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Drug Companies Plan Male Contraceptive Pill
TamMan2000 writes "I can hear the trolls now, with their jokes about how nobody who reads slashdot will ever score... But, incase any of us ever do score the male pill could soon be a reality."
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...watching the antics of celebrities and athletes as they deal with their illegitimate children in front of the media.
Future generations will not know this joy.
... impotence."
"And like that
I think that the technology/knowledge to create birth control pills for men has been around for a while. I imagine they will be much safer, too, since sperm is manufactured on a frequent regular basis, the pill would just have to affect that process. It could probably be taken as little as 24-36 hours before sex to have its effect, and it would most likely not affect hormone levels.
It's just that pills for men have this one little problem:
Zero Accountability.
Oh, sure, if you're using them because you're in a committed relationship and don't want your honey to get pregnant, they'd be useful as heck.
However, one of the reasons that birth control pills for women work so well is because the women taking them have a *huge* incentive to take them -- they don't want to get pregnant. So, they're much less likely to forget a dose.
On the other hand, consider a player. He may even have pills, but forget to take them. It'll be important to him, but not as present in his mind as it would in a woman's, because the effects for him are not so dire. For the player, it might rank just above flossing as a priority.
Also, imagine men saying, "Honey, it's cool, I'm on the pill." A woman has no real reason to lie and say that she's on the pill if she isn't, and if she does lie then she has to suffer the consequences.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
I heard that scientists behind "The Iron Curtain" not only developed male pill years ago - they made abetter one.
They made a "morning after" pill for men.
It was 100% effective.
No patient who tried it ever got pregnant.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
This is pretty neat, but it doesn't mention how it works. They've been experimenting with the male "shot", which is basically an injection of testosterone into your leg once a week. Apparently, it's quite painful, and has many side effects, like bad acne and more body hair. One good side effect is increased muscle mass, but this is simply a good reason to have it abused by weightlifters as most steroids either stimulate the production of testosterone, or simulate testosterone itself.
If the pill simply increases testosterone to insane levels like the shot does, it's simply a steroid and is going to have side effects similar to other steroids. When you supplement testosterone, your body stops making it's own, and that's part of the reason your nuts shrink.
My ex-gf wanted me to get the shot when it was released because she thought taking the pill was too inconvenient. I think going in for a painful shot once a week, bad acne, and lots of hair is probably more of an inconvenience. The female pill has been around for a long time, and it's side effects (good and bad) are fairly well understood. I think the acceptance rate of a male pill will likely be slow just because it will take awhile to prove itself, and if it does just increase testosterone levels, the side effects may not be worth it.
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It's called "Geek Reality" and it's a bitter, bitter pill.
Never heard of Old Dirty Bastard's 10 kids by 9 different women?
Never heard of the Jerry Springer "I want your baby and your money" Show?
There are many women who lie about using the pill for the express purpose of getting pregnant. Whether they do it for money (ODB) or for love (Jerry Springer style), they do it.
A guy who sleeps around isn't looking to have a family and would more likely to be diligent in taking the medication correctly. It's a pill in the morning, not some series of injections. It's easy for a playboy to prevent exactly those things that would hamper his playing. Except for STDs of course.
Ha, shows what you know. I'm an avid slashdot reader and I score all the time... just yesterday I got the highest Pac-Man score for the second time in three weeks!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
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Please, people, be responsible.
--sdem
...this when I submitted the story, but I had not found it yet at the time...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Where the slashdot story says "soon", the CNN article says the product is "likely to be available in seven years."
There has been no technical or biological barriers to producing a non-painful or non-surgical male contraceptive drug like this.
Excuse me? Stopping sperm production is non-trivial. There is no natural mechanism for stopping sperm production, like there is for egg production. Doing it with drugs has generally required something like large doses of Testosterone, which has serious side effects and isn't consistent enough for practical purposes.
Stopping egg production, on the other hand, is relatively simple, and there are various natural mechanisms in place for doing so, such as pregnancy and excessively low body fat. Low body fat is obviously a difficult thing to maintain, especially at the level where it effects fertility, and again it isn't consistent enough to be considered effective. Pregnancy, however, is very consistent, even across the animal kingdom. I don't know of a single creature that is fertile during pregnancy.
This consistency, and the fact that it is a natural mechanism, is why there are birth control pills for women; because it's easy, not because of some aleged (imagined, IMO) prejudice that birth control is a woman's responsibility. It is a fairly simple thing to mess with a woman's biochemistry and make her body think it's pregnant, which is exactly what every birth control pill, shot, or implant does (and if you think women get side-effects from those, just wait until you have to deal with an actual pregnant woman on a daily basis!)
does it fuck with your emotions and hormonal balance in the ways the pill, Norplant and Depo do to women?
