes of protection the better. I could see wanting to use both a condom AND a pill -- the former for STDs, the latter to be extra-certain about pregnancy. The risk may be low but the consequences are very high. You should absolutely use a condom until you are close enough to be "fluid bonded".

Condoms is still the better alternative if you dont know the person yet, it also protects against diseases, something these things dont do, nothing beats a good old condom :P

There I think are a number of viable male birth control options already, but most of them never come to market. This is because it's nearly impossible to get men to invest in preventing the risk of pregnancy. Aside from condoms, unfortunately the vast majority of heterosexual men are programmed to offload that risk mitigation onto women.

You underestimate most mens' willingness to avoid pregnancy. To a lot of men, there are few things more horrific than getting the wrong woman pregnant and being saddled with 18 years of child support payments and the ethical burden of 18 years of child-rearing.

Personally, I am a heterosexual male that would 100% take this if it's available, not sure why I was downvoted.

This isn't my personal opinion, I am actually just stating the opinion of pharmaceutical companies. If you search for male birth control, you'll see lots of stories like this over the past 5-10 years. So you need to ask yourself why there aren't any that we can currently go to our doctor for? The science is there but attitudes and market research are not.

We are a conscientious bunch here and not representative of the general population, sadly. Or at least, that's how pharmaceutical companies perceive that, and until that is successfully challenged I don't think any of these will be viable in a commercial sense, even if they are in a scientific one.

    Early trials of male hormonal birth control, usually in the form of injections, have shown that drugs are effective in preventing pregnancy, but pharmaceutical companies show little interest in developing or marketing them. But another obstacle is the unwillingness of men to endure the drug’s side-effects, and of the medical establishment to permit a drug with side-effects similar to those of women’s birth control from being given to men.

I would be really curious how the side-effects compare to female birth control, which are already pretty bad to begin with, and we just expect women to put up with.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/05/male-b...

I totally agree that most men want to avoid pregnancy, even if for selfish reasons instead of caring about their partners.

It's not a question of estimating willingness to prevent pregnancy which I don't underestimate at all, but rather estimating to what depths men are willing to go to prevent pregnancy, compared with what women are already expected to do, and this is a result of gender norms. As far I know, what we have to go on mainly consists of fuzzy signals sent by pharmaceutical company research preferences. If someone knows of some solid research on this topic I'd love to see it.

You could have spend time in actually looking things up.

Wikipedia does not have any approved and working method as easy as a pill on it.

Also the pill is not that easy for woman either.

Don't put us man all in a bucket. You are not helping mitigating stereotypes

You could have also looked up all the available male birth control options that have been successfully developed and never sold within the last 5-10 years.

https://googlethatforyou.com?q=male%20birth%20control

Wikipedia is not the sole source of truth.

You are misidentifying me as either a misogynist and/or man-hater, please see my clarification.

I have not found anything with your link which disproof my statement.

I don't think you really read any of those articles or did any deep research to learn the history of male birth control development, but the information is out there if you look harder than Wikipedia. If you want to mischaracterize me you're free to do so, even though I think we're more in agreement than it appears.

My point still stands that it's not the science holding us back as much as social attitudes and pharmaceutical company decision making. Pharmaceutical companies do not see this as very profitable, so it's likely they are making false assumptions about male family planning and gender norms.

Even beyond that if you take out any assumptions about male attitudes, society has taught women that they need to accept more invasive measures for family planning, and it just takes time for men to get used to that too. However, as much as attitudes are changing there are some men that will not take up this responsibility, and I say this as a progressive person that has to work with many conservative people that have extremely regressive views about gender norms that are too stubborn and willfully ignorant to be educated otherwise.

I'll just leave these here for those who are actually interested in making this a reality and learning the science and history of where we're at:

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6419257/

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4762912/

- https://www.healthline.com/health-news/male-birth-control

- https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/male-birth-control-v...

You are still only posting studies etc. How they could work but not a single available save product.

I'm totally lost on what your stance is. You can't push against men if there is not a single product out there.

...

I'm not sure where you get your information, but it feels like you have some other axe to grind.. Nearly every single man in my circle of friends has gotten a vasectomy. Several of us knew we never wanted children and would've gotten a vasectomy in our 20s if doctors would approve it.

I just exclusively started having anal sex with dudes. It works wonders for preventing pregnancy and I usually don’t even need to buy them dinner first.

That's great, but sadly that's probably not representative at all. I have no axe to grind, I'm just stating the facts on why we don't have male birth control on the market.

Again, please don't make assumptions about my beliefs just because this is uncomfortable to hear.

or has society (western anyway) for decades offloaded that risk mitigation onto women, so there's momentum to the asymmetry and new adults join an asymmetry already assumed?

No I think actually most guys would prefer not to pay child support, but sure, let’s blame men for everything anyway in a thread about contraceptive options.

This isn't about hatred of men, these are about the facts of why we don't yet have male birth control on the market. Men have had the easy way out compared with women for contraception for this long and sadly a lot of them want to keep it that way.

You literally just make something up and call it facts, how dare you.

No. I do research on the topic and try to come up with the best knowledge I can find. I have citations, where are yours?

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