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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."
however their recent child support filings may lend a clue.
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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...
And this story was posted to /. why?
1% got pregnant, that seems pretty high for contraceptive. It would have to be used with other means
I stand corrected, the pill is 92-99.7% effective, about 5% of couples will get pregnant. So it seems this way is pretty darn effective.
I didn't found something funny to put here.
And as a useful side-effect, those pesky testicles will shrink and get out of the way.
But where is the male morning after pill?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
When researchers don't address a loss of a 3rd of their sample they are not doing their job. Something is fishy from that end.
Also who wants only a 1/100 chance of NOT getting your SO pregnant? For most Americans that would be on the order of once year (assuming the women is only fertile for a few days a month).
Me too. Keep a picture of Janet Reno in your wallet.
That's as close to a 100% effective prophylactic as you can get.
Well, in this initial prototype, yes. Eventually when they get it in the water supply, you won't notice a thing. Does that thought depress you? Don't worry about that; the lithium in the water will curb those feelings of desire for suicide.
I'm going to take the tinfoil hat off now.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Less Chinese being born, less tech jobs can be outsourced to China.
It's not the medical relevance - it's economy.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"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"
Nobody told them WHERE the injection goes.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
So do I, but that's unfortunately no solution for the heterosexuals amongst us.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
FALCON PUNCH!?!?!?!?
I hate condoms. For a couple years I used them with my wife as the pill was creating undesirable side effects. Regardless of brand or style, you DO NOT get the same level of sensation as without. Tight, loose or somewhere in between.. the condom just didn't matter. Sure, it was still fun, but "unprotected" I could feel more sensation in my skin as it rubbed against hers. I am glad that since I had my two kids I went the vasectomy route. Sex life has improved, and it is a lot more fun.
On another note, it is also fun to be able to get half-way into it... take a breather and go back at it later. Repeat as much as I am able. With a condom, that just ain't practical.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
"Don't sweat it, babe, I've had the injection. Honest."
"Oh, OK, then. On you go."
It's called Neem oil, and the Indian military ran a one-year trial without side effects or pregnancies. The reason you're not going to see any Neem-based contraceptives go through the FDA process is that so far attempts to control it have been largely unsuccessful.
Next week, we'll talk about olive leaf extract...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You know, I practice abstinence. I practice it more than anything else - 20+ hours EVERY DAY I practice it, but still it doesn't work for me.
It's those other hours that I'm not practicing -- steep drop off effects.
IIRC, IANAD, but the 99% effective rating is not a per-encounter rating, but for a year of usage - i.e. 99% effective means that among 100 couples using it as their only form of birth control, 1 couple will conceive over the course of that year. Them's the breaks, and why it's usually a good idea to use 2 different methods. Bagging it also prevents things other than babies...
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
In trials in China only one man in 100 fathered a child while on the injections,
But was that child actually his and not the postman's or milkman's (or whatever the Chinese cultural equivalent is)?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
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.
Link is: http://www.newmalecontraception.org/vas.htm
It's the best of both worlds, and you don't have to deal with the horrible side effects of systemic hormonal treatment. Males really got the short end of the stick for so long when it comes to contraception, either condoms which are unreliable or potentially non-reversible sterilization. I really hope RISUG gets passed in Canada soon as I don't want to have to rely on methods that have been proven to be less than ideal. I've even considered a vasectomy. Although I'm young so they probably wouldn't do it, I don't think I want kids at all perhaps that will change though. The reversibility of a vasectomy isn't very uncertain though. Sucks that it's free to get a vasectomy in Canada although it's so unreliably reversible, if RISUG would be free that would make my day.
Condoms are prone to failure or women poking holes in them to get themselves pregnant without your consent. Happens more than you'd think.
It's time for a Maleism Movement.
"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."
The side effects that are very normal and accepted for hormonal birth control for women are apparently not acceptable for men?
I would really welcome more options for men to control their fertility and be able to take a more active role in preventing pregnancy while in a relationship. I'd love to stop taking my hormonal birth control, but the alternatives right now seem too uncomfortable for both of us.
Planned Parenthood says so. Citation provided.
:-)
Birth control is far more complicated statistically than people think.
Personally, sign me up for this: RISUG
All the benefits of a male birth control pill/shot, without the hormonal side effects, at a fraction of the price. And they're pretty sure it doesn't even cause cancer!
Bobb9000 - raised by the wolves,
Oxford education as phrased by the wolves.
TMI ALERT (way more important than spoiler alert) I have found that it is possible for someone in this predicament to use the "Reality" female condom with the inner ring removed as a male condom. Much like the first, early review I read of such things, the experience is much like "porking a hefty bag". Still, if you put enough lube in it, it's almost like actual sex. Condoms are all terrible, though, and really the best thing to do is to find the right couple of girls to settle down with.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They don't want to get their "Real Dolls" and other inflatable women pregnant any more than the next guy!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If you choose to look at failure rates on a per-encounter basis rather than a per-year basis, then yes, but failure rates for contraceptives are almost always put in terms of conceptions per year.
Bobb9000 - raised by the wolves,
Oxford education as phrased by the wolves.
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.
Personally, sign me up for this: RISUG [wikipedia.org]
From the linked article: "'Within an hour, the drugs produce an electrical charge that nullifies the electrical charge of the spermatozoa, preventing it from penetrating the ovum,' Dr. Guha said."
I have to say that while empirically this stuff may work, made-up bullshit like this from the inventor does not bode well for the veracity of his other claims. While he may be talking about membrane polarization or something, sperm are electrically neutral.