Of course it does, they only question is how much. There's no way it could work without messing with your hormonal balance, and there's no way your hormones are going to get messed with without having emotional and physical side-effects. The trick will be the same as it has been for female birth control; balancing effectiveness against side effects (dosage), and trading off more annoying side-effects for less annoying ones (formula).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I think that the technology/knowledge to create birth control pills for men has been around for a while. I imagine they will be much safer, too, since sperm is manufactured on a frequent regular basis, the pill would just have to affect that process.
Wrong on pretty much all counts, actually.
Stopping ovulation in women is straightforward - you're trying to stop a once-a-month event, and the female body already has a shut-down mechanism built in (ovulation stops during pregnancy). The pill just triggers this mechanism (tricks the body into thinking it's pregnant).
Men are designed to produce sperm all the time. There is no built-in shut-down mechanism to trigger. You also have to stop production of *all* of the hundreds of millions of sperm cells produced between sexual encounters, as opposed to stopping just one egg from being released. A male contraceptive that eliminates 99.9% of sperm production is still useless.
And because you're trying to inhibit a function that's never normally shut down, you have to start from scratch when figuring out how to do it, and live with the fact that a male contraceptive that's 100% effective runs a real risk of causing permanent damage if not very carefully designed.
It could probably be taken as little as 24-36 hours before sex to have its effect, and it would most likely not affect hormone levels.
Hormone manipulation is just about the only way to affect sperm production. What do you think drives it? Hormones are the body's signalling system for stopping/starting body processes.
It's only now, after decades of research, that relatively safe, reasonably effective approaches to male contraception are being developed, and we have a long way to go before they're mature.
I assume you are talking about depo. It is nice for all the reasons you mentioned, but there is one important thing that is not there...
Decades of data. No studies on the long term effects of not having a period have ever been performed, the uterine lining is supposed to be flushed regularly, no body knows what leaving it in there like that does to the long term health of the uterus.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
...the male morning after pill.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Depo seems to work well for some people, but I've known people who have gotten pregnant while on it, like towards the end of the 3 month time frame. Also, some of the girls have experienced weight gain that they did not experience while on the pill.
I know one person on Norplant, the implant in the arm that lasts for 6 years, and she loves it. No pills or shots, and it's been 100% effective for her so far.
As for not getting your period on Depo, simialar effects also happen with the pill if it's 100% progesterone. Most women who take the pill take one that has both progesterone and estrogen, which is more "fault tolerant" than the straight progesterone version so if she misses a day, it's not a big deal. The progesterone version must be taken within the same hour each day, or you are supposed to use some sort of backup method. Not getting a period is not necessarily a good thing either. While it may be convenient, it's not necessarily healthy. Some women have had problems with their period not starting again when they go off Depo, which can present major problems if they want to have kids.
Too bad vasectomies are not reversable, as that would be the safe way to go. Isn't the primary reason they are not reversable the fact that the sperm is dumped into the bloodstream and your body produces antobodies which then kill them? So if you have it reversed, your body still kills the little guys? Anyway, I'm no doctor, but I play one sometimes.
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From the official FAQ:
Q: How was the male contraceptive pill created?
A: As with most revolutionary discoveries, entirely by accident! A patient involved in a double blind clinical trial for an entirely different product somehow managed to cram a placebo pill into his urethra.
Q: How does it work?
A: The pill, or, more accurately, "penile plunger," as it has been technically termed, temporarily obstructs the outlet of the urethra. As a result, the patient is rendered infertile for a full 6 hours, after which time the pill dissolves and dislodges harmlessy.
Q: Are there any side effects that I should know about?
A: Being a purely mechanical devide, the male contraceptive pill has very few side effects to worry about. Acute pain and a kidney-stone-like sensation are common. Additionally, patients are advised not to drink prior to or during use of the male pill, due to a slight risk of bladder explosion.
The angel in the oatmeal.
watching the antics of celebrities and athletes as they deal with their illegitimate children in front of the media.
Dunno what it is, but I read that, "as they dangle their illegitimate children in front of the media.
Michael Jackson, anyone?
boys should not be able to get their drivers licences until they have the valve installed. It will be closed by default. It can only be openned once the man is out of college and has a job.
We should invest money is this! Big brother at it's best. Imagine how few losers would be around!
(No, I'm not serious. But i think it's funny.)
A speech...