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Reliable Male Contraceptive In the Works
Hugh Pickens writes "The BBC reports that recent tests in China indicate a monthly injection of testosterone, which works by temporarily blocking sperm production, could be as effective at preventing pregnancies as the female pill or condoms. In trials in China only one man in 100 fathered a child while on the injections, and six months after stopping the injections the mens' sperm counts returned to normal. The lead researcher said that if further tests proved successful, the treatment could become widely available in five years' time. Previous attempts to develop an effective and convenient male contraceptive have encountered problems over reliability and side effects, such as mood swings and a lowered sex drive. However, despite the injection having no serious side effects, almost a third of the 1,045 men in the two-and-a-half year study did not complete the trials; no reason was given for this."
2.5 years of *injections* and 1/3 did not complete the term of the trials. Not surprising. Make it in pill form and you may have a higher completion rate...
I'd bet on 'not wanting to be repeatedly poked with a giant needle'
I remember seeing videos of some trials, it was really scary.
(was very afraid of needles, now so, so, still, not 'omg I'm getting a shot this is so cool!!')
how long until
Maybe they just wanted to have childs...
2.5 years is a long time and they probably changed their mind
I didn't found something funny to put here.
"Don't sweat it, babe, I've had the injection. Honest."
"Oh, OK, then. On you go."
Irrelevant - any good journalist knows that 33% is statistically insignificant...
It really frustrates me whenever the media do a science story, especially one regarding medicine. In their desperation to focus on the human angle and "won't anybody think of the children" - and of course, increase number of readers - they completely ignore any basic scientific analysis.
A classic example was the MMR-gives-you-autism scare - they make a sensational headline from a report without investigating the background of Wakefield (the author who made the public statement that started it - he received money from lawyers trying to build a case), without giving any consideration to the statistical significance of his findings (the paper looked at 12 patients), and completely ignoring the fact that the paper said it couldn't link MMR to autism. Even though it has now been proven that there is no link, the doubt lives on in the public mind.
Perhaps this is due to scientific journalists having no real understanding of science. Perhaps they do, but have a better understanding of how their job depends on selling a story. Either way, they must take more responsibility for their power over the public.
Returning to the MMR story, Wakefield has been widely discredited and hauled in front of the GMC and could be struck off. Meanwhile, what has happened to the journalists who built the story into the frenzy that led to measles and mumps outbreaks in the UK? Nothing - they're still writing stories like this.
Hmm, I think it needs to be a single shot that lasts a year. Going to the doctor to get this sorted out is just difficult for working people.
Or put it in the water supply, especially that of schools. That'll sort out the underage pregnancy statistics.
Quoth the article:
Now assuming that "family planning campaigners" are predominantly female (a fair and perfectly reasonable assumption), contrast the above with the following opinion from fertility expert Mr. Laurence Shaw:
The difference in both perspective and opinion is somewhere between funny and tragic. If you're a woman, the former is most true (men are all-powerful and don't need any "empowerment"). If you're a man who's been involved in custody or child support proceedings, it's likely that you've been made painfully aware that the notion of men's rights is routinely ignored, dismissed as unecessary, or taken away in a gesture of deference to the "weaker" sex.
The once a month injection is a deal-killer for me though.
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
"Evil, Manipulative Women Everywhere Suddenly Deprived of Only Method to Trap Husband"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
A vasectomy is more effective.
what is it with wacked out guys that refuse to get one because "I'm less of a man If I do that"...
Are most guys that uneducated or dumb? If you do not want any children, get the fricking snip and get it over with. your life is better snipped!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Man oh man - if you think that a teenie needle injection once a mnth is a hassle wait until you have CHILDREN! From waking up every 2 hours 24 hours a day to decimating the order of your household, children make a stupid shot seem just... stupid.
Tell you what: don't worry about the needle. Just have good, natural sex, the way nature intended. Wait a few years, and then tell me if a shot is really a big deal!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
No serious side effects? Oddly, I've been told by a number of doctors that extra testosterone injections increase chances of cancer ... I'd call that a side effect, even if it's further out than this study did.
