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Comment by Justin_K | Hacker News Reader

Female birth control states the same, as nothing is ever 100%

Sometimes life, uhh, finds a way.

But yes, if they said something is 100% effective and it wasn’t, I would imagine they would be sued into bankruptcy pretty fast.

How much would an accidental child cost these days?

With the female contraceptive pill 0.3% of women get pregnant within a year if taken perfectly (which is rarely the case, but the figure here is also from lab conditions). This drug leads to 1% pregnancies in 4 weaks, which is much worse.

That said this is still great news especially as the condom is also much less safe then the female contraceptive pill.

Condoms are extremely effective also, if used perfectly, which is rarely the case. Statistics should be based on real-world experience not theoretical best case.

Wikipedia gives a 2% pregnancy rate for condoms within one year with perfect use which is much worse than 0.3%.

We only have the numbers for the lab environment with I assume perfect use for this new drug, so we can only compare perfect use.

I've always been intrigued by where those 2% come from, since condoms are a physical barrier... Teleporting sperm?

The statistics show that the 2% comes from breakage/slippage, micropores and manufacturing defects:

https://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824(04)0...

Mostly misuse. The studies are all nonsense AFAIK, they rely on the participants to use the condoms correctly, which predictably doesn't happen. Problems the studies mention, like slippage and breakage are the result of misuse, probably due to choosing the wrong condom size.

The only reason for a properly used condom to not work would be a manufacturing defect, which should be extremely rare, certainly not 2%, that's plainly ridiculous and immediately disqualifies any study that claims so.

The statistics are based on real world experience rather than theoretical best case. Not to pick on you but really surprised to hear people confidently express so much misinformation on this topic when it's not even particularly hard to find information on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_me...

What throws me off about this, is it's not difficult to use perfectly. Condoms are the only method I trust. Pull-out? Can screw it up. With birth control you're (until now) relying on your partner to use it perfectly.

It's worth measuring both ideal and real world use, IMO.

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