The article claims that it was formerly believed that the treatment killed sperm, which suggests it was developed without even the most basic empirical testing. It isn't hard to tell if sperm are alive or dead using a simple optical microscope immediately after ejaculation.
There's also no indication as to why anyone would use the substances incorporated into this stuff. What line of logic and research lead to this discovery, using a compound of heavily irradiated organic molecules injected into the vas defrens. Why would someone think that was a good idea in the first place?
Finally, there's the claim that it is persistent (up to ten years) and can at the same time be flushed out by irrigation with a sodium bicarbonate solution. This seems implausible, to say the least.
Finally, while there's a lot of talk in the article about Phase III trials, there is no mention at all of trials to actually demonstrate its long-term, or even short-term, efficacy, which is what Phase II trials are for (Phase I is toxicity and pharmokinetics and dyamics, Phase II is safety and efficacy.)
And really finally, there's the name "Sperm Under Guidance"? Under whose guidance are the sperm under, again?
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
My wife had a Mirena inserted four years ago. She had a few days of cramping. After that things have been fine. She also used to have terrible cramping, bleeding, and mood swings related to her period. All of that has greatly reduced as well. Also she has not gained weight like she did on an oral contraceptive (I've already mentioned the improvement of the mood swings on this IUD, the pill was the opposite). There are some risks, ask a doctor or read the warnings. The only downside during the act is that in some cases the man can feel a poke from the string, personally I would not call it painful and it is a good indication that we are going too deep and about to hurt her so it's actually a positive.
Your affusively swenstionalist article points to the existence of neem oil as a pesticide, and apparently a fairly good one (doesn't make me want to drink it btw) but does not mention at all any trials by the Indian military or it's effectiveness. The much less evangelical Neem wiki and the neem entry at drugs.com mention many medical uses, mostly for skin diseases in traditional medicine, and food additives, but makes no mention of male contraception. Female contraception tests in animals are mentioned but not any clinical tests.
I was able to find for both male and female contraception at a new age herbal medicine site http://www.sisterzeus.com/neem.html which seems to contain linked end notes but all the notes are missing. This is quite disturbing as false annotation has been a repetitive problem in the New Age movement, the most famous being the "Chalice and the Blade" scandal about 20 years ago. Google searching the two names mentioned in conjunction with neem did yield some results. Noel Vietmeyer has apparently written a book (not a paper, a book) extolling neem as a wonder plant, but he is not the one who performed the study. It is the only reference I can find. All other references seem to lead back to that one.
I can find no first hand evidence at all on the internet that the Indian military study took place at all.
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.
Ignoring the problems pointed out in other posts, would those males who should be taking it actually do so? Even if it was a patch, I'd think that normal male thought in the populations where this contraception should really be embraced would declare that decreasing your sperm count would make you "less of a man" or "less potent". Essentially it's the same people who refuse to use condoms who need this kind of thing the most, and they'll refuse to use it as well until something drastic happens.
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.
...it will have *absolutely no changes on the character of the person*, to have periodical injections of hormones into the body.
Yeah right.
This might be a wild guess, as I have no proof, but the correlation between the anti-baby-pill and and the rise of feminism is pretty disturbing...
Mind you that I am a strong defender of equal rights (the intonation is on "rights"), as I have never understood why there were different rights in the first place. It just makes no sense. So I thing it was great that they stopped accepting that shit.
What was not that great, was that women themselves somehow acted, as if some female *qualities* were something bad that they needed to fight.
We're *not* the same. We share similarities, and have differences. And it is perfectly fine this way.
Women for example just love different things than men. If we like to build machines, and they like to care for people, then why force us into the opposite, just to be "equal"?
Or to think further: If you force anything into something, to fight being forced into something, something is very wrong.
One thing that comes to mind, is that those pills simulate being pregnant. And if you know how most animals act when they are pregnant... I mean things like wild cats chasing huge bears up into the trees, and small critters attacking you because you are too close, you know that this state makes one very defensive. Which is just right when there are kids to protect. But without kids very likely misdirected.
So what I really would like to know is: What are the real effects on the psyche of a woman, when she is on that stuff. Because I would really hate to know, that my GF is sad or angry for no reason (according to herself), just because of that stuff. I could not do that to her, just for sex. At least I would take my share of it. And ideally, nobody would have to.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
... 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
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.
Gasoline on a fire will actually put it out if you throw enough on that the liquid gasoline smothers the fire before it becomes gaseous and is ignited in air. But I suspect that you meant that oestrogen make prostate cancer grow rapidly - that is untrue and in fact oestrogen used to be used as a treatment for prostate cancer but it had undesirable side effects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate_cancer#Prevention has more info.
The wrong levels of testosterone (high or low) will indeed make one more emotionally volatile and have other bad effects. Injecting testosterone will lower natural production and can make the testes change noticeably. Testosterone injection is intra-muscular and I would expect that the reason most users complain is that 1) they puncture the skin too slowly (it stretches and hurts) rather than using a controlled jab, and 2) they inject too quickly. Liquid testosterone is about the consistency of liquid honey... forcing that into a bunch of muscle fibres at a high rate probably damages them, and 3) because it is thick you use a fairly large diameter needle. Testosterone is available in pill form but it is apparently harder on the liver to take it this way.
Testosterone deficiency can be caused by a lot of things, including sleep apnea which can screw up your endocrine system in general - if one snores a lot it may be worth getting checked out. OTOH exercise can increase natural levels.
I am not a doctor.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
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.