Also, I wonder how many more pregnancies will happen if this becomes popular. I mean a one night stand the girl knows whether or not she is on the pill and so she takes her chances. But now if the guy can say that he's on this then what? The dude doesn't necessarily care he's not the one that is going to get pregnant and he doesn't have to see her again. Also, six months for the sperm count to return: not sure how much I like that, not a big deal for guys as they tend to stay fertile later in life, but 6 months to an older women could be a big risk of hitting menopause before she can conceive.
There's a difference between something that's discretionary and and something that's required to keep alive/healthy.
So what if someone else has a bigger problem than I have? There's always *someone* with a bigger problem. Doesn't mean I can't make choices about what is and is not acceptable in my own life.
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
I've always thought that condom success rate depends on intelligence and your actual practices.
I and a lot of friends used condoms and experienced 0% failure rate (no pregnancies).
OTH, with birth-control pills, we had a failure-- but it wasn't the pills.
The lady in question admitted a year or two later that she was lying and had stopped taking the pill because she had decided she wanted to get pregnant. She also later decided she only wanted the money and not the males interference with raising the child.
As a guy, you know when you are using as condom, but you never really know when you are a using a pill.
So these shots would be good because you would *know* you were covered from your side.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They're not 100% effective 100% of the time. RISUG looks promising but it will no doubt not undergo clinical trials in Canada or US. This is because Pharmaceutical companies would rather put hormonal drugs through clinical trials so they can reap huge profits and leave the side effects for users and the environment. It's a shame really but that's western medicine for you.
Not that I can provide serious input to testosterone injections specifically, but what doesn't increase the risk of cancer? Living in California, I am beginning to think that we have some miasma that turns everything into a carcinogen. I recall hearing about a study that showed repeated injections of saline caused cancer in some laboratory mice. My suggested hypothesis: Too much of anything is bad for you.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Maybe they just wanted to have childs...
2.5 years is a long time and they probably changed their mind
The above makes sense. Couples who already were comfortable with having a child would be ideal couples to participate in a study of birth control effectiveness.
You wouldn't want the set with whom panic would arise at the mere thought of their birth control method failing.
"The best contraceptive I've found is an "Excellent" karma rating on /."
Oh really? Let's try an experiment:
Linux is less stable than Windows, and always has been.
C++ is more elegant than C.
Even power users are faster in a GUI than command line.
Mac users enjoy being marginalized.
HTML should never have gotten more popular than gopher.
So do you think that the karma burn will increase my chances of re-producing?
... I doubt that women will accept it.
Even if it has no side effects and if men are able to accept the stigma of being temporarily infertile, I expect that women won't trust this treatment.
Just think about it: who bears most of the risk in case of pregnancy? Women. It might be unjust, but in most societies, men can walk away and abandon women they've gotten pregnant easily without serious social stigma or financial repercussions. Women either have to get an abortion (stigmatized, traumatic, and in many places illegal/expensive/dangerous) or raise a child alone (stigmatized/expensive/time-consuming).
With the pill or condoms, women are either controlling the birth control themselves, or can verify its use on-the-spot. With male contraceptive injections/pills,
I foresee a big problem with women not trusting that men are really taking this. Heck, in the pilot study 1/3 of the men just stopped taking it for no apparent reason!!
My bicyles
More like they weren't married and getting jabbed "just in case I get lucky" got old real fast, or they were married and getting jabbed knowing they weren't going to get lucky got old REALLY fast.
The enemies of Democracy are
When Pons and Fleischmann put forward their (admittedly bizarre) cold fusion claims, the physics community tried to replicate the results. They did not start screaming from the rooftops that Pons and Fleischmann were frauds, hoaxers, etc...
Um... yeah they did. The denunciations were almost immediate, largely because Pons and Fleishmann didn't give anyone a chance to replicate the results or even submit a paper for peer-review before going to the press. Which is classic charlatan behavior. Then they tried to replicate the results and couldn't, which only confirmed what they already thought.
Funnily enough, it turns out there was more to Pons and Fleischmann than there is to Wakefield. Turns out that just skipping peer review isn't as good an indicator of charlatanism than skipping peer review when conducting research paid for by a lawyer to achieve a result favorable to the lawyer's case.
The enemies of Democracy are
When a registered medical doctor stands up in public and says "MMR is dangerous: 2/3 children who get autism get it due to MMR (based on my sample group of 12 people)", and that story is then carried on the front page of irresponsible newspapers, his peers *should* be standing up and attacking his credibility.
Any scientist worth their salt knows that correlation is not causation, and assumptions cannot be made on a sample group of 12. For any scientist to stand up and claim something so important and dangerous based on the facts before him defies belief - either he was incredibly incompetent, or incredibly motivated to come to the conclusion he had drawn. It turned out to be financial motivation that made him suppress the facts, but either way it had turned out, it was incumbent on his peers to discredit him as quickly as possible. Without contradictory investigations, it had nowhere to go other than a personal attack on the man and his methods. And I say fair enough.
Unfortunately it was too juicy a story for the facts to get in the way, so paranoia and sensational headlines meant the story dragged on for years, largely ignoring the many subsequent investigations that disproved Wakefield. This has led to a lot of fud amongst the general public, and has clearly had an effect on immunisation rates.
That is somewhat different to people saying "We've made a scientific breakthrough", others saying "Oh, really, thought that was impossible, let's have a look", then "Ah, yes, see, you're wrong". It's not as if the public would have gone out and gambled their lives on whether or not cold fusion was possible.
A LOT of males have low testosterone starting at 43-- some earlier. It's an easy test to get.
So yet another natural progression of the aging process has become an illness to be cured?!? What a messed up world we live in. :(
News flash for all you ladies and gents out there... you were never meant to look/feel/act in your forties (and beyond) as you did in your teens and twenties. You'll be slower, weaker, more passive (less aggressive), less beautiful/handsome (by pop media standards, of course), hairier, more wrinkled, less mentally sharp, slower to heal, harder of sight and hearing, and you won't have sex like rabbits. These are generalizations, of course.
It's one thing to help you along as you age (glasses, hearing aids, canes, etc.), but this ever-growing trend in trying to dodge time's arrow every step of the way (cosmetic surgery, perpetual drug regiments, etc.) is sad commentary on a society that supposedly believes in an afterlife. Enjoy your life, in all its stages, then move along -- this world was never meant to be your home forever.
Method of processing duck feet
Right now, women have all reproductive rights and choices (abortion) while men only have responsibilities (18 years of child support).
Say you have 17 year old fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and both of them conceive with their respective girlfriend/boyfriend. You can tell your girl that legally she has the right to
Whereas your conversation with your son will go more like this:
The Male Pill will finally give men the same control over conception that women have, if not the same rights & choices after conception happens.
you were never meant to look/feel/act in your forties (and beyond) as you did in your teens and twenties.
We were never "meant" to receive organ transplants either. The entire field of medicine is basically devoted to opposing to the natural course of life. Hell, most of human history is devoted to that goal.
Eventually, we're going to figure out how to forestall aging and death indefinitely. I don't expect that will happen soon enough for me, but if it does, I'll be the first in line. You'll be free to die happy, secure in the knowledge that you lived only as you were meant to (in front of a computer screen).
If you get her pregnant, you pay child support. It doesn't matter how you get her pregnant. Even if her friends hold you down so she can hop on top and rape you, you still pay child support. Even if she fishes your used condom out of a dumpster near your apartment and uses it to get pregnant, you still pay child support.
Seriously: guys lose in court ALL THE TIME. There is zero defense if it is your kid.
It's crazy enough to trust a condom that you personally buy, protect from damage (keeping it in sight at all times), and flush down the toilet. Trusting anything less is WAY WAY insane.
Plus some of us think it's about more than money: kids need fathers AND mothers.
There's no reason you can't use a condom even though she's on the pill.
If you don't want kids, it's your responsibility to make sure. If she doesn't want kids, it's her responsiblity. Two complimentary methods are better than one. 3 are even better. I've got a sibling that my mom claims made it past 2 forms of birth control, and at least one form was not suseptible to user error.
Maybe it's just me (being one of 7 children, and my parents claim that we all made it past at least one form of birth control), but I'm paranoid. And you know what? I didn't have my first until my wife & I were ready.